I remember how scared yet excited I was when I decided to promote the petition asking for a revision in the laws of PCA, 1960. I had just sent a few important mails to the local and national organisations which take care of animal rights.
I don’t know what triggered it. Maybe it was my deep understanding for animals, dogs especially, or the fire that was burning inside me when I saw a man take a puppy and throw her down the terrace for the sake of having some fun. In no way, and in no angle I found this justifiable. And I was right. It was a cruel act which forced us to question the humanity of us humans. It is extremely disturbing for me to even think, let alone believe, that a person can come across such a thought. In my head I was dead right this was wrong, and the only way to prevent this from happening was to spread awareness of this incident and give those two men the most severe punishment for doing this to an animal.
Think of it from the animal’s perspective once. I think this is how she must have thought this all through: I wonder why he has brought me up here. It’s a wonderful scene from here but I’m scared of heights. I don’t need to worry, he’ll take care of me. Oh, he’s lifting me up! He knows me so well. I can’t see from down here that well. I’m so happy. But looking down gives me shrills. It’s so deep. I want to go down now. It’s enough. Why is he lifting me up? Why is he holding me like that? What is he saying? Why is he laughing? Aaaaaaaaa…. He threw me! He threw me! I see him laughing as I move further from him and my heart races and I am about to cry and I can’t speak and I am afraid of heights something is happening. Am I dropping? What is happening I am so scared! Help me! Someone help…….
I tear down at this point every single time. No matter how hard I try to be a man, this part of the story always brings up tears. To imagine something like this to me where I am not allowed to talk or do anything is a nightmare which will give me sleepless nights. Something even horror movies cannot give. Yet this brave dog decided to fight it all and wag her tail when she saw another man walk up to her, pick her up and rush her to the hospital.
This only goes to say that humans may be far more intelligent than animals, but they’ll never come any close to the loyality, kindness, and hope these animals carry with themselves. We are selfish. We don’t care. We ignore. But animals don’t. Even a lion is your savior if you’ve helped him sometime in your life. Everyone understands the meaning of love and care.
By this time I was convinced that I needed to step up and do something about all of this. I decided to forward the link of the petition to as many people as possible and hoped for the best numbers to sign it. In the midst of all this, I had a number of animal-activists websites opened so that I could pitch in their support too. After all, this is what they work for.
Deep down somewhere, I was scared. I was scared of doing the right thing. The only other time that I was scared of doing the right thing was when I decided to write an article stating the truth about our society. I learnt something that day – that if you’re doing the right thing, you don’t need to be scared of any power. Well, that’s true unless you want an angry businessman or a politician to be after your life – for the rest of the life. In that case, you need to be careful. I did send them the emails anyway, relying on the Almighty for the results and replies to them.
After sending them, I wanted to be sure I did the right thing. It was the middle of the night, and I didn’t know who to ask. Luckily, my brother was online. I immediately decided to ask him if I did the right thing. And that sparked an interesting conversation which was about to take a turn in a way that I could never possibly imagine!
After a while into the discussion of how things turned out in tonic incident, he said and I quote, “poor guy” for the guy who threw the pup. I blankly stared at the screen and prayed it was a joke. Apparently, it wasn’t. He felt that the punishment given to the two men (suspension from colleges) was too much!
On the other hand, there was a much bigger petition started by one of the animal activists (which obviously got more attention for obvious reasons) that demanded that the two students were debarred from medical colleges. If this happened, they could never attend a medical college in India – a perfect punishment. Why? These two men were in the final years and they wanted to become doctors! If I heard that a doctor killed another man just for fun, I would think nineteen times before going to him for surgery or anything else too.
What kind of a vet doctor doesn’t value the life of an animal? This kind of a behaviour forces us to think about our medical colleges and what they are really teaching their students!
All of these thoughts were above my brother’s head. He simply told me, and I quote “nobody would be affected if that dog lived or died.” Yes, you’re right. It probably wouldn’t make any difference to us. But have you thought about this? Doing such an act and getting away with it only provokes such incidents in the future. There are a million people like these two men who don’t give a shit about animals. They would love to do something like this. And I’m sure, after seeing this incident, they will definitely want to try it out!
