Mind Over Water

By: Namita Kulkarni
Submitted: 02/11/2009

At some point in the planet’s history, homo sapiens subliminally decided that the planet’s resources were theirs to use and squander, to the exclusion of all other species. A presumptuous decision based on the increasingly questionable premise of its own “superior intelligence’’, it ought to be replaced with the acknowledgement that all other species have an equal, and perhaps more rightful, proprietorship over the natural resources. What we think is ours is as much theirs. So while we “intelligently’’ mess with the hydrological cycle and send eco-systems into a tizzy, we rob animals of their water and hence their lives. Is such a criminal misappropriation our way of establishing our superiority?

(The take-off point and key reference for this tiger was a photograph taken by Tanna Lee Wells, whose kind permission I’m grateful for.)