James' World 2

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It’s mid-January, harvest time in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The village of Alanganallur is buzzing, festive, rowdy with excitement. Today is devoted to jallikattu: a form of bull riding that is one of the most dangerous and controversial sports on earth.

In an arena in the heart of the village, wearing a neon green number 11 jersey, Vinothraj Navaneethan half-crouches behind a painted coconut stump at the bull’s gateway. His knee is strapped for support, and he’s sharp with adrenaline. He is not alone in the arena. Unlike American bull-riding, in jallikattu, each animal is released into a tangle of men who jostle for a chance at a ride.

The bull charges like a detonation of brawn and color. Behind lowered horns, his body is a hill of muscle roiling beneath a slippery hide. His hump, the fleshy pinnacle at the wither — marking him as a bos indicus, an Indian native — billows a steam cloud of decorative pink chalk or pale ash. He might glitter all over. His horns might be painted blue or ochre. He might be haloed in a burst of blossoms, like a swarm of butterflies, as the garland of flowers ringing his horns is ripped by fingers seeking purchase.

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Now the ancient Tamil bull-wrangling sport is in the heat of an unpredictable renaissance. Photos by Maya Prabhu

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The judges of the Stockholm Water Prize say his methods have also prevented floods, restored soil and rivers, and brought back wildlife.

The prize-winner, Rajendra Singh, is dubbed “the Water Man of India”.

The judges say his technique is cheap, simple, and that his ideas should be followed worldwide.

Mr. Singh uses a modern version of the ancient Indian technique of rainwater harvesting.

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Rajendra Singh is known as “the Water Man of India”

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There is a knife hanging over our heads, as there is for every parent of a kid under 5. The text alert will come, or the phone will ring with a call from school. An exposure. A symptom. Come get them. Come get them and stay home.

We just had to make it to the end of January, I thought. Past the peak of omicron. Maybe we’d even have an under-5 vaccine within sight. Anthony Fauci suggested spring might be possible. Unvaccinated and largely too young to mask, my son and his classmates are still subject to the full 10-day quarantine after an exposure. (A vaccinated 5-year-old who’s been exposed gets to come to school like normal as long as they don’t have symptoms.) We’d had exposures before—one over Thanksgiving 2020, then one in March 2021, both stretching into school holidays for extra measure—but during the summer and fall of last year we let go of the breath we’d been holding. Even through delta, our state kept its numbers low. But then omicron, and then the holidays, and then we were desperate again for the light at the end of the tunnel. When, the week before Christmas, we learned that the Pfizer trial for the under-5 vaccine was extended because the two-shot dose wasn’t triggering a strong-enough immune response, I was the one helping my friends stay positive: Don’t worry, Moderna’s working on it, too. We just had to make to the end of January.

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Photo by Emmanuel Maceda on Unsplash

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He was 50.

LaMay published a video he recorded on his last day in which he said, “Jay Inslee can kiss my ass.”

LaMay started his career in 1999 and worked all over the state. He retired last October instead of getting vaccinated.

“We don’t do vaccines,” he told Fox News in an interview last year after he quit, referring to himself and his family. “We don’t do flu shots or any of that stuff.”

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