In the narrow and winding road an hour outside of Chennai, I
was sitting in a car, having some conversation with my colleagues. We felt rather tired after being trapped in
Chennai's horrendous traffic for hours, but fortunately we finally reached the
outskirt of the city. The view around us
was nice. Around us are grass fields,
growing temporarily to cover the plots of rice fields that were probably
harvested a few months ago. Cows and
buffaloes were peacefully grazing, as our driver pass them by in our MPV.
In one part of the journey, a hundred meters ahead of our
car, we saw a buffalo. He seemed to have
been tied to a rope by his owner just by the side of the road, so that he could
graze while waiting for his owner to come back.
But as this buffalo took a break from his grazing, he decided to climb
up the bank and stand in the middle of the road instead. Our car approached him. He saw us coming. He looked at us with his peaceful eyes. No anger, no fear, no excitement, no
panic. He was sending a simple message
to the arrogant, noisy, ugly metal structure that was coming fast to bully him
off the road: "I am not moving....."
So as we came close to him, our driver hit the break, turned
his steering wheel to the right to slowly pass by him. As our car left the spot, I said to my
colleagues: "Something to learn from this buffalo. We should always be able to look at someone
in the eyes, stand our ground and say no....."
