Innocent Child

His mother gave birth to him alone, directly onto the hard cement floor. Her eyes wet with tenderness, she watches as her newborn son sputters, then gasps on his first intake of breath. With a deep exhalation marking the end of painful exertion and the future of new life, she cleans and warms her feeble baby, still slick with placenta. Visibly flustered by his sudden appearance onto this earth but nevertheless curious of his new surroundings, he turns to investigate the soothing warmth that is nuzzling reassuringly against his side. There his gaze lands on his mother’s soft gentle face for the first time. He sees her beautiful caring brown eyes, having a radiant sheen silently back at him with affection, and the bond is immediate. Even in his infancy, he senses her unconditional love for him; the love only a mother can have for her child.

But then there is a noise. He is confused. He suddenly feels unsafe. His mother shouts in deep voice with surprise, and then again with horror. So much noise, he thinks, and why is she screaming, his mother is screaming, shrilly now, louder and louder, but no, that’s him; he can’t recognize his own screams from those of his mother, because they have joined together now, they are screaming with one voice now; the voice of pain and fear; for he is being hit, dragged, pushed, thrown, electrocuted…

He wakes up to the cold, to the stench of freezing suff and devastation। Once again opening his eyes, he looks wildly around for his mother, for her eyes, where are her reassuring eyes, where is her warmth, her love, but his head is yanked back into position: he is chained tightly at the neck. But still he knows: she is not here. No one is here, he is sure of that; the wooden slatted walls are so close he can barely shift his body from the position in which they threw him just hours before; those men, those humans, who tore him away from his mother. Now, for the rest of his life, this prison cell will be his home. He will be purposefully starved of nutrients, he will sleep and wake in his own feces and he will never take one step. And then, along with 150 lakh of his kind every year in India, he will be brutally murdered. Would you like to meet him? He's your dinner. Meet your meat.