Today, I happened to read the Sunday Magazine of the NIE – New Indian Express, the daily paper that I subscribe to. It contained an interesting, yet weird article by our animal lover [no pun intended] – Maneka Gandhi. Titled – “Monkey’s Aren’t Fools”, it was her thoughts, and suggestions to remove commonly used phrases that degrade animals. It was funny at first, thoughtful at second, weird at third, STUPID in the end. To her credit, it was a well written article, but some of the phrases that she condemned are used so commonly and without any sort of harmful intent!

It was ridiculous to see her pouting about this now. I am a vegetarian, and I am completely against animals being slaughtered and slained. But, to see her ranting against these phrases like 

[] – Kill two birds with one stone
[] – Raining cats and dogs [although the origin of this is pretty gross]
[] – Make a monkey out of someone
[] – Place looks like a pigsty
[] – Dog in a manger etc…

What makes me lash out is that people DON’T mean anything when they say it. I mean no one refers to the context or mean anything bad. Trite expressions are just that – they are to be freely used and abused [by excessive use]. Haha, when someone says “It’s raining cats and dogs” – they just mean that the rain is heavy. They are NOT referring to the Middle Ages, when the neglected pets died in large numbers and the rain washed their carcasses. Chillax Maneka.

The objective of the article and the message was that “We should change the way we speak to bring a new respect to the animals we refer to when using these trite expressions”. I agree with her to some extent, yet the message wasn’t that clear with the article, except her pouting. Maybe it’s because that I found it a bit ridiculous – a bias on the outset. Btw, you should check out some of her suggestions on what to use instead of the trite phrases – HILARIOUS!!!. “This place looks like my son’s room” – takers anyone?? =))!