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I've often looked at ants carefully avoiding puddles, and wondered if that puddle were a sea or an ocean in their world...
Today, when I think about the world around me, I feel as small as an ant. I read the news, I watch telly channels flashing reports and I can't help but think that all those things that I'm disgruntled about hardly even matter.
In space, the junk of abandoned rockets, missile shrapnels and shattered satellites has reached a tipping point. One crash with a satellite and we could lose our communication networks. It sends shivers down my spine. Is this is a sign of the beginning of our end? An end that our own actions are responsible for?
In different parts of the world, there are oil spills that could wipe out birds, marine life. There are cyclones; there are earthquakes claiming hundreds and hundreds of human, animal and plant life. Our motherland is being tormented by plane crashes, blasts, terrorist attacks, and wars. There are rapes, reported and unreported, and there are honour killings. There are kidnappings, money launderings. Then there are government people. In Rajasthan, the corporation has left thousands of stray dogs – puppies, pregnant bitches and others – in the deserted desert, without food and water. They are caught with metal braces that cause their teeth to break and also result in other internal injuries. And then they are left to die in the sands.
In Pune, 35 dogs were recently poisoned by the PMC. The poison used was one that slowly attacks different organs and then causes death.
In Delhi, a cop raped a girl; in UP, two cops took obscene video clips of a girl, and drove her to commit suicide.
I can't even pen any more cases, because my stomach is knotted up and the cruelty makes me sick.
And I realise that I have no right to complain about the downs of work, the end-of-the month depleted bank account, the scratches on my car, the clot in my nail... Even if all my woes and worries were put together, they would never ever amount to what's happening in the world around me.
I'm just a speck, that's all. A small, tiny speck, much like an ant. A speck that's watching the ocean of cruelty drown and destroy the world it lives in.
