Yet Another Rinse, Yet Another Ban, End Of Cecil's Rule, Doomsday For Humanity!

The Bristol family of Michigan Avenue, Chicago, owned two Pitbulls - Elsa, and Dude. Like any other parents-to-be, they took utmost care in preparing their pet dogs to be at the best of their behavior when the new born arrived home. The rehearsals started with presenting the two with fake babies in form of plastic dolls so that they could understand the reactions on the attention getting divided. When the little one was finally there, Elsa became slightly restless. He would lick tiny Pam so unstoppably, that the Bristol couple had to move her to another room where Elsa would have no access. The father for obvious reasons was anxious seeing such aberration and warned the wife saying if Elsa did anything damaging to or near the baby, he would have to leave their residence. Nobody knew what was coming, but as Pam grew up, she formed an indefinable tie with the older pet. Elsa was seen sniffing all over Pam's crib making sure she is safe from any possible microscopic mortal that might harm her. He would mostly set his one paw inside the crib tent and keep a check if the pacifier fell off or the baby bottle emptied of milk. Once Pam began to walk, Elsa would escort her all the way up to the second floor only to help her reach the kid's room and likewise, he would wait at the edge of the last stair at the time she climbed down the hallway in the morning. This, continued for next six years till the Bristol family laid Elsa to rest in his eternal sleep. Dude wasn't so closely bonded with children and would seldom engage himself in the play. Hence, it turned out to be a pleasant surprise for Mrs. Bristol, when she found him taking up their departed Elsa dear's role of a caring four-legged playmate for their young daughter. As time flew, Dude unfolded himself as the most amicable and mollycoddled furry friend for the family. He would walk Pam up to her room to wish her a good night's sleep with his canine adorability glinting the entire house in unconditional love and his mute loyalty. He waited to receive her at the break of dawn the same way for next eight years until his weary bones slowed down and were finally timed off.

Despite listening to this moving tale, the man of the house refuses to buy me a pup. His vehement excuse, that I haven't yet got over the loss of my earlier pet, leaves me dumbfounded. The notion that inviting one more bundle of joy with considerably lesser  life span will mark my inevitable attachment with the pet which always comes with a heavy cost of immense suffering at its eventual demise, can't be denied.

Every time I happen to have my eyes on a cute Pomeranian loitering around its master's feet giving me that look of 'How's my White Rose companion in Heaven?' - I will so miss my Toy, (as I fondly addressed her), the grey cells would forgo the pooch parent in me, permanently enforcing an uncontrollable, and impulsive mode of hankering after what is not very 'wise' and might turn out as the forerunner of an additional despondency in an otherwise peaceful mental state, according to the husband : 'No living beings! You have enough plush puppies and bears to cosset and pet.', he insists.

The struggle for me is not about coaxing or cajoling the consort to get me a sentient companion throbbing in a pygmy, fluffy body, but promising myself that I shall initiate something noteworthy some day, for the animal world by adopting at least one life form and bringing the best to its survival. Joining PETA isn't a bad deal, neither is picking up the mighty pen to cast fables on the world against its cruelty towards animals. The true challenge is about gathering the resilience to foray that chronic, diabolical origin of savagery and our gradual degeneration. Moral as well as spiritual.

The recent story of Cecil the lion, from Zimbabwe, whose tragic killing has been doing rounds, is another slice from the crude reality pie of the state of lions in Africa today. I have grown up in a hunting family, but I shudder at imagining the extent of sadism one needs to muster for poaching and destroying one of the most magnificent creatures on the face of our Mother Earth. Not to forget, that he too had a family, a life, a purpose. He wasn't meant to be our trophy! That wonderful black mane, quite rare in lions now, that vigorous demeanor and wild presence - all are mercilessly diminished to a rug in Walter Palmer's house at present. This opulent yet morally dead dentist has tarnished the whole name of humanity through his terribly avaricious act of assassinating the most graceful and lovable big cat of Zimbabwe. Our loss of Cecil isn't his victory but symbolic of the apocalypse that an audacious moron like Palmer can invite on mankind. If his amusement and sporty spirit equivalents to taking away the lives of innocent animals for no reason, he possibly does not deserve to be called a server of his fraternity with the help of dentistry skills. Mercenaries like him makes me question my faith on the local governments and what are they doing in order to protect the wildlife? Estimated numbers suggest that today Africa has less than 30,000 lions, whereas fifty years ago from now there were about 100,000 lions ruling. Why are private landowners allowed to sell Trophy Hunting expeditions?? Is there a viable answer to that? Safeguarding Cecil was their prerogative and they have failed to observe the law miserably. Animals need to be free and secure to roam around in their 'safe' zones and not lured to leave their sanctuaries so that slime buckets like this dental surgeon from Minnesota can shoot them with an arrow, track the poor for 40 hours, wound them with a rifle, let their bodies rot in the hot sun, skin them, and behead them like psychotics at the end! Trophy hunting is damaging to the environment, and the so-called economic benefits stand nowhere ahead of the preciousness of these endangered species that's on the verge of getting extinct sooner or later. If one prides in the ugly power of money and takes interest in blood sport, must he also not possess the bravery to engage himself in the fight with a lion unarmed? Or, at least get his shot with a bow and an arrow accurate rather than lousy? The sad truth is, animals belong to nature and nature entitles them with the freedom to be who they are. But we try to oppose that by caging them and bringing them abundant misery. Cecil's dreadful decease isn't a mare subject of debate - whether it deserves more outrage over the hullabaloo around defunding or not defunding Planned Parenthood from harvesting aborted baby organs - nonetheless, it is high time for us to open eyes to the barbaric destiny that so many beautiful animals in Africa and all over the world are subservient to. At long last, as the civilized, we must drop off everything else for the sake of argument and comparisons, rather, reawaken the distinction between RIGHT and WRONG that is totally muddled. After all, the erroneous idea that some lives matter less is at the root of all that is wrong with the world. 

