Treating animals better than people?

All that Breathes (Documentary; 2022)

Director: Shaunak Sen

In a man-eat-man world, two brothers find their purpose in life, rescuing injured birds. Against a background of opposing groups fighting against the abrogation of article 370, of brothers of the same nation, hurting each other, we see two brothers going all out to rescue various birds and nursing them back to health, all voluntarily on their own accord with no training whatsoever. Within the confines of a dinghy house which they have converted into a bird clinic in Wazirabad in South Delhi, they have been rehabilitating small animals since the 1990s. 

The brothers, Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, even had referrals from other veterinarian clinics to treat these feathered animals. One of the reasons these raptors were sent away is that these clinics could not feed them non-vegetarian meals. 

The brothers' efforts, even though they received minimal local financial support, garnered international recognition and the attention of a documentary maker and his team to immortalise their efforts.

What started as their late mother's teaching to be kind to fellow beings and all that breathe had snowballed to this. In an environment that is quite hostile, with all the Delhi pollution, their job is endless.

This documentary is a moving presentation with many artistically captured moments when and where fellow beings breathe the same airspace. Many reels show the many 'wild' animals that share our spaces in modern cities. A good documentary, India's nomination to the Oscars.

A cynic wonders whether the filmmakers are trying to portray India as a place so vile that even animals find it smothering to live. Not to forget the toxic environment that minorities have to put up with. And are we talking about pollution or societal pressures? And, of course, another group would lament that people's priorities are twisted - animals taking precedence over humans.  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Animals with ambitions?

Tweet (2016)
Isa Kamari

We, human beings, like to think that we are unique; that everything that happens around us revolves for us and is about us. Maybe, just maybe, animals just like us, do indeed have a consciousness to aspire things in life. They, like us, have hierarchy and order in life. On top that that, they may want to have big dreams and long to be in an imagined place of bliss.

'Tweet' is a thin book which looks sarcastically at the goings-on at a bird park in Singapore. Concurrently, the story tells the conversation between a grandfather and grandson as well a purported communication among and between species of birds in the park.

At face value, the man-boy conversation may seem simple, it is laced with symbolism and philosophy of life. The birds too feel trapped in an environment so alien to their natural habitat. Even though the park promises to be right and fair to its inmates, the whole idea is just to create an aesthetically pleasing surrounding filling it up with pretty birds. Colourful birds are feted while man-defined 'ugly' and plain birds like the crows are shot down. Even though Nature has everything, the good, bad and ugly, people only want to see the watered-down version, minus warts and all; delightful to our visual gratification. 

It is not that Man is doing a service to our avian friends. They have to sing for their supper, do stunts and things beyond what an average bird ever need to do in its lifetime. They say birds are free to fly in the park but why the enclosure. Do birds get emotional pressures that make them think that life is not worth living? Do birds actually think of paradise and harbours hopes of their Maker extraordinaire, like Simuk, in this story? 

An enjoyable and fresh story that makes one think.

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.