Who Lives, Who Dies?
Hard Choices & Animal Loves
Backto Home Page
One of our friends, spiritual adepts, animal whisperers, God’s chosen ones Neema* lives in a farm in a forest. It is a glorious farm, on which she has 3 dogs, cows, and a varying assortment of animals; like chicken, cats, the recovering parrot, the squirrel fallen from the nest… More recently, due to labour troubles, she had to let go of the cows, safely ensconced in a Gowshala, the chicken were decimated by a fox, and so what has been flourishing are turkey… Unlike chicken, and roosters whom she finds the most idiotic, uncaring animals she has interacted closely with, she found the turkey extremely endearing… They are huge… caring… beautiful… and one can connect deeply with them… the bond between her & the turkeys was as close as her love for dogs, and cats…
Now when Corona first burst out onto the world, her country like many others went into a fairly extended lockdown. And like in many countries, shortages began to appear… Even expensive 50 km drives on local jalopies into the nearby town resulted in a pitiful handful… Chicken meat the staple for her dogs began to run short… And the thing is her dogs, loyal, hardworking, keeping snakes at bay, and less than trustworthy light-fingered drifters away… are non-vegetarian. Oh they do eat rice, but only with a healthy dose of meat to flavor it…
Ok you get where this is leading…
Hard Choices…
Now the choices are always hard, it’s just that we are blinkered and we do not see how hard the choices beneath each and every day truly are… Celia & I faced just such a choice many years ago in the early 2000’s… when Buffy first arrived… Buffy is as many of you remember was {and is} a loving creature… And she was {and is} family. She was Celia & Tarun’s daughter, having a charmed life, few in the world can hope for… And yes she was very non-veg… She hated her food being contaminated by veg be it rice or bread, or God forbid, carrots…
To get her food, Tarun visited the local live chicken place… There the chicken were in awful coops… As he looked at them… terrified, knowing only a mesh for ground, imagine having no ground just cruel wire beneath your feet, less space around than a concentration camp… they would talk to Tarun… Just as Buffy talked to him, the chicken talked to Tarun… Their eyes, their inner voices were the same as Buffy… same as any humans… Faced with this impossible predicament, Tarun turned vegetarian, while Buffy continued to be very non-veg… Yes Tarun who absolutely adored non-veg, Celia’s mother if Tarun was called for lunch would double the meat on the table had to give up meat out of what many will call Tarun’s habit of over-thinking…
As we related in Buffy’s Doggy Revelations, Buffy said “If you don’t catch it for me… I will catch it for me. Brave words, for once when she cornered a one-winged crow, she really didn’t know how to crack its neck, or what to do with it. For even if she had managed to kill it? Who would cook it, remove offending feathers and put into her proud red bowl?
Anyway, now that we have circled the dilemma let us return to it… And it is this, Neema* faced closed butcher shops, hungry dogs, and turkey that she loved...
Here is her choice: Hungry Dogs – Loving Turkey.
She took a knife, whispering sweet nothings into the turkey’s ears {We did tell you she is an animal whisperer}, she cut its throat.
The dogs feasted.
Now many kids have stuffed toys, and they hug and cuddle them; koko-doggy, joo-moo, tiggy-tiger, pooh bear, pinky ghoda… Many of us humans call ourselves animal lovers… But actually we are pet lovers, stuffed toy lovers… we forget that to feed one, another must die…
It’s easy to forget this with packaged food, but to feed one… another must die…
Sure in a short while, less than a decade fake meat will be widespread, either grown in petridish or genetically reengineered plant-meat protein… Others will say I am vegetarian… I have done my part… Yes, reducing meat in our diet will greatly help ease the pressure on the earth as 70% of earth resources go to feed the farm animals that feed 20% of people… But that still doesn’t eliminate the essential dilemma… For our cities to exist, for our farms to exist, for our dams to exist… countless animals are killed, displaced… To feed one, another must die… And not just hidden somewhere… one in our family must die for another to live…
In the short run, we can have fewer children, we can remove more meat from our diet, we can postpone the unnecessary next car… we can invent new foods, discover new sources of power…
In the mid-run we may try populate Mars… and maybe by 2300 AD succeed in having a few hundred on Mars by sacrificing a few billion on earth…
Hard choices are part of life… in every family… a family close to us has only enough money to send one child abroad… Hopefully he will take the 4 others when he has established himself… Another family had only money to send one daughter to medicine, the other would have to work after school… Will the ‘medicine daughter’ support the ‘sweeper daughter’?
