Let Us Show Some Love For Animals

 

Standing in our balcony, sipping our evening tea, my husband and I were discussing ‘how COVID 19 has changed the way people view the world around them. How COVID has affected our psychology, our way of living, to an extent that we are scared of moving out of the house, and feel that we need to take extra care of our children and elders.’ Only when we were absorbed in our thoughts, we spotted 2 stray dogs wandering about. My husband quickly asked me to get a piece of bread or some chapatis to give them. I rushed and hurriedly got the feed before they run away from the spot.

Happily, we hurled pieces of the chapatis towards the dogs. To our surprise, they moved back, looked at us with fear, and ran away, as if to save their life from us. On this initial reaction, we felt that there could be people who hurt them in the past, by throwing things at them, and therefore they ran away. But we waited patiently for a long, long while. I even returned to my balcony after a few hours to check, if the chapatis were gone. But, no, the pieces of chapati were right there.

A few years ago, my husband and I were looking for a pup for adoption. A very dear friend of mine, who has her own animal rescue shelter called me and asked me if we would be interested to adopt an indie pup. We liked the idea of adoption and we drove to her house. We were given a beautiful pearl white pup, whom we later named Prince. When I held him the first time, he was shivering and his eyes conveyed horror as if he was pleading to me to take care of him and not harm him. I asked my friend, who has a far better understanding of animals than I do, “What is happening to him? Why is he so scared?” She said ‘there was a litter born in her society, and some construction workers had thrown the pups in a ditch full of water. She and her team had tried to rescue them. She was also trying to rescue another one, but the pups were too scared to come in the hands of humans.’

I held Prince firmly on my lap, as we drove him with us to our factory. We fed him and made sure he rested well. However, he kept howling through the night. He was too scared of the new surroundings. The next morning, we decided to give him a bath and took him under the tap. I still can't forget the sight of that poor little creature shivering to the core, his heart pounding, as the tap water rolled against his body and it must have reminded him of the water in the ditch, that almost drowned him. Once the little guy was clean and wrapped cozily in a blanket, we fed him and watched his behavior. We knew it would take him a while before he turned around to realize we were his caretakers and friends.

Love is a universal language, and so it is for all the creatures. It took a few days for Prince to sense our love, as he watched the other pets run towards us, on seeing us, he too joined in. He became a part of our pet family and very soon he was one of our most trusted guards.

Today, as I read about the group of young boys feed explosives to the pregnant elephant in Kerala, that exploded in her body, mangled her mouth and ultimately killed her, all these memories of the distress which I have seen in the eyes of Prince and those stray dogs under my the balcony has come crashing on to me.

Even after COVID 19, we still haven’t learned our lessons on humanity. We fear the health of our children and elders, our friends and family, but we do not fear the health of this planet. In this lockdown period, there have been a tremendous amount of reports on how the planet was abused by humans and this is the time nature has got to rejuvenate itself, the animals and trees have found renewed space of their own. Let's understand we share the space with them, we do not own it. If we cannot take care of them, give them shelter, food, or love, let us leave them to fetch for themselves. They are very clever to survive in their own surroundings. Harming them in any way should be the last thing on our minds. If you can’t help, please let them be.