Sarvam Vishnumayam

I have been distressed mentally for the last few days. It had to do with an animal which I had escorted to its death. And today, after bhajan, I received my answer.

A few days back I happened to notice a cat in a filling station that must have been the worst representation of karma that I have seen in the animal world, and I have endured many a PETA animal torture movie.

It which was in such a condition that death would have been an achievement. It seemed have run over by some vehicle right through its middle. It would drag its burden of a body with its two fore paws from one end of the station to the other, till exhaustion would make it collapse. The attendants told me that it had been in this condition for a week. The whole of the mid section seemed to be gangrenous. In fact, if the rest of the body behind the fore paws had been paralyzed, the cat could have been called lucky.

I called up Dhanya and she located a vet in Al Goze. Upon my description, he told me that the cat was best euthanized. In fact, that seemed to be the most humane thing to do. But since I had called him at 10.00PM, he told me to bring the cat the next day. Many things crossed my mind during this period: Is it karmic to kill something, when it has to work out the tragedy that it weaved itself into in the first place? Am I right to sanction its end? What would be the karmic effect on me, when I am dealing death here? It is not like lying to someone or refusing a car ride. This is death. Either way, I decided that death would have been the only exoneration for the cat. I then asked myself whether there was anything I could do at this point. Somehow, vibhuthi came to mind. I immediately rushed home and returned with a packet of vibhuthi. As soon as I sprinkled a bit of it on the mid-section, the cat jerked its tail. Beyond that, there was no perceivable response.

I returned home with a hope that Swami would come in my dream and suggest something else. I woke up without a dream, and as discombobulated as I had been the previous night. However, I also happened to remember that my ex-Animal Welfare Wing Convenor Romula Madam used to put down cats and dogs that had no recourse. This actually made me feel better. I asked our driver to take it to the vet that would euthanize it, and he did. End of story.

Now, the cat was no different after the contact with vibhuthi. In fact, I must have been asking for too much to have hoped for something of that order. In the end, it died an unnatural death, albeit, better than the unnatural life that it was enduring. So, what did I achieve by the vibhuthi?

Today, as I was driving home after bhajan, the story of the tiger in Shirdi Satcharitra flashed. The tiger had met its Maker then, and the Darshan was exoneration. In this case, the vibhuthi was Sparshan, and with this Sparshan, it was the cat's salvation. We may never know, but I would like to think so.

In this life, there are umpteen opportunities for us to reach out and touch others in little insignificant ways that make a significance difference. We can,- if we are willing to step out of our gilded cages of self-interest and look beyond the wraparounds.

We come in our BMWs and Mercs, armed with mighty plans and inflated feelings of self-purpose, to draft mighty seva opportunities that will change the universe, while forgetting that just over our shoulder are our so-called brothers, who, unfortunately, don't talk like us, walk like us, share our social or economic status, and don't demonstrate the spiritual flamboyance that we do. No matter how grand our seva, unless we demonstrate the will to grow beyond the halo of our elitist outfit and become a Centre for the masses, we can do all the Maha sevas we want, but we will never have moved an inch in the path that we claim to be on. No one has ever taken his Merc to his next life.

There is no Krishna in the Mandir who is not in the cat.