My name is Usha Shetty, and I'm born and brought up in Mumbai, India. I never wanted to follow the rigmarole of working nine to five. So I had decided one thing in life - I would not live the life which will put my nose to the grindstone, and at the end retire me and put me nowhere. I wanted to live my life my way, on my terms. Initially, breaking through the customs and traditions in India wasn't easy. However, trying to balance both my ambitions and my customs, I started writing. And this got me into serious investigative journalism. I started writing real life stuffs. Interviewing people who would spending the rest of their life behind bars. But that too wasn't enough. I wanted to do something more - something that could help the little ones on the streets who are forced and tortured to beg and make money. Walking though the slums in Mumbai I came across life that no parents would ever think of for their kids. I felt helpless. I wanted to help these people. But couldn't.

So, to get away from all these, I disappeared to Bangalore (the garden city of India). And there I travelled farther south towards Tamilnadu and reached the forests of Bandipur and Madhumalai. And when I saw these poor animals running from us, our cameras, and our safari vans, I decided to do something. I didn't want my life to go waste. So I decided to write a book just for the animals, dedicated just for them. As is known, nothing is as powerful as imagination, I knew that this is the book that will give me everything I want. And it did. I wrote this book, and also planned to start my own business house. And the profit that would come out of it would go to my foundation - a place just for the kids and animals, where they can live their life the way they want to.

For someone who loves traveling and writing, this book came as a respite, though at some point I had to stop and think - will the little kids be able to take the cruelty metted out by humans to animals. But I had to write this. This book is not for any particular generation. It is for all of us who do not care for the feelings of animals. Who do not realize that animals too have feelings. Even they feel hurt, though they can't speak. Even their mothers go thru the same labor pain that our mothers go through. I have tried to show all these in this book. Just wishing, the message is conveyed. Just wishing that this book could atleast stop one person from cutting animals and eating them. Just wishing that this book could atleast save one animal from being tortured. Just wishing that this book could atleast save some animals from the lab torture. Just wishing that atleast one small boy would tell his parents, `how'd you feel if somebody hurt me? isn't little ribbi a baby like me? doesn't he have a mother who loves him as much as you do? Then what right do we have to hurt him or cage him?'

I've written this book for kids in particular, so that they should be able to connect themselves to this little animal, and realize that even animal babies think like them, behave like them, they too have mothers who love them. This is only way I could pass on the message to humans - that animals are not heartless. The only difference between them and us is that they do not hurt anybody without anybody hurting them, whereas we humans take everybody for granted.

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