From my old blog in 2008 Gone Fishing: ANZAC day (ravitandukar.blogspot.com)

On a TV program this ANZAC eve, there was
a short report containing an interview with a frail
eighty something year old. His casual but humble
and honest expressions matched his watery, sad
looking eyes. On an occasion where he was explaining
how he and thousands of his mates were tortured by
the Japanese in Thai Burma rail works during the
World war, the interviewer asked him if he felt any
repulse of the Japanese today. This was at the back
drop of the event he was referring to, the Allied
PWOs, numbering around ten thousand, mainly from
Australia, UK, US and surrounding local countries,
were made to work almost eighteen hours a day, for
nearly two years thru the thickest forests. Most died
of diseases like malaria, open ulcers, hunger,
dysentery and anything imaginable that can kill.

There are picture of these POWs lying like skeletons,
resembling jews in Hitler’s chambers in Auschwitz.

Thousands of mates of this old soldiers perished,
the brutality they were inflicted were
horrendous and unspeakable, like in China or wherever
Japan invaded. He came home at the end of the war,
lost and poor, shattered both physically and inside.
At the end, the Japanese surrendered, the prisoners
were now the masters.

He held back tears and remembered an incident that happened
in the jungle after the Japanese surrendered. He asked
a mate of his if he wanted to give the surrendering Japanese
the payback, the same torture and brutality, after all,
they had it all within their grasp now. He chocked for
couple of seconds, before recalling what his friend replied,
if a digger were to do the same, what’s the difference,
between him and them, it was stunning, untainted greatness of a man.

Don’t you enjoy 24/7/365 life
On the road, home or away
‘online’ anywhere,
anytime night or day, any day of the week
available in Webex, Zoom, Teams, phone
ready for business
Work is life, life is work
can’t tell the difference anymore.

Living the bubble
having a ‘life’
no one’s looking back
left or right
no one’s got time to take stock
of what you gained
what you lost
Like they say, ‘live in the moment’
why bother checking
where you headed
what you have become
who you are
counting years, like days
a whirlwind of roller coaster
all lanes are high speed
slows are only for the losers
like a firefly, diving towards fire
one day to disappear,
like a fading star far away.

Today I took a small visit to Sydney city to see how things were at the thick of COVID lockdown. These shots are at around 10 in the morning when the city would have just come to full throttle of life with office workers rushing, coffee shops at full steam, traffic crawling and explosion of sounds from cars, people, trains. But the scene today was serene and pin drop silence, not many souls around. A deserted, abandoned, scared place where people avoid each other.

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Greetings from Sydney, hope it brings happiness to all and end of Covid-19.

Watching a Netflix doco this arvo on human animals co-existence in a remote forest turned village somewhere in South Asia, made me wonder there should be a way the two could have existed together rather than trampling into each other’s territory, killing each other. Towards the end the doco shows the villagers finally discover an ingenious way to keep the giants away, planting citrus trees around their homes, turns out the animals cannot stand the smell of the fruit.

Well as well known as it is, the fact is undeniable that it is the humans who encroached upon the elephants forests, making way for the fields and plantations to feed themselves. Undeniably humans are at fault and aggressor as it has always been throughout history starting from the so called ‘stone age’. Agriculture ensured human’s survival in the planet, however spelled doomed for many of the species, elephants are in the list next.

In the doco the data was two hundred elephants killed so far compared to eighty humans in the past ten years of living next to each other. Given the intelligence and sheer number of humans, the stats was is pretty much in balance. Still, I felt instinctively sorry for the elephants more than the human casualty. Not a split second thought, a natural and spontaneous response arose from within me. Was it mother nature’s trait calling from inside me? Was it favouring the underdog as the elephants are rare and are heading towards extinction due to human activities? Is it the ‘beauty’ and ‘grace’ of the animals that makes me think they deserve better than other animals, and may be even the humans?

I suspect the answer probably lies deep beneath my, and our conscious minds, somewhere buried inside the sub conscious, that we have link and connection to these beasts far beyond our current existence as humans, I am referring to our ancestors’ – Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals and those before before; interaction with these mostly gentle giants. It is probably part nature, part social or cognitive working of our sub conscious minds that result in such sympathy towards certain animals. We were like them before, we were in the list of soon to be extinct as well, just like them, only that somehow we managed to, or nature chose us to, survive and thrive.