A true story that defined our humanity

Sometimes a regular incident turn out to be pivotal factor to depict the social condition of a particular locality. In my school days, I vividly remember we had a story written by Sarat Chandra Chottapadhay, it was about a white horse, through whom the writer tried to reflect the social tension of that time. As a teenager I could not really realize the significance of the story holistically but the incident that I had witnessed in Kalyani few days ago once again took me back to my school days and reestablish the present scenario of Kalyani with the story of our school syllabus.

Like other days we were ready to go for an afternoon walk as during the winter the cold breeze in the afternoon makes me feel relaxed and happy after a tiring morning. Anyway, as soon as I stepped out of our gate saw a struggling cow on the vacant land just opposite our club mess. At the primary glance I thought she might have fallen into a hole but as soon as we closed the gap to get an idea of what exactly the matter was our eyes got fixed to her. She was giving birth, it was a life-time moment for both of us our coach Debraj chatterjee and me.

What really surprised me was there were at least three to four persons roaming around and gossiping near the vacant land but quite dramatically all of them were unaware of what was happening there. However, seeing the matter both of us Debraj Da and I got quite anxious, we phoned a guy, whom we felt was the right one to help the cow in that crisis. The struggle went on around ten minutes and after that she was eventually gave birth of a healthy white calf. She just relentlessly kept licking him for hours until he was fully clear. We cleaned the mother with some water and gave her some water to drink so that she could rejuvenate energy.  She was tried and drunk the water with utmost satisfaction.

Meanwhile a person came and claimed that the cow belonged to his neighborhood and tried to carry the calf in his lap but the next incident was quite shocking the mother came and gave him a hard knock with her strong horns. She was not ready to let anyone come close to her baby. Although animal can’t speak but we could guess that she has accepted our help without any hesitation in her mind, when the other guy whom we called to help her give birth, rubbed the baby and cleaned her as well, was never threatened by her.

At night, having completed our dinner we heard that few dogs were barking from the vacant land where the cow and the calf were resting. Having heard such chaos we could sense that the mother and baby were in trouble, we rushed out to chase those dogs away and gave the newly born calf little comfort and assurance of humanity. As it was around 11 pm and we were five standing with sticks and stones to chase away dogs a trolling police van stopped and came to inquiry us. They didn't wait much longer as everything was clear to them.

The next morning we woke up around 5 am once again to chase those dogs away and check if everything was fine and indeed what we saw was pure love and tenderness of a mother. The cow was  covering her baby with her warm body in the wintry morning. Seeing us the calf stood up and started running abruptly in the ground he fell quite a few times but that didn’t really effect his joy as he got up every time and repeated the same action. Again around 8 am when for the third time in that day we went out to check the mother and baby, they have left the place by then.

This entire incident mirrored the social bonding and humanity of the residence of that area. Nowadays we often hear that with time, we the human, are losing our humanity and this story was a sheer epitomize of that statement. I was shocked to see that despite fully aware of the incident when the dogs were barking furiously at the newly born calf and his mother, at night and in the morning no one felt it necessary to respond. Most surprisingly the next morning when we went out to chase those dogs away we saw a man walking in the front yard of his house just next to where those dogs were standing. Seeing everything that the calf and the cow were afraid he remained inactive to pay any attention to the incident happening in front of his eyes. Besides, while the cow was giving birth few local ladies were standing there but to our surprise we didn’t see any of them after that. I hope it wasn’t an incident that many of us can witness everyday and specially seeing a newly born baby and the struggling cow in a wintry night no one from that locality showed least amount of sympathy to them.

Yes, we are progressing by leaps and bounds in every aspect but while progressing so fast we must keep our humanity intact as well. We must react to things that expect our initiative, keeping our eyes closed from every situation would ultimately endanger our existence and also have a negative impact on our Eco-system. Life is only beautiful when we help each other and feel for every animal and creature on earth. We must take every action to save the nature and forest and animals living in it then only we will be able to live a healthy and happy life forever.