Eight Humboldt penguins arrived in July from Seoul's Coex Aquarium, of which one died recently. File pic

The death of a penguin earlier this week upset me a little more than it ought to have. I didn't grow up with a particular affinity for penguins, of course, simply because I saw my first real one only in my late 20s. It wasn't a particularly memorable sighting either, probably because we, as Indians, are more prone to being sentimental about awful movies starring Rajesh Khanna or the 1983 Cricket World Cup than we are about flora or fauna. We aren't even encouraged to care about people, let alone animals.