Uncaged.

Once I was walking up the pathway to my house, when I saw an unusual looking man and a woman, presumably husband and wife, slowly making their way out onto the road. They were making very cautious movements, as if gliding. I backtracked a little bit to take a closer look, but I couldn’t see their faces, because the man was wearing a weird hooded robe, which hid his features. The woman was holding a bundle close to her as if it was the most valuable thing in the world. I figured she was holding a baby, wrapped up inside the warm clothing. Her face was pale with anxiety and fear, mixed with a glow of protective motherly instinct, the only things which I could make out before she adjusted her veil to hide her face. As they walked on, I was intrigued by this eccentric looking couple, and I followed them at a safe distance where they could not see me.

They stopped abruptly. As I began to wonder why there was a sudden commotion happening ahead of me, I saw them being surrounded by dogs, who looked hungrily at the pile of clothes containing the baby. The man tried to shoo them away, but they kept coming closer, as if advancing to attack. Then I saw something that shocked me to the core. Instead of running away, the woman attacked one of the dogs, and in one swift motion, kicked the dog on its jaws so hard that it went crashing back. Then she made another quick movement and tackled another dog, pinning it to the ground and throwing a hard punch on its hindquarters, and the dog lay there, unconscious as the other dogs scampered.

While I was recovering, and trying to digest what had just happened before me, they started picking up pace and walking again. I followed them on, and the woman suddenly crossed the road. The man who was a little behind her, trying to keep up with her pace, started running and shouting at his wife. He had seen something that his wife had not. As I struggled to keep up I saw a strange scene that shocked me even more. It was so absurd yet it was happening right in front of my eyes. A magnificent peacock, a few peahens, some crows and pigeons, flanked by an owl, together started running/flying towards the woman, aiming at the pile, which had the baby in it. The woman tried to fight them off, tried to dodge their attacks, but the huge peacock made for the pile, and shook the pile which went flying out of the woman’s hands as she fell. To my utter shock and disbelief, there was no child in the pile of clothes, but two huge eggs. One of the eggs rolled off onto the pathway into the clumps of trees, but I had no time to see what became of it, because the other egg, slowly started hatching as little wings sprouted from it, and the little bird inside flew with the egg shell, hatching out of it while trying to keep itself up in the air. As it let go of the egg and took full flight, the man cried out loud, it was a shrill cry, filled with anguish and pain, his hood had fallen, and his face was contorted with terror, his hoarse cry filled the midnight air. I looked at the fallen woman on the ground. She looked up, crying, struggling to get up on her injured legs, hopelessness and despair etched in her face. I realized that they had little beaks where their mouth should have been, their faces were sharp and their eyes looked like those of birds; they had sharp talons on their back.  I did not have time to register these astounding details, however, and when I looked up again to see what they had seen, I saw the little bird getting swooped away by a vulture in its beak. It all happened in a split second, and suddenly I wept. I wept for the man, his terror and anguish at having lost something so precious and dear to him. I wept for the woman, the woman, her motherly pain of having lost one of her children. I wept for the little bird, the innocent little bird that had just hatched out into the world, without a worry, and had been deprived of a wonderful life ahead of it. I felt everything in that split fleeting second. I felt unabated sorrow, pain, anger, hatred. I wanted to help them, but something was pulling me back.

That was all I remember feeling before I hit the ground and blacked out.

Eclipsed by the darkness, I suddenly saw a shining bright light, and I opened my eyes. It was warm and there was a fuzzy, light feeling in my soul, as I walked into nothingness. The light was emanating from a raven, who assumed a human form when I walked up to him. He looked old, but there was wisdom in his kind blue eyes, and his warm, welcoming face. “You feel sorry for them, I see”, he smiled knowingly, as if he knew exactly what I was feeling. His voice was calm, deep and he had a soothing tone. “Why does it have to be so, O Raven? Why is life so unfair?” I blurted out, my voice trembling with the shock of what I had just been through. I had so many questions which I could not put into words, but he seemed to understand all my questions, he seemed to read my mind, and I felt myself being put at ease by his gaze. “The problem is not that life is unfair, my friend. Come, take a walk with me and let me explain.”, he said as he put a hand on my shoulder and explained, “Our idea of fairness is self-interest. We have an inherent sense of right and wrong, and we expect that the world will comply with that sense. But reality is indifferent to those senses that you and I possess. If you study really hard, you expect to pass the exam, because you think that is fairness. When you’re the hardest worker in your office, you expect that you’ll be promoted before anyone else. You love someone with all your heart, and they do not reciprocate, you think that is unfair to you. It is natural to feel this way, son. But that is just your idea of fairness, and the world does not function based on that idea. For instance, you think that the little bird didn’t deserve to die, and the father and the mother did not deserve to have all that pain. They probably did not, but that makes it unfair for them, and unfair for you because you saw those things from their perspective. You empathized and embraced their idea of fairness with yours, because you saw yourself in them, and you saw them suffer.  Maybe if you had been with the vulture, or the dog for a brief period of time before that, and they hadn’t succeeded in getting their prey, you would have believed their failure to have been unfair.”

“But why can’t life be fair to everyone?” I wondered aloud. “Imagine if that was the case, do you think the world would function well? Imagine you loved someone and they had to love you back just because you exist – or just because you have a semblance of feelings for them? How would that go? Imagine, relationships would never end. They would end only when both partners died. Only bad people would be affected by natural calamities. Someone avenged a murder, but you thought it was fair so he wouldn’t get punished for that. Do you really want to live in a world like that? Our idea of fairness is merely a robe to cover the garb of wishful thinking, my dear boy.”

He looked into my eyes. Suddenly, his wrinkles and his old age became prominent, and his light seemed to fade. “If you think about it, life is not unfair, it is your idea of fairness that is broken.”, he said as the Raven faded, and I felt myself vacuumed by the darkness yet again, and I woke up on my bed, startled by the loud cawing of a raven on my window sill, and a solemn sense of sombreness gripping my mind.

"Who says life is fair, where is that written?"

- William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Image taken from Google Images.