Art–Upcoming Art Exhibition

I’ll be participating in a group exhibition with my Kalavishakar friends between 1-5 May 2014 at the Punjab Kala Bhavan in Chandigarh.

This isn’t one of the paintings I’ll be exhibiting, it’s just one that I’m currently working on.

Self-portrait With Croton

I'm practicing in water-colors this week. This is a work-in-progress and in color. I switched to B/W to check if I'm getting the tonal values right.

Art–New Landscape Paintings

 

So I’ve started work on four new landscape paintings (24 by 24 inches, oil on canvas), and I’m very pleased with myself so far. In fact, I like the orange and blue contrast so much (yes, it’s orange and blue) that I’m wondering if I shouldn’t leave these as they are.

Meijin, the canine critic, doesn’t care one way or the other. The only art he appreciates is of the culinary kind.

Photo of the Week–Owl Rescue

Early this morning, as Barkya and I came out for our walk, a gathering of noisy crows drew my attention to an owl dangling from one of the top branches of the neem tree. It was quite horribly entangled in a kite string and I thought it was dead, but then it moved its head and blinked. I asked one of the neighbors to call the fire brigade and they came immediately in their truck and got the bird down. Everyone was quite relieved that it was still alive. They said they would take it to the forest department office for treatment.

Learning Curve–Coursera

I’ve been dipping a lot  into Coursera lately, while I work. They have so many wonderful and fascinating courses that I feel like I’ve been let loose in a deliciously mind-broadening, chocolate paradise.

Here are some that I either took, or am taking, or intend to take -

1. A Brief History of Humankind - Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2. Think Again: How to Reason and Argue - Duke University

3. The Ancient Greeks - Wesleyan University

4. Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas - Curtis Institute of Music

5. Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative - Vanderbilt University

6. An Introduction to Financial Accounting - University of Pennsylvania

7. A History of the World since 1300 - Princeton University

8. Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade - Mt. San Jacinto College

9. Comic Books and Graphic Novels - University of Colorado Boulder

10. The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem - Tel Aviv University

11. Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World - University of Michigan

12. Sustainable Agricultural Land Management - University of Florida

13. Søren Kierkegaard - Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity - University of

Copenhagen

14. The Dynamic Earth: A Course for Educators - American Museum of Natural History

15. Designing Cities - University of Pennsylvania

16. Introduction to Guitar - Berklee College of Music

17. Introduction to Music Production - Berklee College of Music

18. An Introduction to Marketing - University of Pennsylvania

19. Conditions of War and Peace - The University of Tokyo

20. Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction - University of Virginia

21. Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society - University of Pennsylvania

22. Data Analysis - Johns Hopkins University

23. An Introduction to Corporate Finance - University of Pennsylvania

24. Useful Genetics Part 1 - The University of British Columbia

25. E-learning and Digital Cultures - The University of Edinburgh

26. Nanotechnology: The Basics - Rice University

27. Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition - National University

of Singapore

28. Roman Architecture - Yale University

29. Moralities of Everyday Life - Yale University

30. Introduction to Genetics and Evolution - Duke University

31. Useful Genetics Part 2 - The University of British Columbia

32. Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part I - University of Virginia

33. Human Evolution: Past and Future - University of Wisconsin–Madison

34. Live!: A History of Art for Artists, Animators and Gamers - California Institute of the

Arts

35. Introduction to Public Speaking - University of Washington

36. Learn to Program: The Fundamentals - University of Toronto

Some of these might be helpful career wise. Some are just because they interest me very much.

Photo of the Week–Barkya’s Birthday

Barkya is three years old today. He had cake and ice-cream, a race around the garden, and a longer nap than usual.

Photo of the Week–Rose

This is my favorite rose. It has a lovely fragrance too. I got it last year, moved it twice, and it is finally thriving. I’m going to take cuttings this week. Several of them.

Sketchbook–My Left Hand

 

I’ve put myself on a self-improvement regimen. Which means five hours of drawing daily on weekdays -

One hour – human gesture and life study

One hour – animal gesture and life study

One hour – architectural and still life study

One hour -  landscape

One hour – concept

On weekends I go more in depth.  So far, time-wise, it’s working out. The more I do, the more inspired I feel.

