Can I ask you to be human?

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

~ William Wordsworth

There’s a dog in my building. An Indie. Every time he crosses paths with me, he leaps. LEAPS. His paws against my torso, a gleam in his eyes, tail wagging uncontrollably. On exceptionally good days, he even asks for belly rubs right in the middle of the lobby, as if the universe briefly forgot shame exists. And every time I climb the stairs back to my house, I quietly ache a little. People I cross paths with every day have never shown me kindness that instinctive. It’s not that I don’t have gratitude for my family or my closest people. I know they love me. But I am only human. When I step outside my door, I want to know I matter. And strangely, sometimes it’s this dog who reminds me I do.

But it’s also this same softness that feels unbearable. Every time I walk past a stray, my heart gnaws at itself a little. Like if it were stitched together with thread, and each tired pair of eyes loosens one seam. Especially in Mumbai heat. When you see an animal lying under a rickshaw or near a divider, conserving energy like hope itself is expensive. And for one tiny second they look at you expectantly. And you stand there helplessly, without food, without water, without enough courage to look back because walking away is easier. And maybe that’s the thing that unsettles me most. Not cruelty in its loudest form, but how easy abandonment becomes. How normalised indifference is. How quickly we become another pair of feet that didn’t stop.

Earlier this month I had to uninstall Instagram because my algorithm decided my daily entertainment should be global footage of abandoned pets, tortured animals, neglected strays, creatures trembling at the hands of the species that proudly calls itself evolved. The species given intelligence, language, systems, morality, philosophy. The species that writes think-pieces about empathy while kicking dogs away from storefronts.

Someone once told me being born human is the result of good karma. That in some previous life I accrued enough merit to become this: conscious, articulate, superior. And yet there’s not a single day that goes by where I don’t wonder if intelligence was less a reward and more a burden.

A month ago, we got my cat, Muffin, neutered. Everyone said the same thing. “Very routine procedure.” “Minimal risk.” “He’ll be fine in two days.” And technically, they were right. But no one prepares you for the hours after anaesthesia begins to wear off. Muffin woke up disoriented and terrified. He had no idea why his hind legs refused to cooperate. No idea why he had lost bladder control. No idea why the humans he trusted had let this happen to him. He bruised his face trying to escape confinement. And when we finally relented and let him out, he dragged his pee-soaked fur across the floor trying to find somewhere dark enough to recover with dignity. And I stood there frozen.

That’s what stayed with me. Not just his pain, but his instinct. His refusal to surrender to helplessness. He did not sit there philosophising about suffering. He moved. He adapted. He searched for safety with whatever strength remained in him.

And I, the superior species, stood there paralysed by meaning.

You’ve heard the term Higher-Order Thinking before, I’m sure. HOTS, as academicians love calling it. Analysis, evaluation, creation. The ability to think about thinking itself. Human beings don’t just experience things, we interpret them, replay them, assign narratives to them. Psychologists call this metacognition.

Animals respond to what is. We respond to what it means. And maybe that’s the trade.

Muffin fought to survive. I froze trying to make sense of survival. Our intelligence doesn’t replace instinct; it layers over it. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes catastrophically. Because the same brain that creates art, science, poetry, medicine and philosophy also creates systems of cruelty sophisticated enough to industrialise suffering. The same mind capable of compassion is capable of choosing indifference repeatedly until it becomes culture. And I think that’s what exhausts me most lately. Not that humans are evil. That humans can know better and still not do better.

We love believing higher-order thinking means enlightenment. But honestly? Half the time it just means justification. Confirmation bias with a vocabulary. We gather information not always to learn, but to protect what we already believe. Sometimes we invent cures. Sometimes we invent superstition. Sometimes we decide black cats are omens and entire species deserve punishment for crossing our path at the wrong angle. And yet the creatures we call lesser continue to survive us.

A stray dog still wags his tail after being shooed away by ten people.
A cat still blinks slowly at humans despite knowing captivity.
An animal still approaches the same species that abandoned it, hoping maybe this time the hand reaching out will be gentle.

I don’t have that kind of resilience in me. I don’t have what it takes to be starving and still affectionate. To survive the wild and still seek love. To be hurt repeatedly and continue trusting anyway. I don’t have it in me to curl up under a car during monsoon season and still emerge purring at the sound of kindness. But they do.

And maybe that’s why animals undo me so completely. Because somewhere in our desperate obsession with proving we are superior, we forgot that intelligence was supposed to deepen humanity, not replace it. Muffin doesn’t know what metacognition means. He knows the sound of “num num” means food. He knows the window corner gets the best sunlight at 4 PM. He knows blinking slowly means safety. He knows how to recover without ever asking the universe why suffering exists. And maybe that’s where I envy him.

Because I am here thinking about my thinking. About how our minds become unbearable when left hungry for meaning. About how we know so much and understand so little. About how the proof of our superiority often lies not in our resilience, but in how quickly we abandon it. And still, every evening, this tiny creature walks over to me on four paws, curls beside my leg, and reminds me that love does not always arrive through language. Sometimes it arrives through presence. Through survival. Through a dog leaping in a lobby. Through a cat choosing to trust you again after pain. And maybe that is what being human should have meant all along.

This piece is ultimately for those who are not human, but somehow continue teaching us what humanity is supposed to look like. For the ones failed by systems, by ignorance, by the arrogance of beings who cannot sit with fear and therefore mistake cruelty for control. For the ones abandoned because someone found them inconvenient, unsanitary, aggressive, unlucky, too loud, too fragile, too alive. And with them, I can only continue to hope that someday the sun will not set on their need for love, gentleness, safety, and care. That someday survival will not be the only thing they are offered.

So if you’ve read this far, can I ask you for something small? The next time you see a stray, sit with them for a minute. Offer them kindness. Pat them gently if they let you. Let them know they matter, if only briefly. Because the heartbreaking truth is that the next day someone else may decide they are rabid, dirty, dangerous, disposable… and they may not be there anymore. But maybe before the world hardens around them again, you can give them one moment where being seen feels a little like being loved. Can I ask you to be human? 

For Laddu, Nebula, Muffin, Oreo, Giggles, Garry, and all their kind — you matter, you are loved, and you will always be worth fighting for.