MIDWAY : Recipe for fun

Religions and human laws commonly propound one thing: no one has the right to take away what he or she can not bring back. Most pertinently, it applies to taking a living being’s life, be that of an animal or of a human being. However, murders and killings go unabated in the world even if history has time and again proved that taking one’s life can in no way improve another’s.

Last month, Nepal made headlines in global media: Nepal Airlines sacrifices two goats in a bid ‘to repair’ its conked-out Boeing 575. For those who were new to the absurd and obsolete tradition, it was a great recipe for fun, the Wright bros would have been flabbergasted and disgusted, had they been alive to witness that their invention received such a bloody worship! The amused and bemused Western media wrote: the goats were sacrificed to appease Aakash Bhairab, the Hindu God of the sky.

Wonder whether the engine was repaired! As for Nepal Airlines, I suppose it is yet to brief the public, and preferably the international media too, about the outcome of the ritual slaughter. This instance is an outrageous mockery of modern technology. If goat blood repaired machines and engines, why on

earth the need to pursue, like an idiot, one’s studies in engineering and technology for years?

No wonder if someday Nepal Airlines gives each of its passengers a goat instead of safety instructions. Any sinister sign aboard and the passengers will be saved by goats. Suffice to sacrifice them, and the God of the Sky will save and protect the giant sky flyer.

And we do not seem to learn from the bloody past. This year’s Dashain too saw umpteen numbers of goats and buffaloes butchered at one fell swoop, as if the poor beasts were not even capable of feeling suffering, wounds and injuries. Our so-called Unesco-classified heritage sites in Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur were inundated with blood.

Age-old walls, pillars, statues and paintings renovated with foreign money were stained with blood surging from slaughtered beasts. Few animal rightists’ protests became a mere cry in the wilderness, and the wanton bloodshed in the name of appeasing gods and goddesses went on and on throughout the country.