Wounded paws

The pain was scrutinizing, deadly. He fell on the ground, his eyes bulged out and through them he saw the innumerable number of human feet running towards him and then it came again, the blow. This time the pain wasn’t as deadly as the first one, this time the blow was just a relief. A relief from the fear that was life…

Statistics say that this year the poachers have done a very good job. Tiger poaching would be the one area in which humans have exceeded far above the expectations. Tigers are killed like they are born to be killed. If tiger teeth are good medicine for one disease, tiger paws are good for another, tail for something else, skin for decoration and I am not very sure about testicles and balls but even that is sold for a good amount of money I am sure. Which part is sold and which aren’t doesn’t really matter does it? A tiger’s life is worth lot of money and that is all that matters. Kill the tiger, skin it, chop it, and sell it. The Chinese are waiting with open arms and tons of money. Money is all that matters. The forest officials work for money and they don’t really bother which way the money comes from. A poacher’s dynasty is surely richer than the government’s and we know all things in the world is inter-related and inter-dependant. Anyway, what happens or how it happens out there isn’t something very well known to me. All I know is that the tigers are killed and the future for them is terribly bad and vulnerable.

When poaching happens in its own efficiency, tigers are also killed when they are spotted in villages one kilometer or so away from the forest areas. “Tiger is a threat to our cattle, to us, to our lives and lively hood”, the villagers say. Yes, they are right. When you decide to make your homes by clearing off forest lands, there would be consequences, it is your fault and don’t you sound so helpless. If tiger could speak the human language it would say “you humans have destroyed our homes, you steal from us, you leave us no place to live in, you intrude in our lives and take away our peace, you gift us fear and we are afraid of you all the time, you torture us, you captivate us, you kill our mothers and leave our kids to die, you are murderers and monsters who conquer our homes and make it your own and evacuate us from wherever we belong, you inflict fear and pain in us so much that we do not know anymore what we are to do once born, our mothers are afraid and so we are, fear is so much a part of our lives that we never for a moment parts with it, you humans stink and we do not want anything to do with you. Why do you come in big noisy vehicles, ruin our soil, take away our peace and torture us daily, every hour of the day? We aren’t doing it to you. You spot one of us anywhere nears the houses that you have built for yourselves in our land, you kill us or you captivate us, and you send us off to zoos. Do you know anything about our lives other than the tricks that you play on us to trap us, to kill us? No, you know nothing and you never will. Even if you do it would not make you any better because your vision is clouded in the blood money that you make out of us. Your lives are wasting this planet. This planet would do much better without your lot.  Our homes are shrinking day by day and we know that you know it better than we do, and that is what which takes away all the hopes that we ever have had. We are living because you are not letting us die. We are your creations aren’t we? We have no right to choice, to freedom, to peace, to contentment, to home, to water, to food, to space, to privacy, to family, to life. We exist because you want us to. We exist for you to kill us. We do not understand what you do with all this money that you make. Do you eat money? Is money the most basic need of yours? No, we know it isn’t. Money is only something that you would like to have so that you can have all the materialistic gains of the human world. For attaining that non-essential luxury of yours you ruin us, you crush our lives. Is that fair? Well, fairness in the human world has undergone a lot of change lately and we haven’t been able to understand it fully. All we can understand is that the world of yours is complex and evil and monstrous. If we had a choice, we would never be a part of it. Our lives in the forests, that you have left to destroy later, have become very uncomfortable. Yes right, you do interfere a lot but other than that, we have very less of an area. We have a territorial issue you see, we need our space and that is all we need but space isn’t available anymore. You have shrunk our forests to such tiny fragments of land, haven’t you? We become independent and move on with lives separately once we are matured and this custom forces us to find our own space which is no more available. The non-availability of space makes us competitors and battlers. We kill each other. Yes, you kill us, we kill each other, and natural causes kill us, all in a way is caused by you, human being. Aren’t you proud of it? Our life is dear to us, and we would like to live and not merely exist for you. Could you please not make your extra big money out of us? Could you not provide us with some space and privacy in our land? Please, we beg you. We beg you to leave us alone.”

Isn’t it such a great luck that animals don’t speak the human language? The world would have been a much better and purer place of course but that is not something we need is it? They have voice and they are intelligent creatures but we the thinking man prefers to leave their voices unheard, to deliberately silence their cries, to crush their voices and lives. We will succeed in this because we are capable of it; we are rational, shrewd and cunning. A couple of decades later, if things go by the same standard, let us proudly then say to our children, “there was once a magnificent creature called tiger. It is no more. It’s gone extinct, just like dinosaurs did. There is nothing as great and majestic as a tiger that trod the face of earth. There is nothing as great a sound as a growl of tiger. There is no such beauty as that of those orange stripes, and there is nothing as royal as a royal Bengal Tiger. You lost your chance of living in the age of tigers because we killed all of them.” Listening to this proud achievement of ours, our children will look up to us and praise us. Just like we praise Jim Corbett for all the hunting he did. Be aware though, when the children gain knowledge and goes back to look up on history, they will realize that Mr. Corbett had took upon tiger conservation as he realized the need of it before he was dead. That is okay though; we can always find ways to justify us, aren’t we good at that?

Is there anybody out there who wants to save tigers for the coming future? Is there anybody who is compassionate? Is there anybody willing to fight the war for them? Is there anybody willing to listen to their cries? Is there anybody who genuinely respects them and their lives? Please, come on let us do it. We still have time to mend our mistakes. They deserve it and this planet deserves it. Let us give a longer life for tigers and forests and thus for our beloved planet. Let us act quick, come on.