ANIMAL LIFE
MAITRI’s Love of All Beings

Sunil Kumar and self-appointed nurse Bea look after ailing Kriti. Bea was brought to Maitri as a pup on the verge of death in January 2003. She always chooses to sit next to ailing or weak dogs.

[In India] one sees hundreds of dogs crowding the streets and the countryside scavenging for food, skins ravaged by mange, nursing and protecting their pups, then leaving them to their own devices; innumerable goats foraging in the fields, nursing their kids, and then their carcasses hanging along the streets; and cows eating out of trash heaps, so sacred and yet sold to the butcher when too old to reproduce and give milk. Then there are the mild buffaloes, so mercilessly exploited for their milk; sturdy donkeys carrying heavy bundles of clothes while left to fend for themselves; little horses attached to carts carrying up to ten people even when pregnant or lactating, small hairy pigs allowed to strut freely around with their families and then mercilessly chased and pierced with iron bars…. However, I have come to see all this, not so much as a sign of India’s heartlessness, rather as a part of the overall distorted vision of human beings toward all other forms of life on this planet.

My feeding the street dogs outside the gate of my former flat in Gaya, then transferring some of their offspring to Maitri’s campus, and finally adding to them as many as would be found and would survive along with the goats “rescued” from the butcher, simply represent small attempts of my own to make up for the wrongs we humans have been wreaking on other beings and, in some way, to advocate their right to exist and share the space we call ours.

I have continued doing so, even in the face of criticism that money intended for suffering human beings has been diverted to feed animals, which is very far from true. In fact, my overall modus operandi is to go ahead and do whatever requires care and attention, regardless of availability of funds, in the firm belief that funds will be provided “in some way.”

To confirm this, the Fondation Brigitte Bardot has granted substantial funding toward the actualization of a long-cherished dream of mine: to provide veterinary care through skilled doctors and workers to the stray dogs of Bodhgaya province, including sterilization, and to the cattle in rural areas through educational campaigns and mobile clinics in villages and drop-in clinics at our center, as well as setting up watering points for all roaming animals. We hope we will be able to give shelter also to larger animals intended for slaughter …

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala