the papers started coming out
with feature after feature,
organised campaigns,
and letters-to-the-editor,
demanding, for example,
the extermination
of the pigeons,
from one end
to another
in the city.
And they ensured,
those pigeons,
those ugly, grunting grey things
would be exterminated.
Then, they came
for those four-legged things
some major drives
were directed
against the dogs.
While people - not the four-legged
or the feather bearing ones
but those others
- you know who I mean, yes?
they were still disconsolate
over the catastrophe
of the occupation,
the radio,
the television,
and even the press
went on
and on
about the dogs.
Oh look!
How they soil our streets and parks,
endanger our children's health,
fulfil no useful function,
and yet must be fed!
Only after a year
did the accumulated malice,
which until then
had been vented,
for the sake of training,
on animals,
find its true goal:
the people!
People
started being removed
from their jobs,
then homes,
arrested,
put on trial,
interrogated,
humiliated.
And then at last,
the pigeons and the dogs,
butterflies and the frogs,
the cows and the rats,
the pigs and the cats,
and all them
who were still not people,
and will never be,
could breathe freely.
- A modified piece from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being
#Day03 #The100DayProject #100DaysOfProseToPoetry #GauRakshak
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