When grief strikes, penguins start walking away from the sea and cats stop playing with their toys.

Whereas whales, they are known to cry.

That’s how animals communicate sadness, because they can’t comprehend languages. 

That’s a luxury only humans have. We can talk and we can share our experiences, which in turn increases our ability to empathise.

The ability we waste with the same ease as we waste everything else.

And this is clearer now more than it has ever been. 

What have we not witnessed during this pandemic? Whose suffering have we not seen? Where has the virus not created a havoc?

We have seen a child trying to wake up his dead mother.

We have seen migrant workers walking for thousands of kilometers.

We have seen it all, but we still go back to doing what we do best: Destroying everything we touch. 

A pregnant elephant in Kerala recently stumbled upon a pineapple filled with explosives.

She was hungry, she ate it. The firecrackers soon burst in her mouth, as she stood in water, withering with excruciating pain.

Eventually, she died.

A pregnant cow in Himachal Pardesh was grazing in the fields. She found explosives wrapped in wheat flour. She had them. 

She’ll be unable to eat anything for a few days. If she survives the injuries, that is.

A dolphin in Kolkata came to the shore during the country-wide lockdown. 

A few days later, this is what happened to it.

I can make a list of such incidents, but I am afraid it will never end. 

Just like our cruelty.

Even in the face of tragedy, when the human suffering has been at its peak in recent history, we have not learn any lesson.

And I wonder if a pandemic cannot teach us to be empathetic, what will?

What will it take for our souls to shake?

What do we need to experience before some feelings return in our seemingly hollow hearts?

How did we even become such monsters?

My guess is, at some point, a person must have thought, “I can live with the knowledge that I blew off an animal’s jaw”.

Someone else must have thought, “I can sleep at night knowing that I burnt an animal’s home”.

And I am assuming they were both correct.

One thought, that’s all it took for brutality to start and eventually become normal. 

As is often the case.

A single idea. 

 A single lab experiment

A single bulldozer. 

A single cage.

Those were our first steps in the long, eternal march towards destruction.

However, you’d think that maybe, if humans see humans in pain, they will understand how it actually feels.

But that doesn’t happen. 

Or if it does, it still doesn’t affect the way we treat other species. Which is even more unfortunate.

So in the end, I just want to say with a heavy heart: All lives don’t matter. In our world, they don’t.