Freedom

I am walking on this road, a very familiar road, in fact the only road that I am familiar with. This is the road on which I have done all my walking, running, crawling and kneeling. Everything I know in life is on this road, everything that I have seen and touched is on this road and yet, and yet I don’t want this road anymore; I don’t want to be here or touch or see the things that I have seen and known all my life. How do I go anywhere else, how do I find that way out? Whenever I try seeing the path ahead the road ends dead, and when I turn back something pulls me further into this road, I first struggle to free myself but the thing that pulls me doesn’t let me do that either. I walk further into that road and lose myself on the way, I never bother to find me, and I just walk in leaving me behind. Time passes, I have by then developed a new complex refined me. The new I too begin to want to be away from this road. I am confused. Why does this always happen? Why can’t I just fit in and bring peace within and around? I so let myself obey that smoky vague force which never lets me out and live on losing myself more and more. Time passes, the cycle repeats. Now, all I want is to go away, I am suffocating, I need to go or else I am going to suffocate myself till I can no longer do even that. I beat down the smoky force and run away, I run so fast that the wall encompassing the road passes me in such swiftness as if they didn’t want me there either. I am out of breath, my legs are wobbling and I can no longer run or even remain standing. I fall on the ground and my head goes blank. I don’t close my eyes as I am afraid that the smoky force would win me back. I hope there was somebody to help me, somebody who could show me the way out, I look around and see no one. Not a single soul. Then a while later I see a group of people walking towards me, I am initially scared but then I see them smiling and I am happy. I force myself up and smile as they reach me, but to my dismay, they walk past me, not a single person notices me. They just didn’t see me there. I am disappointed, but I anyway decide to follow them. I resume walking. I walk a few steps and then I realize I am not walking at all but imagining that I am. I shake myself up and try walking only to see before me the dead end of the road. I am broken, tears well up in my eyes, I scream, but I know only I could hear my scream. I also knew that the smoky force was grinning at me from behind. I turn around and stare at it with all the hatred I have never known I had had. I refuse to go near it; I knew it would swallow me if I made a step at it. I settle myself in the middle of the dead end and the ghost figure, the force. I decide to sit there until the dead end clears and offer me a way out. The ghost patiently waits for me on the other side. I am there for a very long time. Loneliness eats me up. I feel miserable, unwanted, unloved. I look at the ghost, it is asking me to follow it, promises me to let me out. I ask the ghost why would it let me out and it says “I would let you out because now you know it’s there with me or nowhere” I am infuriated by that remark, I ask “where would you leave me to if it is there or nowhere?” the ghost, smoky force then says “I would let you out of misery, I would leave you to fit in. I would let you find your way out”. My fury is gone; I say “thank you” but the ghost is no more there. There is no grey force waiting to swallow me up. I am freed. I am free to find my way out, and I guess now I know how. I look up; the grey dull ceiling has disappeared. Now I see the blue beautiful sky, I am overflowing with joy. I am freed. 

Suppression of heaven and the heavenly ones

It was drizzling and the clouds were turning grey or silver. I did not bother to wear a cap or hold an umbrella; I was enjoying the wet climate. I was taking in the smell of the wet earth and green leaves, like a drug it made me light and I guess I was floating on the inside. I was sitting on a swing not swinging but watching my dogs, my darlings in their play time. It is a sight I would love to see each day; it is something so precious to me, something that gives me immense pleasure. There is this particular place where they love to play and I never miss the chance to take them there, just to watch them in action. It is marvelous to watch them, the way they growl at each other and then playfully pounce atop the other.

I love my dogs. They have taught me so much, I have learned so much from them. All my four legged friends have helped me better myself. They have not only loved me with their lives but they have also shown me how empty life would be without them. With love comes respect and with that forms a beautiful relation.

Dogs are pets and human beings find pleasure in having them. A few humans care for them in the way they deserves to be cared but many times the worst happens and the humans find it okay to throw their dogs, pets out of their lives. In India, the developing country, such dogs would be just another stray, about the developed countries I wouldn’t speak of today as I really do not know them well enough. So yeah, those dogs would eventually starve themselves to death or they would get killed under a truck or bus, they would die on the street anonymous and neglected, nobody would know that they once had a name and a master for whom they were willing to die.