Photo of the Week–Smile

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We begin the week with a smile and look forward to lots of interesting happenings.

Revamping My Portfolio

I’m revamping my children’s illustration portfolio on Maysun In C.  I’m working entirely in water-color and should get a good amount of work done by the end of the month.

I met the little girl in this illustration in Badrinath in Uttaranchal. I was looking for a Bhutia puppy and her family had the last one from their dog’s litter. The lady said, take it, but the little girl set up a loud wail. It was her puppy, the lady explained, but don’t worry about it, take it, we’ll get her another one.

Of course I didn’t take the puppy.  I know I would have wailed myself if someone had tried to take mine. I almost did actually once when I agreed to let a man adopt a puppy we had and didn’t think we could keep. I worried about how he would treat him – he said he wanted a ‘fierce, guard dog’. I finally decided, no, he couldn’t have him, anyone that wanted to turn a friendly puppy into a ‘fierce animal’ probably wouldn’t make a good companion. In any case, he never turned up to collect him. The puppy grew up to be Chubary, a big-hearted fellow, but, really, a complete coward.

Practice and Plans

I read an interesting idea in the Reader’s Digest booklet – ‘Personal Excellence’ – that arrived unexpectedly a couple of days back and cost me Rs. 400 to get it away from the Postman. One of the writers wrote about how we needed to continually practice living our life. Not exactly new or earth-shattering, but I hadn’t quite thought of it from the ‘practice’ angle. I mean, I know practice is essential for drawing, for painting, for writing, for music. You really don’t get anywhere very far if you don’t practice. If you can’t get a drawing right you keep repeating it or try different variations until you get it right. You don’t give in to frustration, or at least you learn not to. And that is why I think everyone ought to take up some craft or the other, so you understand the benefits of a continuous, sustained effort – it’s one of the most fulfilling things on earth to get that awkward paragraph right, to master that seemingly flummoxing piece of music. The same effort ought to go into living your life philosophy, instead of getting despondent and falling off track when things don’t work.

“It is really pointless to make plans,” a friend of mine said recently. “I make plans and they don’t work out or at least in the way I want. That happens all the while. So why bother really?”

I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I’m never going to give up making plans and lists. How are you ever going to do something worthwhile, see something worthwhile, be something worthwhile if you don’t have a clue about it all, about what you want? Whether a thing works out your way or not is quite secondary – knowing the direction to take and at least getting started is the important part. And then, of course, comes the equally crucial part of putting in enough time and effort, and keeping on with it. Anyway, so planning beforehand is necessary for me. I don’t want to drift through my days mindlessly, although on occasions I might.

On the whole, I’d rather have my head up in the rosy clouds of possibilities than in the smoky haze of doubt and worry.

My greatest supporter, of course, is Meijin. I turn around from my desk and there he is, chewing his carrot nearby. He looks up and cocks an inquiring ear (he’s always all ears for me).

I say, “Aren’t I the greatest thing since sliced bread, hybrid tea roses, and blue gladioli?”

And he goes, “Whoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOOOOOO-ooooooooooo-OOOOOOOO!!”

Which translates to, “And also since Entire Cantaloupe Slices, Whole Carrot Sticks, and the Entire Bag of Pedigree!!”

It is so touching when someone shares your faith.

Malaria

I did a blood check last week, and it came positive for three strains of malarial parasites - Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium vivax.

I had been wondering why I was feeling feverish and tired all the time. This explains it. I  can’t tolerate quinine, so I’m on a doxycycline course for the next ten days.

In the meantime,  I’ve been having an interesting time reading what malaria does to the red blood cells. Not nice at all. Oh no.

This is what I look like when I have malarial fever. The other day a neighbor told me I looked horrible. I’ve never understood why people think it is necessary to make these kind of remarks. They’re not soothing and they are certainly not cheering. And nowhere in my research does it say it’s a prettifying condition. ;-)

At least it hasn’t stopped me from working. That’s a good thing.

Drawing–Self-Portrait

Sometimes I get these floral attacks.

Photo of the Week - Munchkin and Chubary

He’s getting a bit absent-minded. Loves sunning himself.

