Stolen from your mother. Carried away from the land you call home. The last specs of blue sky fade away, consumed by towering concrete walls colored in a mundane gray, sucking the very light from the sun. Spiked chains dig into your leg, sending blood trickling down to the ground. As if an earthquake suddenly shook the world, you stumble and fall in the crimson pool.
 

You scream for your mother, but no one calls. You long for the blue sky, but only gray can be found. You desperately search for light, but black clouds devour the sun. You lie in your own waste begging for coins as people stroll by, cackling as you writhe in pain. You long to graze on the green grass, but plastic and paper is shoved down your throat. You long to roam the spacious grasslands of India, but you are shackled to a post.
 

50 years pass since the day you were captured. Anger, agony, fear, and pain weigh you down like lead. Faint memories of your mother flash in the vast expanse of your mind. Green forests. Warm caresses. All gone. Now you are ferrying people across a concrete lot with chains devouring your leg. All for their amusement.
 

Sitting proudly on your back, they complain they are suffering because it's too hot, because you're not going fast enough, because the ride is too bumpy, because they are feeling hungry, because their belt is on too tight, and because there's an ugly crack in the ground.
 

You snort at the irony. They know nothing about suffering, you say to yourself, kicking a loose pebble on the ground. Suffering is not merely being “subjected to something bad or unpleasant,” as the Oxford dictionary vaguely states. What is “something bad or unpleasant” anyway?
 

Suffering is not feeling slight pains of hunger throughout the day. Suffering is not getting a bad grade on an essay you have to write. Suffering is not watching your favorite sports team lose. Suffering is not losing that Xbox at the mall to some slimeball lustily grabbing it from you on Black Friday. Suffering is not listening to some irrational human being rant on and on about how they are miserable, constantly suffering from the agonizing pain of trudging 100 feet to their cars.
 

Anger churns inside your mind until you feel like lashing out, destroying the humans hopelessly blind to your pain. While they complain about the most stupid and petty things, you are barely surviving in a living hell. And they don't care. They never have.
 

Since the dawn of the modern human, they have been too consumed, too proud, and too selfish to see that others besides themselves are suffering. In the 1700s, slaves were plucked off the shores of Africa and forced to work on plantations in America, often separated from other family members. Children would be weeping without the warm caresses of their mothers. But did the slave owners care? No! After all, Africans weren't people. They were objects that provided income and wealth for a nation stockpiled with liberty and prosperity for all!
 

During World War II, some 200 years later, things hadn't changed much in the world. Hitler paraded around Europe capturing Jews, sending them to concentration camps where they were trapped between barbed fences, crying as their loved ones were executed. But no matter. Germany was suffering from depression and lack of living space, all because of the Jews! Those heathens probably deserved it anyway.
 

And here we are, in the year 2014 on July fourth. When you were a child, they stripped you from your family, shackled you in spiked chains, and now force you to parade around a concrete lot, carrying loads of suffering people!
 

Finally having enough of that ugly crack in the ground, they lash a whip onto the front of your head, demanding they be returned to the other side of the lot, less than a hundred feet away. You bend your knees so they can easily step off and strut around. The spikes in the chains dig deeper into your skin, forcing drops of blood out until they careen helplessly to the concrete floor, staining it in a crimson red. Uttering a bitter moan, the people complain about how horrible the ride was and how miserable their lives are, passing by you as you bleed. It seemed as though all hope of humanity ever changing, ever understanding the pain you were forced to endure, had vanished.
 

That night, you lay your head down on the muddy confines of your prison, still bleeding, puss oozing out of your wounds. You hear a noise in the distance, coming closer. Silhouetted figures leap over the boundaries of your lonely, barren prison cell. Their faces appear, revealing expressions of pure anguish and horror. Their bodies slump down as you kick your bloody leg shackled to the post. You glance back in shock. Gentle hands reach out and caress you, just as your mother did. They softly place succulent fruit into your mouth, the first real food in over 50 years.
 

Realizing all the suffering, all the bitter suffering, had finally come to an end, a shiver ran down your spine and you cried. You cried, Raju. You cried an elephant's tear, laden with all the suffering and pain building and building all those dreadful years, just waiting to come out.
 

On the Fourth of July, you are finally free. Your tears have awakened the world, Raju. We are beginning to understand that we are not the only ones who must endure the cold clutches of suffering. Pain, agony, anger, abuse, hate, solitude, rage. All of these you were forced to endure for over 50 years. But now you are free. Your suffering will not, and has not, gone in vain.