Time for making the sacrifice of animals, in commemoration of the great sacrificial act of Prophet Abraham, is just about. The sale of animals is mostly done, and by today evening it will almost conclude. The religiously ordained side of this occasion is known to us all.
And it being a great yearly celebration is also a common practice. We experience both the dimensions of this occasion, and it is fulfilling in each way. But there is another side to it, and this we usually ignore. The spiritual side of the occasion apart, there are some physical things that are involved. This is a domain of worldly, and we must observe general rules of cleanliness here.
Unlike the developed parts of the world where the butchering happens at specified places we do all this at our homes. At the designated spaces in the developed countries care is taken that no blood spills into public drainage system, and no disposable parts of the animal are scattered at public spaces.
But unfortunately we have seen here that blood and the animal excreta fills the surrounding atmosphere with foul smell. At places one can see birds hovering to do the scavenging. All this creates an ugly scene. What has added to this from past some years is the disposal of animal hides in open spaces. We have instances where hides and entrails are scene dumped near water bodies.
These are very horrible acts, and no civilised society should tolerate it. Ideally we should have, by now, developed spaces where animals could be dressed professionally, but we could not. In the absence of such a professional arrangement we should, at least, make sure that we do it in a clean way.
We can nicely dig a pit in our yards and put blood, excreta and other disposable stuff into it and stuff it with soil. And it doesn’t take much. Let’s make everything associated with our celebrations look civilised and graceful.