WHAT is common between Jackie Kennedy, Melania Trump, and Princess Nefertiabet who lived more than 4,000 years ago in Egypt? All three are known to have draped themselves in leopard print dresses. Only the pharaohs were old money and did not mind faux over fur as leopard spots; to be precise, rosettes were commonly printed and woven into fabric in ancient Egypt.

According to an NYT story, Ms Kennedy’s jacket was made from pelts of many wild leopards killed for their lustrous coat. Estimates indicate that some 250,000 leopards were killed in the fashion frenzy ignited by Jackie’s sartorial choice.

Appalled by the ever-increasing list of endangered animals, conservationists, fashionistas, and animal rights activists have launched a movement calling for royalties for the species appropriated in any commercial product. The royalties, even if levied in pennies, can raise millions that can be directed towards the well-being of the species.

The leopard print is also a favourite in Pakistan; we call it the ‘cheetah print’, as it is an oft-used misnomer for a whole range of the Panthera family. If the royalties for appropriation trend catches on, owls, billy goats, and jackasses will stand to benefit the most here.

Historically, cruelty to animals has had consequences.

Not sure how many readers remember the anthropomorphic mascot of a US tobacco company, Joe Camel, aka Old Joe. Created for an advertisement campaign in France and later used in the US, the company stopped using it in 1997 after the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that led to a lawsuit claiming the mascot made smoking popular among children.

Fast forward to the camel criminal who went about ordering the mutilation of an animal for trampling on his crops recently. This barbaric act has been wrongly described in the media as an amputation that is usually carried out under strict medical supervision, ensuring against pain and a series of measures to deal with PTSD.

Our diminishing faith in humanity was somewhat restored by offers that poured in to provide medical aid, a prosthetic limb for the leg chopped below the knee, and permanent shelter for the poor animal. The accused has so far faced no serious accountability. Some strawmen have been produced as the executors of this atrocity. While it remains to be seen if the real culprit will ever be awarded a punishment in keeping with the heinous nature of the crime, the accused now has the prefix of ‘wadera’, a much-maligned honorific, courtesy of its caricatures in the media, added to his name. In the good old days, the title referred to a family or community elder; its feminine, ‘waderi’, though much less used, does exist.

Historically, cruelty to animals has evoked consequences both divine and temporal. According to the scriptures, an entire nation paid the price for the ill treatment of the prophet Saleh’s she-camel.

The British colonialists may never have had any qualms about mistreating an entire people living under their yoke, but they did initiate animal rights legislation in the subcontinent. Our subsequent masters have shown similar disdain for the masses; however, the same degree of empathy for the four-legged creatures has been missing.

This brings to mind an English sahib named Eric Blair. His father was an opium agent in India. Born in Bengal and raised in Bihar, Eric oversaw floggings and hangings as a 19-year-old policeman in Burma. After returning to England, it seems he got in touch with the more humane side of his character and autho­red that most quoted line, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. Yes, this is the same man the world came to know as George Orwell of Animal Farm fame.

It is hard to talk of ‘wadera’ and leave out the ‘waderay ka beta’ (son of the wadera), another archetype of a spoilt brat of privileged ancestry. This tragicomic caricature was made famous by a rap artist who pointed out that not just the lord himself but his dog demands to be treated like a lord.

Not too long after the song was released, a brown sahib lost his dog on a foreign assignment to Pakistan. Many a serf who never bothered to refill a birdbath trudged to the sahib’s mansion to offer condolences on the junior lordship’s demise.

For weeks, a pall of gloom hung over the mansion, and all people could talk about was the spiritual experience of attending the junior’s last rites, complete with sitting on the ground around incense-burning censers, flower petals, and wreaths covering the soon-to-be cremated remains. The mansion’s lawn was turned into a temporary crematorium. Environmental and social safeguards are for the less equal farm animals. Who knows, maybe this sahib too may have found his humane side; it gives an entirely new meaning to Orwellian, no?

The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.

shahzadsharjeel1@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2024