"BORN FREE "

One of the more endearing aspects of Goa is the presence of so many animals running about their daily business freely. Squirrels chasing up trees, snakes slithering about in the thick undergrowth, cattle chewing on fodder in the paddy fields oblivious to the rest of the world, dogs barking at passing cars, pigs scrounging in the mud and vegetable waste, and birds everywhere, egrets, kingfishers, mynahs, parrots.

In their natural surroundings among the fields and the waterbodies, they look happy and healthy and one with the environment - which they are.

Cut to the Mapusa bus terminus and the market, or the KTC bus stand at Panjim. Observe the scrawny filthy calves loitering about looking for a scrap to eat, or the dogs milling around often injured with foot or maggot wounds won in dog fights or being beaten by humans. The half grown cats meowing piteously for a morsel of fish. Each of them unnatural, undignified, unwanted, unhappy.

Why do we have them? Who put them there? Did they just wander into the markets on their own, or did we initially drive them out of our homes, because we had one calf, one pup, one kitten too many to care for? Do we deliberately let them roam about foraging for food in the day, and surreptitiously let them back into our yards at night? Do we let the municipalities and panchayats get away scot free with the garbage pile up in public places, creating a hazard for public health and a buffet meal for the stray-but-not-really-stray animals? Having played a major role in the animals becoming a public nuisance, what do we now do with them? Should they be rounded up and destroyed for no fault of theirs? Should they be robbed of their freedom, and made to live in cages for the rest of their lives?

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, God is supposed to have said to Man, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Surely this privilege came along with the added responsibility of caring for these creatures, of preserving their freedom and ensuring their future. All rights come with related duties, otherwise the rights themselves would become worthless, with no reason left to exercise them.

We sometimes get so carried away with this power that we have over nature. The power to plow down the hills with our earthmovers, to fill up the riverbeds and paddy fields, to reclaim the oceans, to chop down the trees, to drive out all the natural inhabitants of these places because they do not have the power to fight back. We do these things in the name of humanity, of progress and development, by saying that we need to make more space for the growing human population. But take a close look at all the structures that come up on those filled up riverbeds, and plowed down hills - one more fancy mansion to celebrate new money, three more five star hotels to draw the foreign tourists, five more holiday home complexes for those weary admen from Mumbai. Do the poor and the helpless really get the benefit of all this land grabbing? And if they don't, then how can we expect the people in power to bother about creatures even further down the ladder of "worth"?

If there is just one thing that truly differentiates Man from the rest of his dominion, then it's not intelligence, but responsibility. A bitch will go out and have ten pups, that's her natural instinct, a genetic code that programs her to ensure the survival of her species. In the wild, nature will eliminate those that become too many for the available food chain to sustain. Nature, if you will, assumes the mantle of responsibility in the absence of Man. But where we do exist, we cannot shrug away our duties. When we domesticate animals, then like our forefathers did, we must take on the full responsibility for their food, shelter, and numbers. Having already curbed their freedom to some extent, it becomes our job to see that in becoming useful to man in one generation, they are not turned into nuisances in the next.

And we must do so in a manner that bears testimony to Man's sense of responsibility, compassion and humanity, rather than turn ourselves into mass murderers and jailors.