But what can stop them? The only thing that can stop them is by telling them “Listen, if you do this – this is what you’ll land yourself into and there’s no going back! You’ll be banned for life!” Now, that’s a huge sentence which a much larger impact and will force at least half of those million people to think twice! We can’t prevent all of them from happening, but we can surely reduce them! Isn’t that something for a start?
All of this didn’t bother my brother. He went on supporting his argument with facts that made me wonder how this guy even became my brother in the first place. The biggest thing that I couldn’t digest was that he was actually feeling pity on the guy! Not once in this conversation had he spoken about the dog and praised her for being so brave!
He also went on to say that he doesn’t see animal life equally as human life, which to an extent can be okay, but when he said that he wouldn’t think twice to save a human life but he would not really mind letting the animal die was something that was beyond my comprehension no matter how hard someone tries to justify it.
I am disgusted by people who be ignorant and not care about animals. Who don’t want to make a change and keep talking about doing something but never actually try to do something about it. And what’s more, when someone’s doing it, instead of helping them they try to pull them down! It pains my heart knowing my brother belonged to this category.
That very moment I decided that I would have to end our ties right then and there because I will never forget what he said to me and how he was confident about what he’s doing was right. I grabbed my phone and decided to write him a small message:
“The next time I decide to meet you, you’ll either be a changed man – or I’ll still be asleep.”
Sending it almost tore me down. I had some of the best moments of my life with this guy and he was there for me no matter what. Stood beside me when everyone abandoned me, but what he said was unacceptable to me.
I received a text from him (I had already banned him from WhatsApp and Messenger) saying, and I quote:
“Better person? Changed man? Come back to reality dude. Nobody out there is gonna die for a fucking animal. I’m being honest. I don’t even feel wrong saying that. People just talk the talk but they can’t walk the walk. Fine, you don’t want to accept the me. I get it. See ya! Im done speaking what others want to hear. You’ll never have to see me.”
I couldn’t help but think. Was I the one who was being immature? Am I to just pretend this of this is okay? Not give two shits about a poor animal? And above all that, he accused me of talking and not doing what I say – well, here is my answer. I was going above my means to try and spread this message and the petition. To make people understand the PCA, 1960 laws are unjust and need to change! And that these two men deserve a bigger punishment! I’m sorry, but I think I AM doing something. I’m not just sitting and arguing about it. I have contacted local activists to discuss the issue with them and get their views on this. I’ve done everything I could. And what did he do? Nothing! Yeah, other than feel pity for the wrong guy! Probably, this was another nail in the coffin of our brotherhood.
It was still midnight. I got up and made myself a soda and went to the balcony amidst the calmness of the night. In the silence, I could think much clearer. Was I wrong about all this? Was I being too harsh on him? Was I being stupid? I don’t know. I kept waiting for an answer, but my heart told me that I did the right thing. And somehow that was the reason that I didn’t feel that bad either. I just decided to move on. I finished the soda and opened my laptop where I had a video of that same pup playing on the bed. I watched it. I smiled. My dog, Bruno, decided to check in on me thinking what I was doing up so late.
He looked at me, wagged his tail and kept his head on my lap. And soon, he slept on my lap. I couldn’t help but think…
“For me, a dog can just be another animal in the world, but for the dog, I am his whole world!”
And that gave me all my answers, and I don’t regret doing that to my brother. I took a stand and he needed to realize that he was wrong and when you’re doing something wrong – you deserve all the consequences that come along with it.
Please share and sign this petition: Change the laws of Prevention Of Cruelty Animals Act, and help give justice to a pup! (or paste this in your browser: https://goo.gl/IFKg12)
And this petition too: Debarring the two dog abusers in chennai from medical colleges
Cover image source: #BraveBhadra (An image posted on Shravan Krishnan‘s Facebook timeline.)
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