I looked at her. “Do you know my story, boy?” Mayuri asked in a soft, dangerous voice. The words leapt across the air like a leopard. She did not wait for me to answer. “Like you, I too came to life on the earth. What a miracle it is! The world conspiring together to awaken a bud, a cub, an egg. How new and truly remarkable, the throb of life in your heart! To breathe, to worship the oneness of all blood! I too was asleep, a content new life in the womb of the human I was born to…” Mayuri paused. The other creatures were quiet. Tears glistened in the mammoth’s eyes.
“I was asleep because I did not imagine harm would seek me out. I was part of the earth, was I not? I had come to the earth because someone wanted me to, hadn’t I? They would protect me from all evil, I could afford to wrap myself in innocence and wait for the world to reclaim me,” she said. I did not know why she was telling me all this. But I listened because her sadness smote me like a burning torch. I was guilty without having sinned and yet, I felt I deserved it.
“These life forms!” she thundered, her hands sweeping towards the giant shadows that stood witness to her anger.
“Some of them came here because their life cycle had ended. The earth was changing, it was time for new life to take root. They needed to go because the universe is infi nite while its children are not. We can accept that. We understand the fl ickering transience of life, however splendid it might be. We know that for new creations, the old ones must perish. These are the laws that we hold sacred. The laws for which we are willing to sacrifice our lives in the Present. But that is not how all of us came here…many came here without life to replace their absence. It wasn’t destiny that brought them here. It was the whim of a callous race, one that thinks itself too superior to be concerned about other forms of life!”
“Mayuri!” the warbler called out softly. Almost in a pleading tone. “Must you live through your horrors again to convince this human of his crime?” asked the crocodile. “You needn’t,” I blurted out. “I’m new to Anunirva, but already, the rage of your people has shamed me. I have nothing to say in my defence. I can only say that the anger you feel is not alien to human misery. Many among us, too, have protested the destruction of the animal kingdom.”
“The animal kingdom! Ha!” snorted the mammoth. “See how he bunches all of us together!
