It was a heart-stirring story, I happened to catch this night in a leading news channel. In a barren paddy-field adjoining a remorse hamlet in Zimbabwe, an elephant was found dead. Soon enough, as the news spread in the village, a flock of people turned up at the site with their hands full of buckets and empty containers. Soon the dead elephant (weighing about 6000 kg) was slashed to tiny bites by a hastened artwork of crude knives. To be precise, it took approximately 1 hour and 47 minutes and there was nothing left but a dominance of blood and broken skeleton of a dead elephant. The hungriest batch of poor and unfortunate people couldn’t resist eating the raw meat, with blood smeared faces. A ghastly sight to observe, I watched it with ptotic eyes on my television set.
Soon all the empty buckets and containers were flooding with elephant’s tissues and some of the unlucky ones, who couldn’t lay their hands on the meat, got hold of the breakable bones and carried with them in the hope of making meat stock. It is said that at any time in Zimbabwe, every 4th person needs some food so urgently that a delay can cost a life. Isn’t it so pitiful and a shame on the name of International treaties that average man’ life in Zimbabwe is mere 37 years and that of a woman, 34 years. Most of the deaths are due to prolonged starvation, potentially preventable. Getting your knees weak? I felt the same few moments back. What an ill-fated pity. Few days back, I got a forwarded message on my cellular which enlightened me with the fact that 280 lac crore rupee worth of Indian currency is deposited by Indians in their Swiss bank accounts. As ordinary citizens, what options do we have? Should we frown and forget yet again as we do everytime we hear of a bigger scam?
Uninitiated, unaffected and unmovable, our insulated & cachexic souls probably need an electric-shock. Mere words of solicitousness or whiffs of compassion won’t stem the starvation deaths in Zimbabwe, or in any part of world. Why can’t the governments commonly pool in some blatantly bright brains and make some out-of-the-box policies to ensure that people don’t die of starvation anymore? There is a strong possibility that after going through this blog, you will click over another link on facebook, or check your email, or stretch your nerves to find the best possible ‘search’ word to feed to the google toolbar. Don’t do that for few moments and spare some time for our devastatingly poor fellow humans who have to face the doom of eating raw meat, butchered from a dead elephant, to save their lives, and it’s a feast for them. If we feed our souls enough, there won’t be starvation deaths anywhere.
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