INHUMAN HUMAN

When I was young (may be 12 or 13 years old) my father was talking to my mom about a gentleman. He is a great author, but he was behaving very badly with his family, so my mom told though he is a great author in her eyes he doesn’t stand as a human. My father told that time these words in our native language Gujarati હું માનવી માનવ થાવ તો ઘણું. I was not able to understand the words and thought my so much learned father is cracking a joke. But those words remain inside me till now and I keep trying to understand what my father was trying to convey that time. I asked him and he told it would be better if you understand yourself one day. I totally forgot about these words and this conversation. In 1994, Surat the diamond city of world got infected by plague and there was a chaos everywhere in the city. The newspaper was flooding with stories of pain, death etc. etc. The local Surat people were going out of city to save themselves and their own relatives or friends are turning back to them because they feared these people can bring the disease in our home.

When I read that I was shocked and suddenly remember what my father was telling my mom. We humans become inhuman as we don’t want our own relatives, our own blood, our own friends to protect because we are feared of our own life. After so many years in 2020 we have COVID 19 which has captured the whole world in its grip and human has no answer for it (as on today). When the panic started there were stories of China and other countries where their own friends and neighbors are avoiding them because they had recent travel history. In some cases, there were attack on doctors and nurses because they are more exposed to patients who have been infected with COVID 19.

There was news in the media that some food court stalls have refused to sale food to healthcare workers and asked them not to sit in food court. We humans were ignoring or insulting our own humans only because they are putting their life into risk by treating the patients. Why? We are worse than animals. The humans are considered as most intelligent animal on planet earth because we can speak the common language, but animals cannot speak a common language (to the extent I know). It is hard to believe that we were insulting and attacking the healthcare workers who are there when we need them. Imagine one person insult a healthcare worker and after few days if the same person got infected and this healthcare worker will refuse to treat this person. No because he is committed to his/her profession and he is there to save our own life.

Where are our values? Whether we humans are so selfish that we can think of our own self only? One side we have people like Gandhi, Mandela, Luther king who had sacrifice their life only for humans and make humans proud. At same time we have Hitler, Idi Amin who had crushed the humans only to prove their so-called fake greatness. We humans are worst animals on planet earth as for our benefit we do anything. Why human cannot respect another human? Whether a migrant worker, a cleaner or a health worker is not human? Why we turn our face when a cleaner or migrant worker pass nearby us? We are so clean and fresh with perfume and this worker had put 12 hours of day on hard work and must be smelling but he is human first. If we cannot change their lives, then let us give some respect to them. Sometime when I walk around my housing estate early morning then I see the constructions workers who must have woke up 5 am and their boss left to site by 6 am. They sleep on roadside till 7 am and then they take their quick breakfast from packed food. They work like crazy till 12 pm and then again take lunch (mostly on roadside where they are working and then they take a break to rest on stones or nearby shadow. The other so call humans walk and spoil their face by seeing sleeping workers. They don’t realise that when we are resting in our home or working in aircon offices these workers are working on hot humid or cold environment just to make sure we get a better home, better roads or luxurious shopping mall.

Scientists proved that we monkey are our ancestors and we were part of that group of animals. Humans become intelligent and walk away from animal hood but whether we humans really come out from that animal hood. We kill animals to feed our stomach, we make fun of animals by showing them in circus, we use animals to test and experiment medicines before it can be used on us. Why? Only because those animals are weak, cannot protest, cannot say no we use them like anything. In some countries, the females are been lied down on naked on restaurant tables. The food served on the woman’s naked body and we humans eat from that body. Wah human wah you are so great. You don’t respect your own race then how you can respect the other animals and nature. That woman lying on table must be forced to do so her family can get 2 pieces of bread. Why no one object to this? Whether one human has money so he/she become king and can do anything to others.

Hey human wake up before it is too late. Respect your own race and respect the other animals otherwise one day the other animals will be ruling us, and we will be their slave. Treat other human as yourself and don’t show your power of strength and money to make them weak or crush them.

I human take an oath that I will respect all other humans as I respect myself and I will respect the nature and other living animals as I respect my own family.

Let me be more human and the words which I learned during childhood proved correct once again હું માનવી માનવ થાવ તો ઘણું

Mainak Panchal

14^th June 2020