It’s Chubary’s birthday tomorrow. He was a 'Happy Holidays' puppy. ;-)

Photo of the Week - Burning the Midnight Oil

 

Photo Credit - Kadambini Panse

I was up late working on an illustration, and I had company. This is Barkya, the pup. He came to stay with us on 17 June, and is now about 5 months old.  Great personality, but slacks on the job, as you see.

Photo of the Week - Munchkin and Meijin

They are not usually a lovey-dovey pair, but they were in rare mood the other day.
Munchkin is the white chap. He was twelve in May. Meijin will be five in October.

A Rainy Day

 

It’s a warm, still day. I’m chewing on a blade of grass and really don’t intend to get anything done. Certainly I’m not going to write. Writing requires thinking. Right now I don’t want to think. I’ve been feeling jaded and worn for some time now and I want to get past that. The light in the back garden is amazingly beautiful. Sunlight and Shadow, and Shadow and Sunlight. It keeps changing from moment to moment, making leafy patterns on my dress as I lie there on the grass. I look up and there are only a few patches of blue sky remaining; the dark clouds are taking up the rest of the space. There’s a speck of a lone bird gliding high up amongst them. At length swirling shapes appear before my eyes and I blink and look away at a beetle crawling up my arm. I haven’t seen this specimen before. It’s orange and blue – nature is almost always complementary – bright, shimmery colors. Another one alights, and, no kidding, this one is red and green. How come I never saw these guys before? There’s somebody else eying them – a yellow Honeyeater. He’s sitting on the mulberry tree with a cocked head, contemplating, of course, how he’s going to get them away from this human. There are sparrows chirping in the background, interrupted every now and then by the shrill call of the Cuckoo. I feel an ant walking on my leg, and shake it off. It’s one of those large red, nest-building types – they stick leaves together to make fairly large homes – I came across one just yesterday on the Red Hibiscus. Somebody calls me. It’s one of the neighborhood kids, aged five.

“What’re you doing?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Are you going to do anything?”

“No.”

He nods in understanding and leaves me to it. Not a pushy sort, this kid. And young enough yet to give people their space. Henry Thoreau would love him. I think of what Henry Thoreau said – ‘It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?’ You’re thinking again, I tell myself. I hear my young friend sloshing his legs idly in the pond. The splashing water shimmers in the fading sunlight. Look, he calls, that was a RED dragon-fly! I prop up on my elbow to look – it’s red alright and hovering close to him. And the fish are nibbling at my toes, he calls ecstatically. Nibble them back, I tell him. He laughs. You’re so silly, he says, they don’t have any toes! He calls them rainbow fish – they’re plain old guppies really, put in the pond so we won’t breed any mosquitoes – and reports that they’re swimming in and out between the underwater lotus stems. Perhaps we’ll get some goldfish soon, I muse. When, he asks at once. Soon, I repeat. Geez, he says, you’ve been saying that for ages! Yes, I think, so I have, haven’t I? Alright, tomorrow then, I say. GreAt, he shouts and splashes more water, what about a turtle too? And some ducks and pigeons, I counter. And some cows and sheep, he adds. A cow would be a VeRy good idea, he tells me earnestly, it would keep the grass trimmed and save you a lot of work – and…and it’ll give milk and you can use the dung for fertilizer. We’ll get a horse too, I tell him. Yeah, he says, that will save the bus fare. A bright kid too. I don’t think I was so commercial at five. I mean, I was all for maintaining a menagerie myself, but it was more like for the companionship, you know? The management was supposed to be my parents’ headache. I don’t know what it is – are kids wiser these days, or have I just grown smarter with age?

There’s a rumble of thunder overhead. The sunlight has gone entirely now and there’s a stiff breeze bending the tree-tops. I pull down my billowing skirt and sit up and watch the fallen leaves go cartwheeling over the grass. The birds are making a huge din and the fruit bats are swooping low. There’s a momentous, excited feeling in the air. It’s always like that before a storm. One of my favorite moments was getting caught in a rain-storm on a mountain slope with a friend once. The clouds were low on the blue mountains and ringing about us in a cold mist, and the ruffling grass on the slopes was bright green and dotted with blue flowers. We stood there looking down at glimpses of the deep ravine through drifts of swirling mist and needed to shout to make ourselves understood to one another. It was one of those times when you just have to tell someone how simply divine things are – it’s not enough seeing them, experiencing them, they have to be shared – and that’s why I sometimes wonder about people traveling on their own, isn’t it a torture not being able to point out something to someone? – something they can see very well for themselves, of course, but which is made all the more worthwhile by having pointed out. But, anyway, so here we were on the mountain and THEN the rains came down. We ran, laughing all the way, to a small, ancient stone temple we had spotted earlier. It was some way off, so we were well and truly soaked by the time we reached it. We stood in the dark, crumbling doorway, shivering in our wet things, and looking out, beyond the streaming rain, at the wild landscape. And we began talking again, of course – deep philosophical and heartfelt matters this time that we had never shared before and would have normally shied away from in embarrassment. Now we spoke urgently, excitedly, one idea tumbling out after another, each sounding freshly-minted and utterly practical. Oh, what a difference we were going to make! I had the feeling of being perched on the edge of a wide, new world, just waiting to spread my wings and take off, and there was a strong conviction too of soaring once I did. There was something about that storm raging outside that convinced me of that… Well, that friendship hadn’t survived the confidences, but that feeling had… And every time it rained and the smell of the wet earth filled the air, I knew there was a point to my life, that there was something good and useful about it, that this journey I was on would only lead to a place better and more beautiful…

“Hey,” my young neighbor’s voice breaks into my reverie. “Your Ma’s calling for us to go in.”

I look about and so she is. My mother is a wonderful woman, but she has the unromantic albeit unintentional knack of turning up and ruining the best ruminations. She’s signaling from the back window. It’s going to rain any minute, she calls, get inside. My friend looks at me. Are we going in, he asks, reluctantly.

“Not yet,” I say.

“Not yet!” he calls back, full of cheer.

“You’ll get wet!” she calls.

“She says we’ll get wet.”

“Tell her we won’t melt.”

He laughs in delight and conveys that loudly, “She says we won’t melt!”

Ma, with an impatient wave of hand, withdraws. I grin back at my friend, sitting there with his shirt billowing at the back and his hair, like mine, swept all awry. This is going to be grand, I tell him. And after we get thoroughly wet, he tells me gleefully, let’s make paper boats and FLOAT them!

published on Buzzle, http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-15-2004-55504.asp

Sketchbook - Tawang and Pelling

This was done on the last day at Tawang,  Arunachal Pradesh, in the early morning outside our hotel. We were waiting for the taxi to show up and it came before I could finish the sketch.

The main street were just starting to stir as we drove out. Leaving  was a wrench. We had had such a lovely time there. It had been such an adventure getting there in the first place -

• Wading through a flood in Guwahati in Assam to get the entry permit
• A tree falling in front of the bus on the way to Tezpur
• Staying overnight in Tezpur due to bad weather
• Two days of travel to Tawang
• Several landslides en route
• One car breakdown
• Getting close and personal with leeches
• Passing misty forests and towering snow mountains
• Driving through a snowfall
• Sharing one bed with the five taxi occupants (a married couple, a college guy and the two of us) at the night stop in Bomdila; it was election time and all the rooms were taken by the political workers, it was either share a room or stay out in the freezing cold.  So we all huddled under the shared blankets and laughed so much we took a long time falling asleep. When we got to Tawang, we found that the Congress Party had won the elections and people were standing around throwing gulal. Extraordinary how hopeful people get at election time, then it's back to business as usual.

This was a valley view from the behind the hotel.  We were the only people at the hotel that stayed on and on, so the staff treated us as 'one of the family'. They were a pleasant, cheerful lot, and it was really nice knowing them.

We met many Indian soldiers on our walks around Tawang, particularly at Tawang Monastery;  some of them were there to get acclimatized before moving on to the border, and others were stationed there. Most of them were friendly, but one took me to task for drawing a hillside view of their camp. It was a top-secret area, he said, and I was endangering everyone. I was really flattered. I mean, in these days of satellite spying and cellphone photography, it's something to be told that your little sketch could make such a difference; particularly a sketch that, due to your half-frozen fingers, isn't even coming out all that well.



