A Message From Ingrid Newkirk

What befalls animals can deeply depress us, but let me describe a place of extraordinary joy. It’s in rural Maharashtra, India. To get there, you board the Mahalaxmi Express, a night train, from the chaotic Dadar rail station. You find your bunk in an air-conditioned compartment with other sleepy passengers. The train thunders through the night, stopping at stations where platforms are lined with sleeping people wrapped up in blankets. Beside them are sleeping dogs who find refuge and scraps at the station and the occasional goat, sleeping, too, oblivious to their ultimate fate. At dawn, you leave the train and drive to the sanctuary. That’s where the joy is.

You’ll see new foals cantering about, chasing and playing. They’re the children of donkeys and horses who were pregnant when rescued from terrible lives. Old bullocks wander the grounds slowly or sit chewing the cud under a shady tree, secure and comfortable for the first time in their lives. They’ll let you stroke the soft skin between their magnificent horns. Water buffaloes wallow in the pond, “supervised” by camels who were spared the sacrificial knife or circus life. Look: cats, roosters, goats, sheep, all content. And happy dogs who somehow, wisely, found their own way here.

Visiting children giggle as the animals nuzzle them. They’ve only ever seen bullocks straining to pull tons of sugarcane or metal; ponies whipped as they ferry passengers in the baking sun; thin dogs, scrounging in trash heaps; buffaloes with heavy logs around their necks, destined to be killed for meat. They hear that their lunch contains nothing stolen from animals and that no animals were killed to make it. They are joyful, too. It was my turn to be joyful when this bullock tasted my flowers and got a rose petal on his nose.