Animals, animosity and anonymity.

 

I was out for a stroll the other day, heading off in whatever direction my feet took me. That is how I am, generally, rambling along.

And then, I caught the smell of…fooood! Vada Pav, or was that Fafda? Perhaps both. I might have hurried faster than my feet could carry me, because I did not realise where I was headed. 

All of a sudden, all I could see were legs…a whole lot of them. At least a thousand legs, (I really am bad with numbers and estimates).- Legs in track pants and trousers. Tall and short. And feet. In flip flops and stilettos. And little feet in sneakers. 

Ah, well, I had no space to move around…so I had to skirt around the sea of feet, and tumble out from between feet spaced apart…and ….God! What were so many people doing in one place? I couldn’t see any of the lovely food….or smell it, for that matter. All I could smell was socks, panic, and fear….Oh! I must run…Ah! Narrow escape!

What? Ouch! Watch out-you’re stepping on my tail!...Grrr….No, he is just scared, of me…Like I am, of him…No, wait! Ouchie! That hurt! Grrr…..I’ll bite you!... Umm…Should I? Umm…I mean…Oh, God! Where is the way out? I can’t seem to read the signboards these humans put up.

Hey! Wait! I’m going…I’m trying…Excuse me, Miss? Which is the way out….? Aah! No! Grrr! Damn! Calm down, big guy! I am not trying to hurt you…or maybe I should…Ouch! Did he just kick me…are they running towards me…Hey? Which way out….? Grrr! Yelp! Yelp!

A stray dog recently lost its way on a cricket pitch, during a match organized on an imposing scale, and the best way we could handle it was by kicking and startling it! In all probability, in a bid to prevent the dog from causing any more disturbance to the folks around, and understandably in view of the possibility of the stray dog biting someone in the crowd, the ground staff gave a knee-jerk reaction. 

But then, that is precisely the point. We need to sensitise the supporting staff at ground level, on how to tackle unforeseen emergencies like this. Had it been an unruly, forget just confused, human out there, would they have kicked him/her? Not without provocation, at least. 

Maybe we all need lessons on how to keep our calm and handle a confused, whimpering animal the best. In fact, we must be given lessons on how not to provoke such frightened creatures in the first place.

As a starting step, we could discuss more about these real animals than the glorified ‘androgen bomb animals’ Bollywood would like us to believe the current generation of males aspires to be - Alpha males who growl and bark and bite their way to box office success.

In a world that is scared AI-Artificial Intelligence will do most of the jobs we gloat over, better than us, it would do us good to sensitise ourselves towards suffering of any kind. If we intend to be better than a bot in any way, that is. 

On a related note, a friend of mine recently voiced her concern- If AI could mimic our voices, how would we retain our individuality? Fair point, I said, but what worries me is that we might have surrendered our individuality voluntarily- Look at the recent outpouring of content on social media- Airbrushed ‘glass-skin’, spell-checked autocorrected script, a filter on our speech and blinders on our eyes- How much more alike could we be? For all we know, we are already anonymous, in a bid to be ‘relevant’.

Meanwhile, Lil Miss has a question: Mumma, what is animosity?

Me: Hostility

Lil Miss: As in a hostel?

Me: No, umm… animosity is the feeling we get for our enemies.

Lil Miss: Funny.

Me: Why?

Lil Miss: Because animals don’t have enemies. 

As usual, she is right. Maybe we should call it Humosity. And just maybe, it is not the dog, but us, humans, who are astray.

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