a fish, a small bear, a fox and a wild dog

In Lahore one used to see animals all the time: horse-draw carts, stray dogs, donkeys pulling impossibly large loads of wood or hay behind them if they weren't tethered to a wooden pole, as if waiting for something or someone, with an infinite patience and the saddest eyes imaginable, and on the odd occasion there'd even be the dancing bear. Most of the time, this was all very cruel and needless. Goes without saying (as with much else). But now...

Now, with the expansion of the city, the relentless extension of roads, and the creation of a uniquely ugly urban sprawl, the animals have receded to the background-both physically and in the mind's eye. What remains? Only the caged animals, and memories of power, freedom, danger (Pets, after all, grow to be human...and how you detest the next logical step: the digitalisation or virtualisation of animals with those silly Japanese electronic pets).

Animals, not even beasts any more; the irrational, formerly contrasted with our supposed rationality; not even the dark side of our humanity, but utterly tamed and humanzied...nature as a socialized product, made a raw material for consumption-our food, leisure or entertainment. The natural and the mythical have been destroyed, canceled. And one can't but help wonder if something of our own origin is lost in the process...

What remains? Crow, dark crow, looking down ominously, feeding off what we've killed, surviving amongst the debris (and he is in this sense,therefore, our closest cousin).But even when all is exhausted, seemingly lost, when all has been said and done, maybe a spark remains, since now and then the human being calls to another human being in the dark, and gives her the names of the animals.

(the ideas were borrowed from john berger's wonderful, elegiac essay, Why Look at Animals).