I have become a supporter for prevention of cruelty to animals. No, Maneka Gandhi didnt come in my dream and threaten me with dire consequences for something that I did few years back. Rather we recently shifted houses, and that brought about the realization about the suffering animals go through.
We recently moved from a three bedroom house to a two bedroom house and my better half was managing the move. The stuff that we had to pack before the moving deadline was enormous. The things that you accumulate when you stay in a place more than a year is amazing. Yet, we had a deadline to stick to. I had given the option of creative visualisation to my better half as a way to proceed, but the presence of my parents gave her the confidence to shoot it down.
So it had to be me, who after toiling in the workplace (gathering several trivial information from the world wide web – and occasionally glaring at the only up-to-date work that I do regularly – which incidentally is keeping a list of things to do) come home and start doing work again! Injustice… Cried my soul, Gross Injustice, but the sound was lost in the instructions that came from my parents and my other half.
Day after day, the packing was progressing. It was one of those days, as I was pulling out stuff after stuff for packing into boxes, I suddenly felt this deep sympathy for Dusshasana. Yes, our beloved Duryodhana’s brother from the Mahabharata. I could feel the stress he might have gone through while pulling out Draupadi’s sarees one by one. Here I was thinking packing will be over in a jiffy and as I pulled out stuff to pack, more appeared. Just like the situation dusshasana was in. This packing seemed futile and I had a thought that this might land me in the battlefield of kurukshetra.
Once the packing was done somehow and we shifted to the new place, came the next shocker. I was supposed to unpack and arrange the stuff as well! I had always thought that parents loved their children and so does a wife love her husband. But the way things were going, I felt as if all those ideas were wrong. Once a man marries, he becomes part of a circus, where he mistakenly thinks that he is the ringmaster. Its only when the show begins that he realizes his position. I felt like an animal performing tricks in the circus, while the ringmaster(s) crack the whip. The show had to go on, and the animal did perform.
Now I am all for animal rights. You still dont agree, shift houses and let me know.