Have you watched that cutest and sweetest video from Thailand? Lek Chailert, the lady who initiated the "Save Elephants" movement there, has shared it. It seems that she took shelter under a mushroom shaped arbor as it started drizzling. She was singing along. The entire herd of elephants thronged the place, attracted by the sound. Fa Mai, a cow elephant, felt worried that Lek might get hurt, and kept protecting her with her trunk.
What a lovely, that is, both full of love and beautiful, gesture! What tremendous emotional intelligence and maturity! Most human beings completely and totally lack either of these emotions, eaten up as they are by competitiveness, one-up-man-ship, viciousness, cruelty, self-centered-ness, wickedness; oh, the list is endless! Why waste words on such negativities? Well, the wonder of wonders is that such beasts call poor animals names!
Let me give you another example. My brother has a beagle. As the breed is very cute and smart, everyone likes him a lot. Yet Tashu has a special fund, a great reserve, of love for me. When I go to my brother's place, his joy is unbounded. When I am about to leave, he stares most mournfully. With his nose jutting out of the grill of the balcony, he keeps on looking at me as long-n-far and as much as he can.
Well, for the five or six hours that I am there, he has to play with me. He is all the time hovering around, keeping me constantly in sight. Indeed, like children, animals understand and reciprocate the language of love, and that, too, without any expectations of any return gifts! No wonder, the very memory of that gentle, innocent visage is such a calming balm. Long live the love of animals!
Pratima@At Mana village in the "Devbhoomi", there is "swarg-rohini", the final path to heaven the Pandavas took. There are (rather garish, gaudy and glitzy golden) statues of all the Pandavas and Draupadi about to tread that path, the road of no return. Leading them all is the statue of a dog who, according to the legend, was the only one to accompany Dharmaraj till the end! Sure I remembered Tashu, Jimu, our dogs, and that friend of mine at Yamunotri. 'Dog', read the other way round, is 'god'!