Deafening silence of the dumb
Maswood Alam Khan | Sunday, 1 June 2008
FOR the last forty-five years I have been shunning any scene of animal slaughtering during Eid-ul-Azha since the day a goat, who was my most intimate playmate for a couple of years since its birth, was slaughtered as an object of sacrifice.
Under duress I had to allow the goat to be beheaded after my mother had convinced me that the sacrificed goat would give me a ride to heaven after my death. But, later when I realised that it was mere a ploy to stop me from crying I became so angry with my mother, who was extraordinarily a devout Muslim, that I vowed one day when I would be independent I would embrace Buddhism -- to avenge myself on my mother who then seemed so cruel to me -- though still today I am a Muslim and have a strong faith in Islam.
There was another lie my parents told me as I fought tooth and nail to prevent a quack from doing a surgery in the abdomen of my pet. I was told that the goat was going to be circumcised, though in fact it was castrated.
I fell in love with the goat as he loved my companion in my childhood days in Sunamganj. In the mornings when I had to leave home for school my pet goat used to bleat with a harsh cry to express his pain in parting with me and in the afternoons as I would reach home the goat used to rush to dote on me with a soft whining sound to express his pleasure at our reunion.
The goat also picked up the grammar of 'Gollachoot' game (a game of sprints between two circles) and used to run parallel to me during the game we the children in the neighbourhood used to play in the open field everyday in the evening till sunset.
Cruelty to animals is a social stigma we have been attached with since the day animals had been domesticated for their working in harness with us. When a cow gives birth to a calf, we feed her the greenest grass and take away the last iota of milk held in secret reserve deep inside her udder depriving the hungry calf who gapes at his helpless mother eager to feed her newborn baby.
The same cow, when it gets old and can no more conceive a foetus, is not given the driest grass and is sold out to a butcher as immediately as possible.
Love and hate correlation between humans and animals is an enigma Gautama Buddha failed to understand in the barren wilderness of civilised life. In quest for an answer Buddha meditated upon the riddle in the solitude of pristine wilderness to unlock the mystery of the cycle of life: a circle around which the preys are perpetually on the run from the predators.
Suddenly he woke up from his trance hearing the divine answer: 'killing any animal is the worst mortal sin".
Our symbiotic relationship with animals has been a necessity primarily to quench our hunger and share our labour. As smartest animals we humans have been crueller to all living beings than any other predatory birds or animals under the sun. The stronger animal has always been a predator and the weaker a prey so long the predator is hungry. A tiger does not bother for a kill if it is not hungry. But humans, unlike other predators, are not content only with the meat the preys afford.
We shackle the weaker animals to serve as our slaves until they are too weak to walk before being served on the dining plates to appease our carnivorous palate.
Humans are not genetically carnivorous as for thousands of years we subsisted on only fruits and vegetables. Eating animal meat is a habit we borrowed in the recent phase of our evolution and got gluttonous and obese.
Perhaps that is why many of us can't stand seeing a live cock being slaughtered, let alone blood pouring out from the cut-throat of a slaughtered cow.
The child who for the first time in his life had seen a cow leashed and slaughtered shivered with a chill of dread. But his parents assuaged his fears gradually infusing into his embryonic mind that 'killing a dumb animal is a fun, a thrilling sport to relish'---the first lesson a human child learns on the arts of sadism and masochism.
A sound or a gesture of protest at times keeps the predator at bay. A cat baring her teeth while growling scares a bigger animal away. A prey incapable of scaring away the predator is a soft target.
Slaughtering a live fish does not make a person queasy because a fish does not scream or groan as we chop it into pieces though some of us, who are a little weak-hearted, prefer cutting a fish when it is dead and still.
A living being has a natural empathy for another living fellow and the empathy deepens when there are commonalities between them. A crow does not eat another crow's meat. We humans too don't kill men to eat human flesh. But we don't hesitate to kill an elephant to pry open its tusks to sell for our livelihood and at the same time we are again humans who have imposed a ban on ivory trade to preserve equilibrium in nature. Weirdly our mercurial temperament in terms of intelligence, love and hate are juxtaposed in our varying treatments with vocal and dumb living beings.
Animals' silent tolerance of pains or their forced segregation from natural abodes does not arouse compassion in our hearts and minds because they are dumb. Being dumb, the living beings cruellers have always been the smarter creatures to them. If the fish, the cock and the cow could talk like humans, our relationship with them could be very different. The talking animals in that case perhaps would have been blessed by talking humans with some constitutional rights and legal protections as our common neighbours.
A tree does not wriggle out of fear nor does it giggle out of ecstasy. The dumbest of all the living creatures are perhaps the trees which live the most introvert life on this earth; they have neither voice audible to human ears nor movements noticeable to human eyes. A tree may have emotions; but we don't see their emotive expressions the way we see a dog wagging its tail to declare its love for master or a mother elephant shedding her tears at the death of her newborn calf.