China's Yulin festival is another prime example, of the best of horrors victimizing innocent animals. Putting the cuffs on poor stray dogs, slaughtering them brutally for achievement of piousness through their meat is detestable. Insanity of such magnitude casts my heavy doubt on leaders, diplomats, and ministers of the same state who relentlessly herald the facts and figures of their motherland to communicate, how "developing'' China is. Unfortunately, the growth and progress on the surface of a leading country often fails to conceal the murky and gory crux which nobody braves to examine and arrest.  

We slobber like a numbskull Hindustani who believes in the sacredness of worshiping the holy cow, yet our religious ethos impel us to endorse animal sacrifice in the temples. We claim to proudly hoist the flag for a country crooning 'Vande Mataram', and vow to protect and worship our Gomata, but the position of women in the same country goes from bad to worse every day as she has to fight tooth and nail for voicing herself and combat sexual harassment. Pinnacle of irony? Perhaps a set of paradoxical world ethics that isn't far from reaching epidemic proportions by the bane of its sanctimonious countries and their ever-widening population? We can't help but cope up with a new ban habitually, while the government expects us to ratify with a national Yoga Day and the much awaited 'achhe din'. Our dearest Saffron Brigade has slipped up big time by refraining us from beef consumption at first, and now, from relishing adult websites, which are perhaps the two most preposterous decisions they have ever smashed down on a bunch of spuriously democratic citizens, who are left nothing short of some lethal self-mockery, on being asked about the laws brought to bear on their person freedom. Safai mein bhalai? 

It feels like a daily gaiety to me, reading about those harsh, unjust and dictatorial propositions of my home country that echoes 'the nation wants to know', almost on the verge of reaching a crescendo in the middle of a planet of six million people. Why restricting and sabotaging a personal choice that any consenting adult has the right to consciously make in private, instead of not vetoing tobacco and cigarettes, that can destroy lives? It makes me want to urge those trendsetters to emend their conceptual adequacy, get over their tendency of unnecessarily meddling with extraneous issues and start realizing what is more important. One needs to be adaptable to the subjectivity of opinions - Just as what might be termed as pornography for one man might be a high art and a way of life for another. Someone might be absolutely comfortable in flaunting a bikini by the beach suiting the urbane culture, climate and temperament of a certain state, whereas the same might be defined as nudity and utter obscenity for somebody from a rural background. My reasoning is very simple. In a nation where even the faintest reference to sex is a topic of shame and deliberate escape, where the repressed social scenario is bereft of any sort of sensitive conversation between the parents and the children hitting puberty, will the interdiction of pornography usher in better future for the youth? I can list numerous names of my connections from the Indian descent who have shared their experiences with me of being explained the mechanism behind a growing baby in the mother's womb as some kind of definitive yet invisible Divine sovereignty. To get to the meat - Once you enter the wedlock and visit your nearest Mosque, Cathedral or other holy shrines of any form, God will bless you with an offspring of your dreams. Thus, since birth to adolescence, they have hardly had any exposure to the knowledge of sex and its various intricacies. But wistfully, our culturist forerunners of the government have even outlawed the idea of putting sex education into effect. Inscrutable as it may seem to many Indian minds, a recognition of their own home ground as the land of Khajuraho and Konark feels awkward in today's date. One can't overlook the analogy behind the rich display of complex and carved statues which still stand as the genesis of human sexuality for decades, sexual liberalism across countries, and the Kama Sutra (Shastras) in the Vedas that is quintessential of its universal prevalence for the erotic sculpture, sexual themes in literature and the candidness around the aesthetic pleasures that the contemporary era and its dynasty used to revel in. At this moment in time, we have no choice but to make peace with a precariously patriarchal milieu, which considers sexual gratification as a tool, rather, a mutual treaty between a couple for procreating. Any deviation from such preconceived equation, women who demand or even talk about carnal desires so to say, are stamped as emanating promiscuity and degraded moral values. Defeating those prejudices and bigotry is a disgrace to the 'Bharatiya Sanskar' yet why the ample evidences of crime against women are barely undermined? In 2013, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking a ban on porn, citing it as majorly instrumental to the enormous sexual abuse on women in the country; however, the ludicrous paradigm was soon ruled out by certain actualities - Instances of Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India - These are places where sexuality is not out in open still the rate of sexual offense is increasing by leaps and bounds. The loathsome fate of the twenty eight year old girl who was looked down upon as a mere object to be penetrated, grimly murdered, and then thrown over the cane fields of a rustic province in UP's Badaun few days back, is a mirror image of this haunting state of affair in defiance of a 'Swachh' Bharat. 

   

We need to understand, if we demand a clean internet, the solution has to be powerful enough to surpass the periphery of the tangible and thereby obliterate the ubiquitous evil that has been crippling the human race for quite some time now. Why not targeting on the menaces spreading at a larger scale than virtual or non-virtual debauchery? How difficult it is to press focus on those, battling under the poverty line and the ever weakening healthcare system of rural India? There is a whole slew of cases central to farmer suicides, malnutrition, violation of human rights, and religious segregation. Why not look into it all as the nerve center? Only if our lopsided forerunners can extricate themselves from debating over the pros and cons of capital punishment, there might be some room left to ensure that every single minor in India goes to school and not come in for child labor, perpetual trafficking and starve to death. So, as we bide our time in anticipation of 'Achhe Din', the nighthawk behind every closed door continues to rejoice the partial withdrawal of ban from a hunky-dory erotica over a non deleterious Maggi noodle. Yeehaw!!