The Rightful Inheritors of the Earth

When I became the owner of a tiny little piece of this wide earth, I felt very happy. It was a two-acre plot with coconut palms and an old house where we could live. Those were the days when the price of coconuts was going up and I was in high spirits at the thought of the palms laden with coconuts. But then came the trespassers.
They did not care about the fence we had put up at the boundary. Moreover, they did not seem to be at all afraid of my watchdog Shan. They did not seem to care for anyone in the world, not even the government.
The first arrivals were birds and butterflies. A wide variety of birds and so many, many butterflies! Perched on the boughs, the birds chirped on and on. The butterflies fluttered around in the courtyard, flashing their colours in the sunlight. Then came the crows. Their raucous cawing was unbearable than the racket of other birds. But the worse was that they missed no chance to swoop down on our hens and chicks.
Next to arrive were the hawks- birds that perched on our coconut palms. However, while they sat in higher planes, their aims were just as low- down in the dust! The hawks and the crows had the same agenda while they watched and waited.
Nor were they alone. There were mongooses in the bamboo thicket and there were foxes in the shrubs close by, ready to pounce on the hens. Then there were rats. Rats, of course, were found everywhere.
Even as I wondered what right all these creatures had to be on my land, there arrived a fierce creature without paws or wings - a cobra! It stood before me, dignified, majestic, its hood spread out. It hissed as if asking me what business I had on this land. Didn’t it know that I was the new owner?
‘You had better leave my two-acre land at once,’ I said. But then, where could it go? Hadn’t the whole earth been taken over by man, bit by bit?
My wife said, ‘The jackfruit has ripened. Squirrels and crows are feasting on it. The guavas and mangoes! Birds and bats are eating up everything.’
‘But that’s the beauty of it,’ I replied. ‘God has created variety of things in this universe -fruits, edible roots, grass, grain, flowers, water, air, warmth and light. Now, while we are the owners of this land, without a doubt, the birds, beasts, reptiles, and insects too have a right to these things just as we have. God has made them for all the creatures, and we had better remember that occasionally.’
‘Are you saying, rats have a right as well?’ my wife asked. ‘They don’t seem to think we humans have any. They go about as though the earth belongs to them!’ she said.
So we go around, killing them. How sad that we kill rats to let our own life undisturbed! What we need is a new scientific way of living - a new way that helps us to live without killing any living creature.
‘Anyway, I had no taste for killing rats, or anything else.’
While that was so, however, I had to do something soon about our coconuts. We needed them. They formed a part of our daily food. ‘But what could I do?’ I wondered.
While I was still wondering, my wife decided to take things into her own hands one day. She went shopping for two hours and bought many things. One was a large tin of rat poison. The poison was mixed with bananas, rice, tapioca, and left everywhere in the compound. In four days five hens, twelve squirrels, two hundred rats, and a cat disappeared.
But the tender coconuts went on falling. Everyone now accused the owls. They peck at the tender coconuts. A few months later, however, the real culprits were found out - the bats!
After dusk, huge bats came in swarms and flew straight to the palms where the tender coconuts hung. Clinging to the outer coverings of the coconuts, they gnawed into them from the softest sides at the top. When they had cut through the kernel within, they sucked out the sweet, nourishing water stored inside and flew away, satisfied. ‘Let’s buy a gun,’ said my wife. ‘We can shoot the bats, the foxes and the polecats with it.’
‘Not me!’ I said. ‘Guns should never have been invented.’ But alas, a few days later, my wife’s cousin turned up with a grim-looking gun. He said, ‘Nearly three thousand coconuts are destroyed every day. These bats are the pests. But there is no point in shooting bats down at this spot. On a little islet nearby, stands an old temple. Next to it grow a pair of banyan trees. You can see at least three thousand bats hanging on the twigs of the banyan trees. I’m going to kill them all!’
I prayed fervently, ‘Oh bats! Bats! Save your lives!’ It was astonishing. It was a miracle. The bats were saved! My wife and her cousin came back in about two hours time looking really scared. My wife said, ‘We just managed to escape narrowly.’ There are some houses around the temple.
When we arrived at the place, a hundred people with weapons surrounded us within minutes. They looked menacing. If we shot at the bats, they said, they would kill us.
‘Do you know why? They believe that bats are the souls of their ancestors.’
I took a decision, then. I said firmly, ‘Bats are no ancestors of ours. But they are among God’s countless creations. Let the coconuts be destroyed. That doesn’t matter. Let us be satisfied with what is left after they have taken their share. They certainly have a right to the coconuts. All living beings are the rightful inheritors of the earth.’