Babies of all species are cute. Usually not when they’re just born, but after they’ve spent a while outside the confines of their gestational/incubational container). Pigs have large litters so they always make a happy family picture. Minus the father though! There were seven of these little things, six pink and one black, scurring around their mother as she took them out to forage in the grass and green plants, on the slopes of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) campus. Their tails so like the little pigtails we see hanging down from a school girl’s head.
It took but a short while for the little ones to gather some courage to wander off a bit, but not too far away from the protection of mom.
Domisticated pigs are usually seen on farms, and in the city we don’t really see pigs the same way as we see cows and horses. This despite pigs being, according to Wiki, “one of the most numerous large mammals on the planet”.
The sight of these pigs took me back several years to the movie Babe. My children were about three-four years old when we had bought the DVD to watch at home. We didn’t get beyond the first few scenes. “Where are they taking the mother?”, my elder son Siddharth was distraught. His comprehension was quite beyond his years. He knew the pigs were going to the slaughter house and he was in tears. Post this first bit, the movie is supposed to be “the” talking pig family movie to watch, where the little pig becomes a sheep-pig… like a sheep-dog. The other would be Animal Farm. Pigs are said to be really very social and intelligent animals. The book by George Orwell turned 70 on 17th August, without much fanfare. This mother pig might have made a good Mrs Napolean if there was one!
I suppose that ten years on, my boys will see Babe in a different light, and they will be able to relate Animal Farm to the book. These old movies are now on the ‘to watch’ list, thanks to the pigs at SAI!
arathimy 