Festivals and festivities that cost lives

An age old practice as it is, elephants are ornamentally used as a show in many a functions, festivals and several kinds of festivities. Tamed they are and quite trained to behave themselves but all this vanishes the moment they are unduly teased, harrassed or provoked which possibility is always there in a crowd. The practice is very common in South India particularly in places like Kerala and Chennai from where there are reports of mishaps emerging every now and then with the news that an elephant turned violent killing certain number of people on the spot. The report for the current year says that as many as 18 persons,  men, women and children, were killed by irrate elephants. There is nothing very new in what has happened as the past is full of such stories. Why this should not be possible for the organisers of the festivities to carry on their activities without elephants, why this should be that necessary that several lives are lost in the process and that heavens wouldn't fall if the functions are conducted without elephants.

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