I Killed A Rat.

Humans deem themselves to be the masters of this earth. We feel we are invincible when compared to other animals, be they big or small, all because of one important thing called brainpower. Yes, it is this brainpower that has brought forth so many great ideas into this world, so many great inventions. But at the same time, it destroys what we call our home, all for its primal emotion of greed. 

We build great structures, new machines, and vast civilizations spanning large swathes of fertile land. All the while, we forget how helpless we were when we started out. Uncertain our existence was, but it was ever dependent on our angry but caring mother, Nature. We knew how stormy or bountiful she could be, and we worshiped her for it. We ate like other animals, we played and fought like other animals, and we took shelter like other animals. We built greatly, but our love for our mother did not disappear.

And then something happened. Gone was the peoples' hope in nature as we increased our manufacturing capacity. Any value that humanity had for nature effectively disappeared when the Industrial Revolution began. Steam power was like giving a machine gun to the hands of a monkey. And the rampage doesn't stop at the monkey killing everyone in the room. When greed overtakes us, we become blind enough that nature matters less than that singular resource that we wish to tap.

Was an unsustainable extraction of resources necessary? Only for those getting rich off it. The other people knew no better than to be blind accomplices in the systematic murder of nature. 

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It is with such a background that I proceed into the happenings of a normal morning in my house. I sleep and wake up late, hence I miss most of the morning mayhem that occurs when my family is packing and going to their respective offices and schools. The one day I had a bit of a holiday, I thought I would sleep in, but I was rudely awoken by shouts saying "Rat! Rat!". 

I had no choice but to go down and see what was happening. It was absolute chaos, just my family freaking out over a furry but still quite nasty rat. This fat rat had somehow entered the bin, and when being carried through the house it broke out of the bin and ran into the kitchen.

As I'm the only one who doesn't feel squeamish about dealing with animals, I took up a stick and one of our neighbours next door had to step in to catch the rat, so scared my family was. 

He made loud sounds on the wall with his broom and I beat ground with the stick. I know the rat was terrified, hence it didn't run out. It kept running inside the house, despite all doors being open. Then all of a sudden it ran once again into the kitchen and into an open food storage cupboard. Both of us waited outside the cupboard and made the loud noises again, and sure enough, it came running out once again, but in a frenzy, I hit it straight on its backbone. It twitched once, then went still. Then my family cautiously approached the rat as the neighbour picked it up and put it into a plastic baggie. 

This is too much detail, I'm quite aware, but this is the truth I had to process after just waking up. You're not going to get off easily on this one. 

I couldn't help but go to the Ganesha temple that evening and tell him what a terrible person I had been for killing the helpless animal. A rat was killed, and I was the murderer. 

I mentally reassure myself that I did a good thing by making sure none of our family was bitten by the rat, but the truth? I was bitten mentally. I didn't like urbanisation before this, I hate it now. I despise the very thoughts that I had about development being linked only to large-scale constructions.

No political party gets it. It's not purely infrastructure development that one has to pursue, but sustainable infrastructure development. 

What happened to us? Where did we as a species go wrong?

Why don't we love nature like we did?

Does everything have to be about money and resources? Why do we need an excess? We don't need an excess and we have never needed an excess. 

We teach kids about a balanced diet. I think it's time to teach adults about balanced consumption.