Dad was once cleaning up the kitchen, and I realized that one the bowls was filled with ants. I asked him to rinse the bowl under the tap, to get rid of the ants. He looked at me with amusement and asked, ‘You want me to do murder?’
In that moment, we both exchanged looks of amusement. But I realized later that those words have kind of stayed with me. And they manage to randomly pop back into my mind at certain moments.
****
I’m a deep sleeper. The deepest I know. Once I’m asleep, I
can sleep through 15 back to back blaring ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ alarms, or bulbs
exploding over my head (all based on personal experience). Moreover, I can also
pass out in a matter minutes, a fact that Mom often likes to enviously complain
about.
But there’s one thing that can come in the way of me and the moments just before I fall asleep, and that’s the sound of a mosquito buzzing near my ear. That one sound can transform me from a peaceful baby to a Spartan warrior, out for blood.
And that’s exactly what happens. The moment I hear that sound, I know what’s coming (and what’s not, aka sleep). After a few seconds of silently and unsuccessfully wishing that the sound won’t return, I jump up, switch on the light, and start looking around for the mosquito. If I manage to spot it, well, there are some strategic assaults that follow, some successful, some not so much (I’d like to believe I don’t look like a crazed person jumping around the room, swatting my hands ferociously, but I’d be lying). If I don’t manage to spot the mosquito that’s the source of the buzzing, well, then I tentatively lie back down again, dreadfully waiting for the sound I hate to return (and it always does), only to have me jump out of bed again and re-start the process with double the rage.
In fact, lately, I’ve started opting for the old prevention rather than cure route. In the hours following up to my sleep, I’ve started keeping a sharper eye out for mosquitoes in and around my room. If I spot one, I go for it, no questions asked. Anything to avoid having my almost-sleep get disturbed. And I must say, my strike rate can be rather impressive on some days.
And while I’d love for this post to be about me gloating about my victories, it’s actually about the emotions that follow right after. You see, while I’m in the process of swatting mosquitoes, I feel quite justified in the massacre I leave behind. But, the moment it’s done, there’s a feeling that emerges, and it comes every time. In that moment, I suddenly become very aware of the fact that I’ve just taken a life (or several lives). And it wasn’t out of self defence or hunger, like most other species in the animal kingdom might plead. It was because the mosquito was inconvenient to my sleep. That’s it. My only justification for having killed that once living thing is…inconvenience.
Often, I try to shake myself away from it. It’s only a mosquito, after all. It’s no different from the countless ants I probably kill every day just by standing or walking. But that comparison isn’t completely the same. The deaths of those ants are not a result of intentional, strategized killings (most of the time). This is. Just like those ants in the bowl I told dad to wash away. This was…murder.
Again, I try to justify it. It’s a mosquito, for crying out loud! Hardly in the same category as a human. A human murder – now that’s wrong, unjustifiably wrong. In fact, even the dictionary describes murder within the purview of one human killing another. So there, it’s not murder. This isn’t comparable. Humans and animals aren’t at the same level.
But if that’s the case, then why do my insides squirm every time I hear about cruel killings of dogs? Or the mass slaughter of dolphins? Or the killing of elephants for their tusks? They’re all animals too, and their murder definitely feels like murder. Sure, the people committing those acts might not agree, but if the point in question is my emotions, then the anger and sadness and guilt I feel on behalf of my species for those actions are high up.
How does one decide, at which life do you draw a line, beyond which you can kill without any guilt? At one point does it become okay to kill one thing but not another?
A friend once told about something called ‘arbitrary
boundaries’: the idea that our society has arbitrarily decided boundaries on
what’s okay and what’s not. It comes out in almost every aspect of our lives:
dress (what’s okay to wear and what’s not), marriage (who it’s okay to marry
and whom it’s not), sexuality (which sexual acts are permitted and which are
not), etc. And I realized it applies to the act of killing as well:
·
It’s generally not okay to kill, but it’s okay
if you’re killing the ‘bad people’
·
Killing is bad, but it’s okay if you’re at war
·
Killing men is bad, but killing women and
children is worse
·
Killing humans is not okay, but killing other
species is fine.
·
Killing dolphins is not okay, but killing other
fish is fine.
·
Killing dogs is not okay, but killing insects is
fine.
That above list of what’s okay and what’s not could be endless, and you slowly start to realize, that the rules separating the two sections are really random: arbitrary. And if there’s really no guiding principle or logic behind it, then how do I say what’s okay and not okay?
If I had started this post by saying, ”I need to kill someone in order to sleep peacefully”, you would have found it absurd. And I’m sure that the idea of me dedicating an entire blog post to ‘my remorse over killing a mosquito’ sounds equally absurd. These are two conflicting ideas that just don’t fit together.
Realistically, I know what I’m going to choose. In the overall hierarchy of important things in my life, mosquitoes don’t make it very high up. So I’ll probably continue to kill them despite it all.
Knowing, that the whole time, I’ll be trying to tell myself, ‘It’s just a mosquito’.
Also knowing, that the word ‘just’ has no place in that
statement.
