Of appearances and prejudices

It's been a while since I quit my job. I feel no need to wake up earlier than 9:30 in the morning. 

Like every other indisciplined or lonely person, the first thing I do when I wake up is to check my phone.

The time was 9:40

I had received at call an hour ago..which makes it...umm...8:40? Wonder who it was.

I blinked twice to clear my vision and found out that it was a member of the housing society I live in.

So to give you a quick backdrop...

A conversation was struck on the point of stray cats entering the building and that they could be a threat to little kids that play in the premises. 

This was the message:

"Dear All 

Today when I opened the lift at ground around 3pm , I got scared to see Cat sitting at the exit of Lift . I used to see cat often in our society in the afternoon mostly but never seen at the entrance of the building . We need to find out solution on this before they bite our small kids who goes down to play without their parents . Either we have to put pest control heavily on passage  or do  something."

I freaked out imagining that pest control will mean poisoning and I expressed my fears and protest. I have never known a cat to have walked up to someone and bitten him without reason. (Only humans do that by the way; animals only attack to protect themselves)

But man being man will always be on the top of the ecological chain..seldom will he deal with his own fears and insecurity. 

The following sentence confirmed this belief: "For God sake , you don’t know the incident in the past .  This happened with me when I was small around 10 years old . So this is not true that cats don’t bite."

Nevertheless, back to the present at 9.40, I called the person back. We spoke for another hour on how cats are dangerous and how little kids playfully will pull the tail (naively) and the cats would attack them.

The harmless request eventually spiralled into a personal attack - not against me, against the cat.

He went on to say how the cat had scars on its face and looked horrible. I asked him only cos the cat looked ugly, you decided it was dangerous? If I was a victim of acid attack, would you think the same? If I am ugly, am I not fit to be around you?

That triggered the breaking of a dam inside me. My heart cries out to all the victims of acid attacks, accidents that disfigured them and other signs that people consider ugly.

If a cat is so mercilessly judged on the way it looks, humans can't survive such prejudices.

It is true that the world needs kindness - more now than ever. But to all those who judge others often, don't help but at least don't hurt!

Playing human - the victim card

There is no species that complains as much as man does. In spite of having superiority in physique, intelligence and adaptation, man has been unsuccessful in achieving one thing - contentment.

While the train that I am sitting in, crosses the creek, I notice that it's low tide. The tiny forest close to the shore is laden with age-old plastic, degrading cloth and so many objects discarded by humans over the years. The greens of the plants are overshadowed by the dirty grays of the garbage. All this will be hidden by waves of water very soon as the tide rises.

Maybe owing to religious or superstitious reasons or sheer laziness (maybe), we find it very convenient to discard into nature what we do not need. No consideration for water, air or soil. We build roads, bridges, railway lines, houses, hotels and the more we create, the more powerful we consider ourselves to be. We follow the "create/import, use, discard, repeat" cycle. 

Oblivious to the consequences, we keep dumping all that we refuse. We have not even spared the depths of the oceans, the top of mountains, not even outer space which apparently contains floating debris of satellites!

With the slightest dumping of work or emotion on us, we make a big deal out of it and say we are stressed, pressured, harassed and abused. And even so, very conveniently, we care a damn about the space we inhabit. 

We keep creating stuff mindlessly and conveniently. Do we know if there's enough space in our home - planet Earth? 

What an irony when Nature decides to retaliate (just as we do under pressure), we again smoothly play the victim. We keep cribbing and complaining about how we "lost" so much because of nature, and how much "damage" has incurred due to natural calamities.

We want to be immortal, invincible, and unaffected by any adverse or unpleasant events. We strive very hard to fight disease and death, suffering mostly due to the side effects of our own creations. We tamper with nature's laws, feel superior and continue splurging, exhibiting our intellectual capability to defy everything. The minute it backfires, we cry, and write motivational quotes about fighting on, not giving up or changing our ways.

There is no thought about anything else but our own comfort. We can damage and walk away, without regret or remorse. But if we experience the slightest retaliation from our environment, we throw a fit about how life is unfair and unkind.

My realisation (apart from my rant) is only this: When will man be considerate before creating something? When will he consider others in his ecosystem before calling all the shots? When will he be compassionate and mindful while creating?

Truly, with great power comes great responsibility. Be superior but be responsible!