Court on whether Cockrel can crow !! - கொக்கரக் கொக்கரக்கோ சேவலே!

 

கொக்கரக் கொக்கரக்கோ சேவலே!

கொந்தளிக்கும் நெஞ்சிலே, கொண்டிருக்கும் அன்பிலே,

அக்கறை காட்டினாத் தேவலே !!  கொக்கரக்கோ! கொக்கரக்கோ!!! 

It is common that one wakes up to  கொக்கரக்கோ sound of Cocks !  and to the Temple bells ringing sounds  .. .. The song lines and the body language of Vadivelu in ‘Kanthasamy movie’ evoked hilarious response.  This in fact is a song from the film ‘Pathi Bakthi’ released in 1958 – sung by TM Soundararajan and Jikki – lyrics of Pattukottai Kalyanasundaram, musical score by MS Viswanathan & Ramamurthi and contained these lines too .. ..  

காலம் நேரம் அறிந்து உலகை,  தட்டி எழுப்பிடும் சேவலே!
காத்திருப்பவரைக் கொத்தி விரட்டிடும் ! காரணம் என்ன சேவலே?  

கொக்கரக்கோ   is the sound of Cock / hen .. .. and it is – ‘cluck / crow’ – yes the sound of a Cockrel is known as ‘Crowing’ !! – and what time can a Cockrel crow ?  Miles away in France, the  case was seen as symbolic of the clash between those living in rural areas who have long kept animals or rung church bells and those from urban areas of France or abroad who have bought second homes in the countryside !!  A noisy French rooster, who became a symbol of tensions between traditional rural France and encroaching urbanity in a court battle over his early-morning crowing, is no more and its death was published in news papers too.  Maurice the cockerel rose to national fame after his dawn cock-a-doodle-doos so annoyed a retired couple with a holiday home on the picturesque island of Oleron in western France that they took the owner to court in a bid to silence him.

Time is a measure of events, duration, and change.   Indian Standard time (IST) is the time zone observed throughout India, with a time offset of UTC+05:30. India does not observe daylight saving time or other seasonal adjustments.  IST is calculated on the basis of 82°30' E longitude from the clock tower in Neni near Prayagraj Uttar Pradesh.

Many in the cities go to bed at night with curtains drawn to shut off lights, and wake up when the alarm sounds. There are few environmental signals to tell us that it is morning. But go to villages and you wake up to the crowing of the cock.

While the the crowing of roosters is described in Tamil as “kokkarako ko”, in English as “cock-a-doodle-do” and in Japanese as “Ko-ke-kok-koh”. Why they crow in the morning at day break has been the study of some bird scientists. While several theories had been debated, the actual answer is that it is due to the body clock (or circadian rhythm) of the rooster.

Immediately after the death of MGR, the party AIADMK witnessed a split   between MGR’s wife Janaki Ramachandran and Ms J Jayalalithaa.  Recognising neither as a ‘true successor’, the EC assigned separate electoral symbols to both these groups — “two doves” to the Janaki Ramachandran faction and “Cock” to Jayalalithaa’s faction. However, following Janaki’s routing from Assembly elections and the split benefiting rival DMK under M Karunanidhi, the AIADMK camps reunited behind Jayalalithaa, regaining the “two leaves” and a stable footing in one go.  Aadukalam  released in 2011, directed by Vetrimaran, with Dhanush in lead role was  set in the backdrop of rooster fights in villages of Madurai.   It was rooster fights and love in between for the hero.   

Miles away, Maurice the French cockerel fancied himself as a bit of a crooner. Not quite like his famous namesake Maurice Chevalier, the late French balladeer; but still, each dawn, Maurice was doing  what nature intended cockerels do: he crowed.

His owner, Corinne Fesseau, who described herself as a local singer on the Île d’Oléron, an island off France’s Atlantic coast, was used to Maurice’s early wake-up call.  But Fessau’s neighbours were not so enamoured, and have threatened legal action to silence Maurice for good.  Fesseau launched a petition, and it was signed by more than 32,000 people, to save the bird. “I was born on the Île d’Oléron and we’ve always kept chickens, well before residences were built behind our wall,” Fesseau wrote.  Of her two neighbours, just one – who used to visit  only three times a year – could not  bear to hear  cockerel Maurice crowing … and they demanded that the Cockrel be made quiet.  The owner did try shutting Maurice   for the night and lined his coop with egg boxes to absorb the sound “like they do in recording studios”. To no avail. Then the neighbours sent out a legal notice   claiming the noise was a health risk and threatened a lawsuit under various laws pertaining to public nuisances.

In 1995, faced with a similar case that led to a death notice being served on a cockerel, a French appeal court declared it was impossible to stop a cockerel crowing. “The chicken is a harmless animal so stupid that nobody has succeeded in training it, not even the Chinese circus,” the judgment read.

In the instant case too, a French Court ruled that France’s most famous cock can carry on with his dawn chorus, in a legal case that has pitted town against country.  The tribunal rejected a couple’s complaint about the bird’s early morning crowing and ordered them to pay €1,000 (£897) in damages to Maurice’s owner, Corinne Fesseau. The dispute between Fesseau and her neighbours on the Île d’Oléron, western France, took two years to resolve.  

The Tribunal allowed the right of Cockrel to crow and order the plaintiff to pay   €1,000 ($1,120) in damages to Maurice’s owner, Corinne Fesseau.   In 2020, Corinne Fesseau said Maurice, six, died of coryza – a respiratory infection common among chickens – during the coronavirus lockdown.

Interesting ! 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
7^th Oct 2021.