This can pass for as an example…

One fine morning the owner finds out that his not very well cared for or loved extra intelligent, innocent pet dog has some sort of sickness in it. The dog would be taken to the hospital, government vet hospitals which hardly know what hygiene is, there the doctor would prescribe a few medicines which the owner would buy the first time and gives the dog for couple of days without fail. The dog might be in pain and it might behave badly or it even might try to bite the owner when he tries to apply the medicine. The owner gets furious at the dog, he forgets that the dog is in pain and he neglects the dog from then on to teach the dog its lesson. The dog is in pain and now its master is upset, it doesn’t know what to do, it is uncontrollably depressed, and all that the dog yearns for is his master’s love even when the pain is killing him. A few days later, when the dog has so badly deteriorated his condition, after long days of neglect and lack of treatment, the owner finds it unbearable to watch. He says that the dying dog makes him feel sad all the time and he doesn’t want to feel sad all the time. The dog now has suffered all the pain and sorrow and the only fact that he finds solace in is that, he is still by his masters side and he knows that he is safe in the house that he has lived all his life. The dog then one day sees his master walking towards him, after many long days of neglect, the dog feels so happy that even with the killing pain and nausea that he feels he wags his tail for his master. The dog wags his tail and right away feels a lot better. He bends his head for his master to pat but only to find that he was being pulled by his leash by his master ordering him to follow. The dog is tensed as he is taken into the car, the dog is afraid of the car; he has never been in a car. The dog goes through excruciating anxious moments as the car driven by his master travels a long time. After a long time when the dog feels slightly better the car halts. The dog expectantly looks at his master; his master doesn’t meet his eyes. The dog has sensed something bad and he panics. The master roughly tugs at his leash and the dog is forced to come out. When the dog is out he tries to hide his face behind his master’s legs, he is scared to be here, and he has never left his home. All the sound of vehicles and people scares him; he is not used to such things. His master starts walking away from the car tugging him by his leash to follow. The dog inevitably follows; he tucks his tail between his legs and starts shaking badly with fear. Then his master ties his leash to a tree and walks off. The dog doesn’t understand anything, he tries to pull himself free, and he starts yowling and yelping. His master doesn’t turn back. The dog do not stop yelping as the car moves away driven by his master. He finds himself alone tied to this tree in a place that scares him so badly. He lies down beside the tree shaking and shivering with fear.

If that dog is lucky some savior human would appear in his life or he might be helped by the gangster pack of stray dogs. If luck does not happen, he would alone try his best to survive by himself, animals never give up how much ever was the conditions against them. Surviving by himself in the street with all the sickness would fail him and death would one day embrace him. He will die there never revealing the story of his life.

Well, this is not always the case but things like this happen, sometimes worse happen. If you are a believer in god it is easy because you can say, ‘god will punish such men for their cruelty’, but if you aren’t then you do not even have such a phrase to live on.

There arise a lot of complaints regarding the stray dogs, of the disturbances they cause the people and the government decides to do something about it and they set up a rule. After setting up the rule the government forgets to carry it over and then the people take over the reins and do the action their way. They do things according to the rules set by the government but the ways that they do it isn’t exactly how the government initially planned of doing it. Once the people take over, things go out of control; nobody knows who is right and who is not. Nobody knows who government is and who is not. Recently a government hospital decided to control the number of stray dogs and for that they spayed a number of bitches. The media covered the news item pretty well and the average animal lovers all were happy.

Nobody knows the number of stray dogs that happens to exist. Nobody knows when litters are born. Likewise nobody knows it when the dogs are killed, how they are killed. A pair of eyes that I trust a lot like my own once witnessed a stray dog captured with the help of noose hit continuously on its skull with a rod until it was dead. So that is also a way in which they are killed, even today. Waste materials is what they live on, the stray dogs. As in our country waste management is so extremely inefficient the strays feast from the heaps of waste that pile up everywhere except on the middle of the road. So it is us who make them, there is no one fault on their side. It is us who make them so don’t we have the right to end them? No, we don’t. We have the right to not make them anymore, but yes that is a right which we would never want to win.

It is horrible to have so many starving creatures in our land. A starving being falls down dead and there our land degrades.

There is suffering happening in each and every dumb creature, voiceless beings. No animal is free to live their lives in this planet, the planet in which the human race is above all. The wild animals suffer the most as they have their forests shrinking down each day. They have nowhere to go but number up within their limited insufficient shrinking area. The striped big cats who rule the forest fail to rule over the cunning human race and end up poached and skinned and packed in cartons piece by piece. The Chinese rule over the world with those minced up tiger pieces that are assumed to be medicines that can cure the human race off their sickness. The elephants that belong in the wild are brought here and beaten up to man’s accord. The celebrities wear t-shirts that say save out tigers and campaign throughout the media while the poachers join hands with the forest officials to make their currency notes. The news papers report each day of considerable improvement that happens in the wildlife and readers feel good. The tourists flood up in the forests and shout and howl their way into the forests in the safari jeeps, takes a few pictures of the irritated tolerating tiger and comes back home and shares the stories of their adventurous trip and preaches for a while about conservation.

With no tiger there is no forest, with no forest there is no life. It is not me saying it but it has been said ages ago in one of the Indian epics.

When humans are killing humans, humans killing animals may not qualify to make headlines. Women are raped, men are murdered, cities are bombed. All this will go on as long as the thinking man does over thinking. Everything has a limit; the suffering too has a limit. One day the suffering ones may decide to revolt and that day would bring the end to this planet, our planet.

Till then I will keep on loving and living for the ones I love with all my life, apparently the ones I love are all the suffering ones.