Children's Corner

Mughal Emperor Jahangir, who was fond of dispensing justice to his subjects, ordered a huge bell to be hung up in a market place, close to his palace. The emperor appointed Qazis, the ablest of his judges in all cities of his empire. He had made it known throughout his kingdom that when anyone needed justice that demanded his personal attention, all they had to do was come up to the bell and pull the rope at any hour of the day. Instantly a judge would make his appearance and hear the matter between the disputing parties. If they felt that justice had not been served to the fullest, they had to ring the bell the second time to summon the emperor.

All went well for a number of days, and there was hardly a complaint that needed to be resolved by the emperor. However, in the course of time the bell rope, which had withstood rain and sunshine for several seasons, got worn out. One day it broke and bell fell with a loud thud. Someone who saw the bell falling down, brought some dry straw, twisted it into a rope and restored the bell at its place.

Now, it so happened, that the bell was rung violently on a hot afternoon. The citizens of Delhi who had not heard the bell rung for a long time were surprised and immediately made their way to the marketplace. A judge who had his house close to the place too rushed out and made his way through the excited crowd and demanded: “Who has rung the bell?” Everyone pointed his finger at a large, gaunt, half-starved horse, whose bones could be seen clearly through its skin in many places, totally unconcerned to the tumult that he had caused, happily munching at the dry straw hoping to make a meal out of it. He had rung the bell by tugging at the straw.

“Who is the owner of this wretched animal?” was the judge's next question, and an old man standing in the crowd said: “ Sir, it belonged to the Commander-in-Chief of the emperor's army. He was once a fine horse of the purest Arab steed, which the emperor has personally presented to him for proving his gallantry in the battlefield. The Commander of the emperor's army would ride on him proudly, but he has now become too old and feeble to be of much use, and his master has turned him out of the house so that he gets his food from wherever he can. He saw the straw that was dangling at the end of the rope, and in trying to eat it the poor horse had rung the bell of justice.
“And justice shall he have!” the judge announced. He ordered the commander and the Emperor to be brought to the place.

Without much delay the Commander of the Emperor's army and the Emperor Jahangir arrived at the scene. The judge explained to the emperor the extraordinary situation, which compelled him to seek the presence of his Royal Personage.

The Emperor was full of rage when he heard the complete story. He turned to his Commander and asked him whether the charges that were leveled against him were true? The Commander nodded his head in acknowledgement. At this, the Emperor rebuked him sharply: “Are you not ashamed to allow your faithful servant to get into this condition after years of service. He did you good service while he could, the least you can do is give him shelter in some corner of your stable and provide him enough to eat”, the Emperor thundered. He warned him of stripping him of his rank and military honours, if the orders were not complied with.

The commander bowed his head and promised that he would never let the horse wander in the city and would feed him properly.

The magic of corals can be seen at the Great Barrier Reef in the northeast of Australia – the largest structure on Earth created by living things – that has been built by living animals, which are tiny, delicate and fragile such as the coral polyp. Polyps are related to sea anemones and jellyfish. They feed on planktons at night, separating through their tentacles, when they emerge from their hard limestone homes and in the process create a velvety landscape of brilliant colors. Dead corals are white in color and the living ones are green, pink, yellow, violet, brown – in fact, every brilliant colours that are found in an artist's palette. As the coral polyps feed, they extract minerals from the sea to secrete the lime, which forms their hard outer skeletons. These corals grow at a rate of 12 inches or 30 cms a year on a reef's seaward side where the nutrients for their food are found in sufficient measures. Some large colonies called 'bommies' in Australia are 1,200 years old.

These reef-building corals grow only in the warmer sea waters of the world in the shape of a band that extend its limits slightly wider than those corals that are found in the tropics.

The warm, salty water must be deep enough to cover them, but shallow enough to guarantee that they receive enough sunlight. They need the sunlight because the coral polyps work together with the tiny marine algae, which live with them, using the energy from the sun to manufacture food and oxygen for the coral polyps. Coral reefs that are formed are the result of the animal, mineral and vegetable matter.

Coral polyps are capable of producing both male and female reproductive cells. On spring nights they release billions of sperm and eggs into the water, where they fertilize, eventually attaching themselves to a suitable base to begin new colonies that multiply by replicating themselves by producing new buds.

There are seven hundred species of reef-building corals found in different parts of the world, each unique, with its own shape, color and reef structure. In the seas that form the frontier between the Indian and Pacific oceans, a single coral reef may contain as many as four hundred different species producing a fantastic range of shapes and colors, which may be categorized but can never be imagined in the minds of human beings!