This was done in Pelling, Sikkim, at the Rabdentse Palace Complex.

We went to Pelling from Gangtok (and we went to Gangtok from Darjeeling, where we went after Tawang) on rather a spur of the moment decision and stayed in a small family owned hotel that we had discovered on a travel blog. Really lovely people again.

We were a bit weary of traveling - we had been traveling for two months at a stretch by now - so we stayed put for ten days and did nothing except take long walks with Tashi, our Lhasa Apso - yes, we were traveling with a dog, we got her in Tawang.  The locals thought we were a bit cracke d - nobody stays here this long, they said -  and the tourists asked us for directions.

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What I like about sketching when traveling, aside from the pleasure of the work, is how drawing seems to act as a people-magnet. Park yourself somewhere and soon there will be a crowd gathering to see what you're doing.  It's a good way to meet both the local and the visiting characters.

The nice ones don't bother you, are positive and encouraging, and sometimes overwhelm you with their kindness. I've had people bring tea and snacks for me so I wouldn't 'starve' while  I worked. There was the tea-stall owner in Dalhousie who made all the porters and customers sit for me for  a portrait marathon and kept plying the tea all the while - he refused to be paid for it later. There was  the chanawallah sardarji, again in Dalhousie, who gave a great big laugh when he saw his portrait and handed me an even larger parcel of free chana. There was the Tibetan lady in McCleodganj who brought a glass of tea and sat down nearby and told me about an English artist who had been in town a few weeks earlier. He was just like you, she said, you artists can't do anything unless you imbibe, can you?

Then there are the twerps and the smartasses. They stand over you and tell everyone else what they think you're doing. Or they plonk right down and try to get you to talk about every brush stroke or pen line, if not your very private personal life.

And then there are the idiots. I'm sorry for not being PC here, but idiots are idiots, they ask very dumb questions. Someone probably told them it was a good thing to ask questions, for there lies the path to enlightenment, and since then there's been no stopping them. There was the chap who asked, "Did you draw this with your hand?" and, no offence to the Foot and Mouth artists, but that's kind of a strange question when you're sitting there with the pencil so obviously in your hand.

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Does travel broaden your mind? To an extent, I suppose. If you give it a chance. Otherwise it's just carrying around the same baggage in different localities.

Some people seem to travel just so the natives can live up to their expectations. I remember a Spanish man in Nepal, a very intense fellow with a gimlet stare.  He told me he had been a hippie in the Nineteen-Seventies and come to India seeking spirituality.

"Ah, those were the wonderful days!" he said. "Since then you lot have gone downhill. Every time I come to India now, all people want to talk about is getting a job, a flat, a car or a washing machine. You're getting as materialistic as us, and what's the point in visiting you if you're exactly like us?"

"To strengthen the kindred bond?" I suggested.

He wasn't amused.  "I need you to stay spiritual, goddamn it!" he said. "After all I can get my fix of materialism back in Europe!"

Estoy enferma - but I'm full of illustration ideas

I had to go see the doctor the other day, and I did these thumbnails in the waiting room. I'm revamping my illustration portfolio on Maysun In C, and these are going to be the additions in the Animals and Birds section.

Visiting the doctor, never the most joyous of occasions, has turned into a conveyor belt experience. First, you wait in the waiting room and when the receptionist has the time she will summon you to get your weight taken on a very ancient weighing machine that I've never quite got the hang of -  you stand on it and the receptionist pushes the weighs around and announces her finding in a loud voice so everyone in the reception area knows how much you weigh. Once she made a mistake when weighing me and announced a figure that was twice the correct one and everyone in the room exclaimed, "It can't be! She looks far too skinny!"

After you've been weighed,  you go back to waiting until the receptionist says it's your turn to go down to the basement. You go down and wait until the assistant doctor is ready to check your blood-pressure, pulse and temperature. Then you wait some more, exchanging sympathetic looks with the other patients and trying not to get sucked into an exchange of ailment details, and then finally the doctor will see you.

He is a very nice man though. Worth all the waiting. Have known him for ages.

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Speaking of doctors, I remember the one I visited when I was an art student in Bombay. I had an ear-ache and my land-lady in Dadar suggested a neighborhood doctor. He's brilliant, she said, I always take my kid there. So I followed directions to his clinic and found the front door bedecked with mango leaves and marigolds.  There was a quite a crowd inside in the waiting room.  Quite a festive atmosphere. 

I sat down and wondered if it was some sort of celebration. You never know in India. There's something to celebrate practically every day. I asked the fellow next to me and he shrugged and said he didn't know. Then a man looked out from the doorway to the inner room and beckoned and said, "Alright, everyone, come inside."

And everyone rose and went into the inner room. Soon I was the only one left outside. So I got up and went in too. They were all standing in a semi-circle around the doctor's desk, and he was asking each person in turn, "What's wrong with you? And you? And you?"

As I happened to be the nearest to him in the semi-circle, my turn came almost immediately. I told him about my ear. He had a look and said, "Hmmm!" and sent me out to the compounder.

The compounder was in a small cubicle, with two large glass beakers in front of him, one containing a red liquid and the other containing a yellow liquid. He was page deep in a film magazine and not pleased to be disturbed.

"Alright," he said in a bored, irritable voice. "So where's the bottle?"

I said, "What bottle?"

He  made an annoyed sound and said,  as if talking to a half-wit, "Don't you know anything? You need to bring a bottle along when you visit the doctor. I'll give you one now, but don't forget the next time."

With an eloquent sigh - oh, the fools I have to put up with! - he rose and extracted an amber-colored bottle from a bottom shelf. Then he scooped out a measure each of the red and yellow liquids from the beakers before him and poured them, one after the other, into the bottle. He screwed on the cap and thrust the bottle at me.

"Here!" he snapped. "Put it inside thrice a day!"

"Put it inside? I put this in my ear?"

"For crying out loud! In your mouth!"

As I went away I saw he was ladling the same liquid in the same proportion to the next patient as well.

When I got back to my lodging, the land-lady said, "Yes, he always gives my kid that liquid too. Sorry I forgot to tell you to take a bottle with you."

I said, "How can he give everyone the same medicine?"

"It must work," she said. "Everyone keeps going back to him."

After she went away, I poured the liquid down the drain. I recovered the next day.

Photo of the Week - Meijin

This is Meijin. He is originally from Bhaktapur, Nepal. Now he lives with me in Nasik, India. He's four years old.

Here's how I met him - 'How I Met Meijin'




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Here is Meijin looking particularly fierce. He had some aggression issues when he was a puppy - if he didn't like something, he would switch from sweet to savage with such speed it was scary - but we worked through that with clicker training, positive reinforcement and some helpful suggestions from the members at Agbeh.

We're working on search and find at present, and we both enjoy that very much. I'm glad I went online to seek help, rather than going with a local trainer the vet recommended. Many of the trainers here follow the 'old-fashioned' training methods, which usually involve punishments and rough corrections. I once saw one of them work with the neighbor's dog, wielding a stick and yanking hard at the choke chain, and I thought, no way I'm ever going to let anyone do that to my dogs. I have to mention here that my other two dogs, Munchkin, 11,  and Chubary, 6, are both local breeds and never once displayed the type of frenzied aggression that Meijin did.

Anyway,  that sort of training would have ruined him. He's very intelligent, he likes to have things explained to him, he does not like being ordered around or threatened or yelled at or being forced anymore than I do. It is important to respect your dog as an individual, to build up trust and liking rather than fear and submission, and clicker training has certainly helped us understand each other better.

I told the vet about it, so he would pass it on to his other clients and perhaps it'll help them too. The problem is some people like having an aggressive dog that nobody can manage, they somehow think it's a good thing.

A gentleman in the area has a six-month old bull mastiff that he is afraid of already, and there's a chap with a quite dangerous rottweiler - it has bitten him four times and recently it went for his mother when she ordered it off the bed; it bit her on her arm, going right down to the bone, and if she hadn't grabbed a chair and hurled it at the dog and got out of the room and slammed the door, it would have gone for her neck.

And these people still get a kick out of telling everyone what an aggressive creature their dog is. The vet said he has given up treating some of these animals. It's too risky for me, he told the owners, which probably only bolstered their egos more. Some people really shouldn't keep animals.