As a child I used to whisper to plants I nursed in our garden. The funniest blunder I committed while nursing my marigold plants still evokes laughter among my friends who used to compete with me in gardening. Lest my marigold plants catch cold at night, I, before going to my bed, discreetly used to cover my plants with a few shoeboxes. All my plants died in a matter of days before flowering.
Now as I have already crossed half a century of age I feel that I have started my second childhood. Whenever I visit an old place I look around in quest for evidence that may transport me to my childhood days. I visit some places, as people know, to attend some formal functions but actually, my mind knows, to meet my boyhood friends or to see a tree that I climbed on as a child. I enjoy an appointment with the tree that I planted with a view to whispering in her ears that I still love her.
There was a time people knew that a tree is as lifeless as a stone. Science later has told us that a tree has not only life it has perhaps emotions too though botanists may take more years to measure the plants' emotive acuity compared to human's.
Rabindranath Tagore sang: "Trees are the earth's endless efforts to speak to the listening heaven." And the great naturalist John Muir said: "A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, and tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like in worship.
But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself."
There are people around the world who are fighting for 'prevention of cruelty to children' and 'prevention of cruelty to animals'. But there is not much sound of protests we hear in regard to 'prevention of cruelty to trees'.
I wonder why some conscious people in Bangladesh like Abdulla Abu Syeed don't raise their voice against the gruesome ways the trunk of a date palm tree is chiselled to tap its sugary syrup which otherwise would have nurtured healthy dates if the palm tree were allowed to grow as God designed. Nowhere in the world, other than in the Indian subcontinent, can one find a date palm tree as maimed and disfigured as in Bangladesh.
Shouldn't the erudite members of our think-tanks reflect on the implications of our cruelty to trees? Should our law allow any landowner to behave with the tree on his land as his whims fancy? Should we saw and hack a limb off a tree leaving the poor being maimed and pouring out its lifeblood from the ugly wound?
Have we ever thought how sad a tree must feel when it is transplanted from the forest to the city? How must it miss its tall and stalwart companions, the woodland birds, and the flowers that used to spring up around it each year? The parting from them all is bad enough, but there is worse to come.
Its little dreams of the hideous 'trimming' that will begin as soon as it commences to spread its tiny branches! Poor little tree! I wonder it does not die of grief and pain! There is no use in appealing to you if you are insensible to the beauty, the blessings and the benignity of trees.
Now that a month-long tree plantation programme has been launched to plant millions of saplings throughout Bangladesh, it is time to encourage our children to plant trees by their own hands to develop their love for, and attachment to, trees so that one day down the road s/he may feel proud of the tree as his/her own.
The best time, as the saying goes, to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now. Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and can be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]
Under duress I had to allow the goat to be beheaded after my mother had convinced me that the sacrificed goat would give me a ride to heaven after my death. But, later when I realised that it was mere a ploy to stop me from crying I became so angry with my mother, who was extraordinarily a devout Muslim, that I vowed one day when I would be independent I would embrace Buddhism -- to avenge myself on my mother who then seemed so cruel to me -- though still today I am a Muslim and have a strong faith in Islam.
There was another lie my parents told me as I fought tooth and nail to prevent a quack from doing a surgery in the abdomen of my pet. I was told that the goat was going to be circumcised, though in fact it was castrated.
I fell in love with the goat as he loved my companion in my childhood days in Sunamganj. In the mornings when I had to leave home for school my pet goat used to bleat with a harsh cry to express his pain in parting with me and in the afternoons as I would reach home the goat used to rush to dote on me with a soft whining sound to express his pleasure at our reunion.
The goat also picked up the grammar of 'Gollachoot' game (a game of sprints between two circles) and used to run parallel to me during the game we the children in the neighbourhood used to play in the open field everyday in the evening till sunset.
Cruelty to animals is a social stigma we have been attached with since the day animals had been domesticated for their working in harness with us. When a cow gives birth to a calf, we feed her the greenest grass and take away the last iota of milk held in secret reserve deep inside her udder depriving the hungry calf who gapes at his helpless mother eager to feed her newborn baby.
The same cow, when it gets old and can no more conceive a foetus, is not given the driest grass and is sold out to a butcher as immediately as possible.
Love and hate correlation between humans and animals is an enigma Gautama Buddha failed to understand in the barren wilderness of civilised life. In quest for an answer Buddha meditated upon the riddle in the solitude of pristine wilderness to unlock the mystery of the cycle of life: a circle around which the preys are perpetually on the run from the predators.
Suddenly he woke up from his trance hearing the divine answer: 'killing any animal is the worst mortal sin".
Our symbiotic relationship with animals has been a necessity primarily to quench our hunger and share our labour. As smartest animals we humans have been crueller to all living beings than any other predatory birds or animals under the sun. The stronger animal has always been a predator and the weaker a prey so long the predator is hungry. A tiger does not bother for a kill if it is not hungry. But humans, unlike other predators, are not content only with the meat the preys afford.
