You would cut us up for mere beauty?

She peered inquisitively through the bars of the cage. The next moment, she regretted it.

A scalding stab of fear seared through her soul with fervent intensity, and revulsion shot down her throat so swiftly that she almost gagged. What she had seen was a reminder of her own inexorable fate; an inexplicably terrible destiny to which she was inextricably bound.

The enclosure she shared with the dozen others of her kind reeked of vomit and faeces. The hands that reached into the cage never cleaned; they occasionally threw food callously into a bowl, but mostly, they would grab their next victim.

She’d never met her family, but would sometimes weave intricate imaginary pictures of them in her mind. No doubt they had met, or would shortly meet, the same agonizing end as all those born in the prison.

Loneliness permeated every crevice of the cage, draining its inhabitants of every emotion except the omnipresent dread, and wrenching them from hope and love. Making friends was next to useless. Nobody knew who would be chosen next by those malevolent hands.

One day, they chose her. Fingers gloved in plastic seized her, digging into her flesh ruthlessly and clutching her writhing, struggling form tightly.

Smouldering, poisonous black fluid was poured into her eyes, and she screamed in pain; blazing, all consuming pain that threatened to destroy her very existence. She kicked as hard as she could, but they wouldn’t let her go. Those hands gripped her unyieldingly as more fluid dripped into her eyes. This time it was so tremendously unbearable that she executed a sort of flying leap. A white-hot spasm of pain ran swiftly through her leg. It was broken. The hands still held the bone while she dangled precariously from it, terror ripping her heart mercilessly into shreds.

It wasn’t over yet. Fluid trickled steadily into her eyes and those hands held her as firmly as ever, turning a deaf ear to those cries. Her vision blurred with each venomous drop, and then suddenly, all was black.

But the sting continued to ravage her; and she wished feverishly that somebody would put her out of her suffering.

She was then thrown, alone and sightless; throbbing with overwhelming distress, and blazing with piercing despair, into another prison. She still lives, those wounds of misery and desolation coupled with her blindness and loneliness slowly but surely, snuffing her life out.

A few months later, a young woman runs a brush dipped in mascara along her lashes, and smiles in satisfaction at the mirror.

Her lashes are thick, dark and voluminous. That is all that matters. After all, what is the life of a rabbit worth?

Every year, thousands and thousands of innocent animals [ rabbits, mice, even dogs and cats] are mutilated, blinded and killed in laboratories where companies selling cosmetics perform horrifying and cruel experiments to test their products, despite the availability of more effective, cruel-free alternatives. Play a role in stopping this heinous and barbaric practice by boycotting the cosmetics marketed by these companies. For a complete list of companies that test on animals, visit the Peta website.

We can change the world around us by making wiser, kinder choices .Spread the message. Remember, millions of helpless creatures are counting on you in hope of a better tomorrow.

Malvika Parthasarthy
Cluny Convent School