SOS for my Mother

Today I write, not as an animal activist, as an environmentalist or even an animal lover. Today, I write as some one who suffers at the condition of her fellow beings, today I write as a human.

The story of 7 elephants being killed by a speeding goods train in West Bengal left me in tears. The story tells the appalling condition of India and her treasure which is being plundered by men who call themselves her sons - sons who are stealing from their mother’s womb. Be it through urbanization, industrialization, oil spills, deforestation, speeding vehicles or simply through poaching, the people who call themselves guardians of our nation are chocking our hope for future and pillaging our wealth.

The animal lover in me screams in pain when I read about the dead elephants. The animal activist in me wants to shoot down those poachers who are ready to kill tiger cubs for a few thousand rupees. But the human being in me just wants the suffering to stop – for once and for all.

But how will it? We have left our country in the hands of those whose greed will never be satisfied and whose pockets will never be full enough. We have left it to those who continue to shame us in-front of the world, jump at the smallest opportunities to create communal divides and spread corruption faster than a mosquito spreads dengue. Will they ever listen to the wordless cries of our animals or notice the dead lands where lush green trees once stood? If they stop counting notes they plundered, maybe - just to go back to counting the notes. And we will let them because that’s how we have been taught to do.

And that is where it has to change. The corrupt traitors need to be replaced by true sons of the soils - sons who will rebuild the broken empire of my Mother. And those sons will be born in her own womb – in the finest educational institutes of her land. They will rise above one crore packages and hear the pleas of penniless farmers, flood affected, homeless victims and underpaid labours. They will lead the way and teach the future sons to believe, to hope and to fight corruption. They will bring with them a tidal of change, which will break the shackles of corruption holding my mother to ranson.

And then maybe, the human in me will rest peacefully -with the souls of those seven elephants.