LOOK INTO MY EYES!

“I want you to eat me!” – said no animal ever! ~ This is PETA’s new punchline for Animal Rights!

Sometime back, I had shared a status on Facebook that was prompted by a friend’s retort when I asked her about how many birds she ate in a week! While that conversation was tongue-in-cheek, the more I question this, the more similar answers I get. I guess enlarging the sample size only proves my theory! Man thinks animals are a part of the food chain he rules, so it’s a given that his rules rule!

I get told, “I eat animals and you eat plants! So you are ruthless too!”. Well that shuts me up for a minute I agree. “But tell me that only when you stop using toilet paper (trees) to do what you do with it!”  I say that to friends ONLY ;)

You may still have the ‘plants pain too’ argument but my heart just bleeds when I see how we own animals and use them to our advantage as if they were created not for their own lives but to slave for us, entertain us with their habits and colours, decorate our walls and floors and titillate our taste buds. Just when have you really gone close to an animal and looked in their eyes in a way that hasn’t made them defensive. There’s so much love there!

Animals nuzzle and kiss their young like we do with our babies. It arouses such a great feeling of empathy in me. Think of when you have come home to your pet dogs. Don’t they just jump and slobber all over you with wet kisses! NO ego. NO SULKING! Only unconditional Love! How adorable! Or cats! And how royal they (think) they are! Or funny monkeys, uninterested cows, and huggable rabbits?

Animals feel like we do. For instance, the largest animal on our planet has the largest heart! Elephants! They are highly intelligent and emotional. They form close knit social bonds in their group and share  a strong sense of family and death like us. They also feel many of the emotions we experience. Each one among them is a unique individual with a unique personality. They can be happy or sad, volatile or placid. They display envy, jealousy, throw tantrums and are fiercely competitive, and they can develop hang-ups which are reflected in behaviour. They are indeed very sensitive! Indeed, it is widely known that these Great animals die of heartbreak when someone close to them dies. There is a lore popular amongst couples. They talk of the great white Swan who has a single companion for their entire lives. They swim together. Raise their young and when one dies, the other goes along! Is there a pain any greater than that of Love? If they love each other so much, why don’t our hearts break to abduct them and put them up in cages in zoos, shoot in the air and bring one down for fun, pluck out the feathers of a live bird and put them between two slices of bread? A living feeling animal!

I live in Banaras! The most spiritual city in the whole wide world. But it does not mean Banaras is not bleeding of insensitivity. Every morning, going to office I pass by a slaughterhouse; I just shut my eyes and say sorry for not being able to save the screaming animals! Birds pulled out from cages and pulled apart as it were only carrot leaves being plucked! Ahhh..

We wear fur, we make medicines out of tiger bones,  jewellery with rhino and elephant tusks! But human needs a tusk just like no animal has the sadism to need to sleep on human skin!

A month back I saw an old movie with a friend. Hatchiko- A dog’s story. It's a real-life story from Japan. Hidesamuro Ueno brought his dog, Hachiko, to Tokyo in 1924, and every day when he left for his teaching job, Hachiko would stand by the door and watch him go. Then at 4 p.m. the Akita would arrive at Shibuya Station to meet his owner. A year later Ueno died of a stroke at work, but Hachiko continued to return to the train station at 4 p.m. every single day, searching for his owner’s face amid the slew of passengers getting off the train. It’s the story of how a loyal Japanese dog is not able to get over the loss of his human friend and waits for several years outside the station gate for him to come back. Follows smells and tracks and trains to look for him. Eventually, the stationmaster made the dog a bed at the station and began leaving him bowls of food and water. Hachiko returned to the train station every day for 10 years until he died in 1935. By the time the movie ended, I shut the laptop down; we hugged each other and cried bitterly for ten minutes.

Just love animals! Please love animals!