Saturday 4 August 2018

Death of a chicken

Let me narrate an incident which happened today itself. Please note that I am not making it up . This is a real incident with a witness who is also on Facebook.

As I finished buying the fish and some vegetables in the morning,  I was about to enter my car parked by the kerb . Suddenly I saw an old colleague of mine coming towards me. As we met after quite a few months,  both of us stopped and proceeded to have an animated discussion on the pavement , exchanging notes. 

While we were speaking about this and that , a poultry van laden with birds came and parked on the opposite side of the road . The driver and the helper came out of the van and started picking out the chicks for delivery to a nearby shop.  Now, the van was parked just at the point where the road turned and was causing a slight obstruction to the free movement of traffic due to its position.

Even as we watched , one of the chicks fell from the van on the road.  It's legs were tied . Immediately, there was a car which turned the corner and braked. I saw a young lady driving the car . A child of about seven eight years was sitting beside her.  She was obviously in some hurry and was annoyed at the obstruction on the street due to the parked van . She clearly saw the chicken lying on the road and honked impatiently . But the helper wasn't there and the driver was on the opposite side of the van and not aware of the chicken  falling on the road.

I clearly saw the lady shouting which was inaudible due to the glass on the car windows rolled up . Then she changed gears and moved ahead ,  crushing the poor chicken under the wheels of her car. There was another car behind her which also did the same thing. Everything happened in  a flow and maybe in 10 to 15 seconds.

Both me and my friend shouted out at the driver of the van and pointed to the chicken lying crushed on the street.  He looked up at us with a disinterested gaze and gave a sardonic smile. The perished chicken was just a collateral loss for him . I told him to at least remove the dead chicken from the street. Shrugging his shoulders, he looked at me with quizzical eyes.  Then he picked it up and threw it away .

Why I am narrating this is because I just saw a post which showed cut chicken stained in blood to elicit revulsion about non vegetarian food. I generally don't mind such posts and ignore them with an amused feeling. But today's incident made me think about it .

Now don't get me wrong. I am a hardcore non vegetarian and consider chicken to be a lowly staple as food. I have myself butchered, skinned and cut chicken and feel neither squeamish or ashamed about it. But I don't think I would ever be able to nonchalantly drive a car over a chicken lying on the road just because I am in a hurry and irritated with the traffic. Why a chicken, I can't do it even for a snake .

Killing an animal for food or saving own life is something else .  But wanton destruction of life without any reason , I can't support that .

Maybe a  growing intolerance all around us makes us irritable and oblivious about the problem of others. Sometimes this results in total disregard for everything , even lives.

I am not sure , but who knows if the lady driving the car might be a strict vegetarian . She may consider chicken to be impure and offensive too. Don't think I am hyper ventilating . Even Hitler was a vegetarian and thought Jews were impure.

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