Haathi mere saathi:
As part of my lockdown routine, I watch a movie every afternoon between 1:30 and 4:00. Today my channel surfing happens upon an old favorite that I must have seen at least 10-15 times as a young teen. “Elephant/s my companion/s” is what the movie title roughly translates to. I cried every single time I watched the movie because the hero’s elephant dies in the end. Today’s infinitely older me completely lacks the fortitude to watch the tragic ending – even knowing it is in reel only. I am just about to continue with my surfing when I see the hero arrive in pouring rain at a farm/rest house of sorts seeking shelter. The owner turns him away saying he has no room for animals. The hero turns his eyes heavenwards and says “thank goodness *You* made this world God! Had it been left to us humans, there would have been no animals!”
Ever since covid-19 has gripped the entire world in a stranglehold, I’ve not been able to shake off the feeling that the animals are finally reclaiming their space. A bizarre role-reversal in an upside-down inside-out zoo – humans cower indoors whilst animals roam freely. News media and personal cell-phones have captured photos and videos of innumerable occurrences. Jackals and coyotes are out and about, wild boars are running through streets, bears amble (one sighting a few hundred feet from where we live), flamingoes are coloring lakes pink, peacocks shimmy-shake – their spectacular plumage fanned out in a dazzling display, swans and dolphins glide about in canals, raccoons and badgers scamper around, elephants herd their families and saunter across forest roads to find new homes.
Of all the conspiracy theories – 5G radio waves; indiscriminate culling of its own population by the Chinese government; a lab test gone alarmingly amok; bio-terrorism; futuristic predictions made years ago by visionaries (Dean Koontz to Homer Simpson); evangelists spewing repugnant theories – Bill Gates the antichrist, payback for our sinning ways; anti-vaccine groups convinced this is a plot to “get them”; – in this cesspool of putrid paranoia – I am rooting for Mother Nature and the animal kingdom!
Live and let live:
I held a little goat kid at a Masai village in Tanzania and fell instantly and completely in love. It was so tiny, so vulnerable, so helpless – it took a while for the kid to stop trembling and settle in my arms – but once it did, I couldn’t get enough of its soft, silky, warm cuddle. The thought of it being food someday was so horrifying that I snuffed the vision immediately.
The Lockdown has given me ample time to ponder and reflect. I wonder how much blinder the turned eye can be when people:
decry and denounce the death sentence (even for hardened criminals), but give no thought to the animals being raised (only) for slaughter
raise a hue and cry about abolishing torture but think nothing of the lobster that is cooked alive
accept wars and killing strangers in another country as necessary evil in the cause of defending their own – but find no irony in defenseless animals being killed in meat farms
condemn and castigate women seeking abortion, but see no crime in enjoying veal or a suckling pig
actively fight for policy changes to reduce environmental pollution but no pause for thought about monumental conservation of natural resources by being vegetarian
Who makes the rules on chicken-yummy, bats-yucky? Eating dogs & cats & horses is savage and cruel, but calf and lamb and pig is civil and cultured! Culling deer in the backyard is deplorably disgusting but nothing wrong with buying meat off the supermarket freezer!
Now that I’m back in the world of books again, I pick up a mixed bag at the second-hand bookstore I stumble upon. One of them is a book by Lawrence Sanders – writing style reminiscent of James Hadley Chase. The hero-detective in the book unearths an illegal import scandal of rare and expensive birds – where “the smuggler’s methods are gruesome and the mortality rate is horrendous.” The hero has considerable “mental maunderings” on “why was it okay to feast on domesticated fowl but wrong to ensnare and incarcerate exotic parrots. But they’re all birds, aren’t they, and where is the moral justification for the difference in their treatment?”
I have an argument with someone who says that she herself is a vegetarian but doesn’t want to stop her children from eating what they want. Fair enough! But then she says – with complete obliviousness – “I believe in live and let live!”
