On Humans and Humanity

It was a Saturday, another Saturday. I wonder why people chose to have only seven days in the week- not that it’d be any fun to have a different number of days but it sure is a wonder how everyone agreed with the number seven with no one complaining. Humans were never so concordant. Anyways, putting aside the wondering and the speculation, I’ll stick to my story.

So, Saturday it was. It was another day in the alleged paradise we populate. I had not had a sound sleep for quite a few days- owing to the psychological pressures that come with the Indian System of Education and the perturbation arising out of the other problems that had been gnawing at me. After a few hours of the rudimentary sleep, I could no longer pretend to be engaged in the coveted activity; I rose from my bed and looked at my watch- it was 0430 hours. Picking up my towel from its usual throne- the backrest of my chair- I slung the door open and walked towards the washroom. Once facing the mirror, I looked into my eyes (might sound strange but the human exploitation of optics has made it a possibility). They were still red and burning with the desire to rest. I splashed water into them and instantly discovered a method of decreasing the pH of hydrogen-hydroxide. After the heat in my eyes had lessened, I wiped my face. In doing so I realized that my facial hair had exceeded its usual length, but realizing that it was not something I cared, I let the thought drift out of my mind. I walked towards my room and placed the towel in its habitat. The time was still 0440 and the mess would not serve breakfast before 0730, so there was time to be digested. Following an impulse, I decided to take a walk. I pulled on my walking shoes and let my feet embark on a journey to the unknown. Once at the gate, it took me seventy seconds to persuade the guard to let me out.

Once outside the gate, I started walking towards the Hyderabad Central University. The HCU campus is about two miles from our campus and once upon a time the IIITH campus was part of HCU as well. I was perhaps thinking of this and consequently I didn’t notice the rays of the sun breaking through the darkness. It was only after sometime that I realized things around me were visible. This was one of the times when I was fully aware of my surroundings; I had nothing specific to engage my mind, so I was as free as a bird. To surrender all the thought provocation and look around, only to be surprised by Nature, helps at times. And that was what I was precisely trying to do, until I set my eyes upon the scene ahead.

Through the infant rays of dawn, I saw a pup sitting near the remains of its mother. The mother had apparently been run over by some heavy vehicle and was reduced to a stationary mass of dog-flesh and dog-bones, and perhaps dog-food. I am not a dog person. However the sight was pathetic and no human could’ve resisted turbulence in the pool of emotions. The pup’s serene muteness seemed to radiate an overwhelming sensation of mourning. Its fixed black eyes seemed frozen in their cavities and its tears had dried out, only to be represented as dark lines on his face. The pup appeared human. It had feelings and it knew of a way of expressing its feelings. That nobody cared how it felt is another issue.

Dogs are a species as old as the humans. Even if they’re not, it does not matter. What matters is that they are flesh and bone-like us. Dogs do not have organizations like humans, they cannot construct buildings and they do not drive cars on the roads they built. They have no jobs and they certainly do not read books. But like us, they like other dogs and dislike other dogs. But there’s a bottleneck in their hatred of other dogs. They can kill only one dog at a time, unlike us humans. We might resemble dogs in some of these days but we’re superior to the dogs in a lot of ways. We should be called super-dogs, because we are dogs who can burn a hole into the ozone layer, control weather and cause catastrophic changes to the climate around the world. Only if we were half as loyal as - they say - dogs are. Someone once said, “You take a starving dog, give it food to eat and let it free. It will never bite you. This is the fundamental difference between a dog and a man.” I don’t know how much of truth is in what he said but man’s history has shown us that the statement is not false altogether.

I walked a little further and then my feet found themselves glued to the ground. I could not walk any further. The pup was a few feet away from me. It had lost its only kin. It was alone. It had no place to go to, no one to turn to. If it had harbored any dreams - if dogs could dream - they were shattered. It suddenly became aware of my presence and it looked in my eyes. It was sad. I was sad. The whole situation was an irony. Humans have the ability to feel, to sympathize and to understand pain - be it their own or somebody else’s - for pain is universal. Nevertheless humans have the social forces that prevent them from relieving themselves of the agony they find themselves in when they see others in pain. Simple acts of kindness fail to manifest themselves when they confront the ways of the world. I was a human. I wanted to embrace it but the sole fact that I was a human and it was a pup and having seen people frown at dead dogs on roads and dismiss them as rubbish and label their children as ‘litter’ all came to me and left me in a dilemma. I was wordless and the pup couldn’t speak our language either. I could not decide on how to react, so, I wished the pup were strong enough to survive on its own and prayed to God (the force we turn to when we face tough times) to take care of it. And like a useless mass of flesh and bone I turned back and started walking towards College.

I wish the pup had found company.