We shackle the weaker animals to serve as our slaves until they are too weak to walk before being served on the dining plates to appease our carnivorous palate.
Humans are not genetically carnivorous as for thousands of years we subsisted on only fruits and vegetables. Eating animal meat is a habit we borrowed in the recent phase of our evolution and got gluttonous and obese.
Perhaps that is why many of us can't stand seeing a live cock being slaughtered, let alone blood pouring out from the cut-throat of a slaughtered cow.
The child who for the first time in his life had seen a cow leashed and slaughtered shivered with a chill of dread. But his parents assuaged his fears gradually infusing into his embryonic mind that 'killing a dumb animal is a fun, a thrilling sport to relish'---the first lesson a human child learns on the arts of sadism and masochism.
A sound or a gesture of protest at times keeps the predator at bay. A cat baring her teeth while growling scares a bigger animal away. A prey incapable of scaring away the predator is a soft target.
Slaughtering a live fish does not make a person queasy because a fish does not scream or groan as we chop it into pieces though some of us, who are a little weak-hearted, prefer cutting a fish when it is dead and still.
A living being has a natural empathy for another living fellow and the empathy deepens when there are commonalities between them. A crow does not eat another crow's meat. We humans too don't kill men to eat human flesh. But we don't hesitate to kill an elephant to pry open its tusks to sell for our livelihood and at the same time we are again humans who have imposed a ban on ivory trade to preserve equilibrium in nature. Weirdly our mercurial temperament in terms of intelligence, love and hate are juxtaposed in our varying treatments with vocal and dumb living beings.
Animals' silent tolerance of pains or their forced segregation from natural abodes does not arouse compassion in our hearts and minds because they are dumb. Being dumb, the living beings cruellers have always been the smarter creatures to them. If the fish, the cock and the cow could talk like humans, our relationship with them could be very different. The talking animals in that case perhaps would have been blessed by talking humans with some constitutional rights and legal protections as our common neighbours.
A tree does not wriggle out of fear nor does it giggle out of ecstasy. The dumbest of all the living creatures are perhaps the trees which live the most introvert life on this earth; they have neither voice audible to human ears nor movements noticeable to human eyes. A tree may have emotions; but we don't see their emotive expressions the way we see a dog wagging its tail to declare its love for master or a mother elephant shedding her tears at the death of her newborn calf.
As a child I used to whisper to plants I nursed in our garden. The funniest blunder I committed while nursing my marigold plants still evokes laughter among my friends who used to compete with me in gardening. Lest my marigold plants catch cold at night, I, before going to my bed, discreetly used to cover my plants with a few shoeboxes. All my plants died in a matter of days before flowering.
Now as I have already crossed half a century of age I feel that I have started my second childhood. Whenever I visit an old place I look around in quest for evidence that may transport me to my childhood days. I visit some places, as people know, to attend some formal functions but actually, my mind knows, to meet my boyhood friends or to see a tree that I climbed on as a child. I enjoy an appointment with the tree that I planted with a view to whispering in her ears that I still love her.
There was a time people knew that a tree is as lifeless as a stone. Science later has told us that a tree has not only life it has perhaps emotions too though botanists may take more years to measure the plants' emotive acuity compared to human's.
Rabindranath Tagore sang: "Trees are the earth's endless efforts to speak to the listening heaven." And the great naturalist John Muir said: "A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, and tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like in worship.
But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself."
There are people around the world who are fighting for 'prevention of cruelty to children' and 'prevention of cruelty to animals'. But there is not much sound of protests we hear in regard to 'prevention of cruelty to trees'.
I wonder why some conscious people in Bangladesh like Abdulla Abu Syeed don't raise their voice against the gruesome ways the trunk of a date palm tree is chiselled to tap its sugary syrup which otherwise would have nurtured healthy dates if the palm tree were allowed to grow as God designed. Nowhere in the world, other than in the Indian subcontinent, can one find a date palm tree as maimed and disfigured as in Bangladesh.
Shouldn't the erudite members of our think-tanks reflect on the implications of our cruelty to trees? Should our law allow any landowner to behave with the tree on his land as his whims fancy? Should we saw and hack a limb off a tree leaving the poor being maimed and pouring out its lifeblood from the ugly wound?
Have we ever thought how sad a tree must feel when it is transplanted from the forest to the city? How must it miss its tall and stalwart companions, the woodland birds, and the flowers that used to spring up around it each year? The parting from them all is bad enough, but there is worse to come.
Its little dreams of the hideous 'trimming' that will begin as soon as it commences to spread its tiny branches! Poor little tree! I wonder it does not die of grief and pain! There is no use in appealing to you if you are insensible to the beauty, the blessings and the benignity of trees.
Now that a month-long tree plantation programme has been launched to plant millions of saplings throughout Bangladesh, it is time to encourage our children to plant trees by their own hands to develop their love for, and attachment to, trees so that one day down the road s/he may feel proud of the tree as his/her own.
The best time, as the saying goes, to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now. Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and can be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]