After Aadukalam , which threw light on rooster fighting, it’s pigeon racing that has now caught filmmaker Vetrimaaran’s fancy. He has promised to make a film on that subject — a decision prompted by a request from a group of pigeon fanciers.
The pigeon-fanciers community — which made this request at an event organised by the New Madras Racing Pigeon Association and the South Indian Racing Pigeon Society, Chennai — has offered to crowd-fund the film.
The president of Central Madras Homers’ Club, R.R. Prasad, who made the request on behalf of the city’s pigeon fanciers, said director Vetrimaaran’s national award-winning Aadukalam raised considerable awareness about rooster fighting.
“Pigeons were used to send messages by our kings. But today, people are unaware of the homing instinct of pigeons and object to the sport of pigeon-racing,” he said
Vetrimaaran developed a fascination for pigeon racing over the last three years.K. Palaniappan, founder of the New Madras Racing Pigeon Association that has been around for the last 40 years, said the sport could do with some publicity.
“Movies will help our cause. The sport could do with patronage and funding,” he said.
Asked why pigeon-racing hasn’t figured significantly in mainstream Tamil cinema, except for actor Dhanush’s recent release, Maari , Vetrimaaran said it takes time to understand the sport.
“It is an expensive sport — it takes a lot of time and money to train and maintain the birds. So, it is not easy for the filmmaker or the audience to understand how it works. It is much easier to do a film about something that the audience readily knows about — say, cricket. It is much more difficult to write a film based on golf,” he said.
