From that NYT articles in #140 “…The ring was more like a battlefield than a picnic. Periodically, a bull was released into the crowd, a total of 40 bulls over the four hours. The bulls were harassed by about two dozen horsemen carrying barbed sticks called banderillas, used to prod them into lunging madly into the throng. This worked well, resulting in many wounded manteros.

The bulls are not killed in the corralejas as they typically are in bullfights in Colombia. But if a bull is exhausted or, as often happens, tripped up by a rope held by the participants, the crowd swarms in, pelting it with rocks, kicking it, slapping it, spitting on it and pulling its tail.

Observing this in the stands are cattlemen and others of the moneyed classes. They throw 2,000-peso notes (about $1) and bottles of rum to the most popular manteros…”

The Jallikattu seems closer to American rodeos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallikattu , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodeo

NYTimes article

The rural poor, the urban unemployed, testosterone-filled adolescents, drifters, shopkeepers, mechanics — as long as they are undaunted by the possibility of severe injury or death — enter an arena on Sincelejo’s outskirts made from lumber and discarded pieces of wood. From 2 to 6 p.m. each day in the ring, hundreds of these “manteros,” including a handful of women, waved red capes advertising spirits (Harris Whisky, anyone?) or the candidacies of local politicians. One middle-aged man ran around the arena dressed in a yellow Speedo. Another participant, a transvestite, wore a miniskirt and green knee socks. Others lighted small fires in the ring, brewing coffee as if they were at a picnic. One man wandered the ring with a sign that said, “If you like war, send your son to war.”

Anthropologists say the corralejas reflect a rigid social hierarchy, with the rich amusing themselves by watching the poor risk their lives. But the festivals, thought to date to the first half of the 19th century, go deeper than that.

sad to see the hindu-baiting continue here nonstop.

Dearest troll, prithee enlighten us as to exactly where you see evidence of this alleged persecution of our kind, aside from the flame-bait you’ve pulled out of your ass?

People are dumb.

I remember from times begone, A bull could chase you for no reasons but his own. Yet it is hard to surmise, For say, who would it surprise, If he didn’t do it for fun, but for exercise.

we’re from the south, so no karva chath for me but i doubt that i would observe even if i were punjabi pati-vrata and all that is not in my logic i’d rather have a man who serves me gin and tonic!

port, i’m not really back – work has made me ‘demote’ myself into more of a lurker, at best. but nice to know that i was missed, and that, too, by you.