When I was 5, I saw “The Jungle Book”. The Jungle Book was a story about a young being raised by a pack of wolves and the other animals of the jungle. He must prove himself as one of them to show that he learned the ways of the jungle. Hence, The Jungle Book.
Mowgli was my all-time favourite character whom I loved. I thought about the fantastic life Mowgli must have led in those times with all the animals surrounding him and teaching him the ways of living – no school, no homework, no worries.
All he had to do was survive. That was awesome in my mind and if I would have been asked to have a life like Mowgli’s I would have said yes. So, that was the time I started falling in love with animals and their lifestyle.
Then I saw the movie “Madagascar”.
Madagascar is a story of four animals. All four animals are extremely loved, spoiled, and taken care of in the Central Park Zoo. But, they dream of living as free animals in a jungle. So, they finally manage to run out of the zoo and ultimately reach Madagascar. It is a fascinating journey about their way to real freedom.
In movies, you have the creative freedom to write characters the way you want and a storyline with a happy ending. But, the same is not true for the animals in Delhi Zoo. They cannot express themselves or talk or design an escape. In reality, things are very different, and even survival is at stake.
In Delhi Zoo, animals were taken care of poorly and severely mistreated—which reportedly led to 325 animal deaths in 2016-’17. Not only this, the veterinary hospital in the zoo had operations performed by a daily wage labourer, who has no formal qualification in the field.
It makes me wonder if that was the reason for the death of that 27%. But, this was not the only disturbing piece of news that had come about in the news about the Delhi Zoo.
There were 75 animals that were taken to the veterinarian’s hospital but only 16 were recorded as “returned” to their enclosures. What happened to the other 49 animals? 49 animals vanished in thin air and zoo officials are not bothered.
Were they butchered to death or smuggled? Like me, a lot of other activists had a similar question that was posed to the ministers and all they had to say about that was to file an official complaint with the police and we’re looking into the matter. Till now, no further action has been seen.
I Wanted To Change This And There Started My Changemaking Journey
When I heard this story, I was shaken to my core. Later I found a program for changemakers. When I attended the changemakers program, I found many like-minded individuals who were equally passionate as me about causes close to their hearts.
Some looked at sexual and reproductive health rights, while others looked at mental health and education. In other words, there was a healthy variety in the number of causes that one could find across the room. We had mentors to guide us too.
There, I came across an old friend who was equally passionate about animals. Meeting her was simply serendipitous as we both thought in a similar direction and were extremely passionate about our cause to protect animals. We even managed to put a team together to further work things out, after the program.
Together, as a team, we started AniCare (or animal care). AniCare spreads solutions for animals that were sustainable and looked at fundraising for local vets and animal shelters already taking care of animals.
One of our solutions was pseudo-adoption: adopting an animal without keeping it in your house, but regularly feeding it and taking care of it. This type of adoption can be done with street dogs in societies, where neighbours can take turns feeding and taking care of them.
It could be like a neighbourhood pet that did not belong to anyone, particularly a family. Lastly, we started a petition on Change.org to shut down the Delhi Zoo. We believed if we had enough signatures, we could persuade the minds of our lawmakers and and get them to apply section 63 better.
But, we could not reach the target we were hoping for, and thus,we were not able to bring about the desired change we wanted. However, we did not give up; we kept trying and when all roads we could think of came to an end, we parted ways and began spreading out and finding other ways to apply section 63 better.
In all honesty, all we cared about was improving the Delhi Zoo. The route to improving it did not matter, only the goal did.
I had just joined college and was discovering my passion for writing when I came across the Youth Ki Awaaz Justicemakers’ program. It was a program to use storytelling for a cause. This seemed to be the perfect fit for me.
Since it fulfilled my thirst for writing and could give the long-standing justice for the Delhi Zoo animals that we were all looking for. This has been my journey till now and hopefully, by the end of this program it would also be the end of my journey with the Delhi Zoo.
Hence ending the long-standing injustice going on against the animals in the Delhi Zoo. Finally giving some respect to the ones who lost their lives because of it.
This is the first part of the three-part series on ‘animal plight in the Delhi zoo‘ as a part of the Justicemakers’ Writer’s Training Program, run in partnership with Agami and Ashoka’s Law For All Initiative. The second and third parts can be found here and here.