A Treat Turns To Tragedy

A Treat Turns To Tragedy

1988 6 June 6 A Treat Turns To Tragedy (421) Three-year old Nitin Walia, who lives in Shahadrah, New Delhi, with his parents, Vijay Pal and Sunita Walia, was very keen to visit the Delhi zoo, so his parents took him there one day as a treat. He was having a wonderful time, roaming around, looking at all the animals, and enjoying the various spectacles that the zoo had to offer, when he suddenly caught sight of the white tiger. In a trice he had ducked under the railing and pushed his hand through the bars of the cage. The tigress sprang at him, then opening her jaws wide, she managed to get the whole of the child’s right arm into her mouth. The parents and some other visitors wrestled with the tigress, and finally succeeded in pulling the child away. But all that remained of his arm was the stump. The child is mercifully alive today, but is fated to go through his entire life without his right arm.

According to the news reports of March 21, 1988, the child’s parents say the zoo officials are to blame for this tragedy, because there were no guards on duty at the time.

It is a commonly observed phenomenon that when any such preventable tragedy takes place, the victims, ignoring their own personal responsibility hasten to seek out others on whom to heap the blame. But in a world where, in the normal course of events, human beings are regularly beset by difficulties of greater or lesser magnitude, with or without warning, and sometimes with unnerving frequency, it is up to individuals themselves to do their utmost to avoid danger, overcome obstacles and avert tragedy. If they fail to take positive action, they must blame themselves, or if they encounter factors which are beyond human control, they must simply bow to their fate. It is pointless to bewail one’s lot in life and then to blame others for it. The most blameworthy are actually those who see the warning signals, but who nevertheless press on to inevitable disaster.

Just as there is a railing four feet away from every wild beast’s cage at the zoo, which is meant to keep visitors at a safe distance, so is there a ‘railing’ at every turning in life. Those who recognize this ‘railing’ as an outer limit will not attempt to go beyond it and will, therefore, remain unharmed. But those who forge ahead, ignoring what the railing stands for, will head straight for calamity, be it a zoo, or anywhere else in this world.