Born Free

If you have never watched the movie BORN FREE, you must! Every human must! Filmed in Kenya, this is a story of a lion that was raised by humans and then released to the wild, and later on in life, she gave birth to three cubs... and she brought them back to the camp she was raised at, for her human mum and dad to meet.

A friend of mine (I have no idea why he has spent so much of his life in computer science, he should be a conservationist)... told me about the documentary that aired last night on PBS.

And, since I could not say it better, here is his take on the documentary:

"It is indeed truly sad, and a story that touches one deeply..

I too never knew about what happened with Elsa and what the Adamsons did in the future..
Besides a long time back, when I had first seen it, while I was in school, there was no internet to even follow it up :D And then its just the story which sticks with you - the 'happy' part, that there can be a beautiful bond between humans and truly wild animals, and that Elsa, in this case was as fond of the Adamsons as they were of her, and that animals like her could be rehabilitated in the wild.

And come 2010, the 50th anniversary of the publication of 'Born Free', the real Elsa's legacy story gets documented on film.

My take:

I would probably guess that Joy Adamson was more charmed of Elsa and treated her more as her daughter than a lion, and wasn't much into studying lion behavior, etc.. But its unbelievable that George living so many decades with lions, never got attacked upon or even charged amidst more than 30 lions that he tried to rehabilitate in Kora - so he must have understood lions like no one else. That to me is far more amazing than even Elsa's story itself - and when a person of his stature remarks - "As I have learned at great cost, it might be true to say that no lion is completely reliable. But a many human beings neither.", that's saying something.

I mean, a person who lived with a beast as savage as a lion, and never got attacked, and such a person, out of his living experience, saying that a lion cannot be trusted or relied upon, to me, is a huge statement with a deep rendition.

And ultimately, with such die-hard, passionate, heroic, gutsy and dedicated efforts for the rehabilitation of pet/circus lions, he and Joy were brought down - that's real harsh, and no one can ever take their place. A few in a million - the Adamsons, Steve Irwin, Jane Goodall and its really sad that most of them are not even there. That makes my true idol - Dr.Goodall so much appealing and amazing a personality, since she sacrificed her passion for studying chimpanzees and understanding their behavioral aspects, so as to spread the msg of awareness and conservation and dear hope among us all.

So, indeed as sad and harsh and unreal the story unfolds in front of each one of us, I am nevertheless glad that its out for everyone to take whatever each one can make of it :)"

Watch it here: