You and I Belong to a Shameful Race
Not long ago my morning-jogs would unsettle me to the point of disturbing my entire day instead of cheering it up. The road I took would be a site of massacred millipedes (the paisa insect that curls up when you touch it). There would be at least one or two of them – crushed and lifeless – every five steps. But what disturbed me more than their death was the insignificance of it. Their lives or deaths meant nothing to the people passing by crushing them as they walked or drove on their two-wheelers. Even more disturbing was that these were the well-educated people who think that they lead clean lives, never committing legal or moral crimes. Why can we not think of these millipedes as babies we tend to, the babies who do not know it’s not safe to go out on a road? If a baby crawled onto a street, the entire traffic would come to halt. Uproar will emerge. The very same people who carelessly crush the millipedes would be angry at the carelessness of the baby’s parents. They woul