Now Neema* had a choice,
A} Kill the turkey and feed the dogs with meat,
B} Let the dogs starve till they became veg,
C} Kill one dog and one turkey…
D} Kill herself and let the world take care or not…Now she tried option D, but that for her is not an option. For a God has taken her under his wing. And will not let her die. He will not smooth her path. But he will not let her die.
Take C} Kill one dog and one turkey… She needs the dogs to stay alive in the wilderness.
Take B} Let the dogs starve till they became veg. She is vegan, she can ask that of herself but not dogs.You may choose differently from Neema*, but whatever choice you or I take, one family member will devour another… Or is there another choice?
You may ask, but why Tarun & Celia are you giving is such grim choices? Because you & I are going to have to grapple with grim choices…
Hard choices for the Millennials…
There was a time in the 1960’s -1980’s when things were clear, the world was growing, economies were thriving, communism had fallen, the whole world would soon be under the wing of the rock-loving, freedom living American Empire, with civil liberties ensured, and pot roast on every table…In the early 2000’s after the silly millennium scare, all the young had to worry about was… which transnational to work for? Which footer club to back? Which car to afford? Which love to sleep with this week? And then the middle-eastern problem refused to go away, India stopped being ‘tolerant’, China stopped being the good servant, Nature stopped being something technology could crush under its metal boots…
Loving nature is not something sweet… it is hard, rough, but if we find a deeper understanding, in the decades ahead. Billions won’t need to die… if Billions aren’t born… Finding harmony between different communities and cultures is not easy… for the alternative is sometimes letting tyrants rule, permitting tyranny have its day… Or letting out the nukes…
If you fight for more forests, the mineral lobbies will oppose you… If you say old secularism works, you will be asked to prove that assertion in a non-symmetric world…
We are today coming to a place, where Neema* lives… we have to confront life, nature, death… we cannot offer you ready-made answers… or easy-solutions…
Yes, we believe broadly in ‘go for nature…’ But remember in nature the noble lion usually chooses the baby, the sick and the old to eat… yes vegetarianism helps, but just as we talk to animals, we talk to trees…
All we can offer you is this… We have all, everyone reading this, stood outside time & space… We have all come here to this place of hard choices to grow… We will all survive death… We are all lights… We are all part of a vast being within in whom all; dog, turkey & Neema* live…
*********
-- Celia & Tarun Cherian
A breathtaking encounter with a Butterfly who is a Sage. Animal Whisperers. Celia & Tarun Cherian give you a little book packed with a sky of wisdom. And magnificent meditations. Read More! The Butterfly Pearl A Spiritual Classic. Packed with Stunning Images
Now! Order The Butterfly Pearl as an ebook on Amazon Only Rs 77!
On 28th Nov 2016, Aura Master Tarun Cherian looked out of his window to an amazing sight. A world covered with shimmering bubbles of light. As he interrogated the experience he realised it revealed how our emotions intertwine with the world,
how we are deeply interconnected, how the hard world is shaped through soft emotion.
Now! Order The Bubbles of Joy Vision as an ebook on Amazon Only Rs 77!
What happens when you look with God's Eyes? Celia & Tarun Cherian give you a little book packed with a sky of wisdom. And magnificent meditations. Read More!
Just Uploaded! God and The Peacock-tailed Pigeon as an ebook on Amazon Only Rs 100!
A little walk with a dog through a middle class neighborhood of Bangalore, becomes a journey through wonderland! When you borrow the Aura Eyes of Tarun & Celia Cherian, the insightful nose of Buffy, and the senses of God, a humble street corner is filled with mystery. The roads shake off tar and choose to dress in Gold. Walkers look like ancient prophets. Children blaze with innocence. Ghosts appear. Shaktis stir. Solar Angels are revealed.
NEW! Order The Aura Walk on Amazon Only Rs 55!
Collage Images courtesy: jeremy-thomas viktor talashuk @unsplash.com and pixels.com