The boy who fell in the borewell.

It was a dull day as far as the newsmongers were concerned. No terrorist attacks, no terrorist captured, no minister caught on tape accepting bribes, and no communist strangulation of the UPA government. All of a sudden a 5 year old boy, Prince, falls into a borewell. Finally they have news to report. Its all been on live TV since then. Makes you think that without news channels no work gets done in this country. I think the army would have done their job even if all the cameras and Hooda (the CM) never showed up. How a borewell was left open is a whole other story.

After seeing this sea of humans who had gathered to rescue a single child I was vividly reminded of an event that happened when I was around 6 and at my granny's place. Its a quaint little town (not quaint as in gay) in Assam. There were all kinds of birds from storks to owls to sparrows. On a weekend (I remember it was a wekeend because my mother was home that day) a yellow baby bird landed up in our living room by mistake. It looked like a type of sparrow. It looked so cute that I caught the bird and put it in a cage. No sooner had I mentioned my accomplishment to my aunt everybody in the house had gathered around the bird.

After a while we heard birds chirping ceaselessly outside. On opening the doors and windows it was a sight I had never seen before. About 500 yellow sparrows of the same variety I had caught were looking for their lost friend. After a lot of pleading from my family members I finally let the little one go. Withing 15 minutes all those birds were gone.

Looking at all these people gather around while the army was digging Prince out I couldn't help but compare the similarity between those birds that day and these humans today. There is a very strong bond between living beings of the same species irrespective of whether they are mammals or amphibians.