Imagine the scene, a middle-aged man comes home after a protracted day at work. Along along with his spouse, youngsters, and an old mom, there are two stray dogs ready for him. They are sitting quietly in a nook of the courtyard. The man washes his fingers and dries them with the towel his spouse provides him. Then, he sits down on the charpoy to eat. His daughter brings him a shiny brass thali of meals. The dogs begin wagging their tails. The man tears the roti in two, appears on the dogs, and provides every a chunk. Holding their deal with of their mouths, they walk out into the road, wagging their small tails.
My grandmother described this scene to me with fondness every time she talked about her ancestral village in western Uttar Pradesh (UP). She had been married for greater than 50 years, by then. Yet, when she stated “my village”, I knew it at all times meant her dad or mum’s home, the home the place she had spent her childhood. The description was so vivid that I may think about the entire scene completely. I even imagined the color of the 2 dogs, one black and one beige. The black one was slightly taller than his companion. Both had small curly tails. At that time, I had solely seen stray dogs and different animals on metropolis roads and was afraid of them.
“Weren’t you and others in the family scared of the dogs? They could have bitten you.”
Grandmother smiled as if I had stated one thing humorous: “They came for their share of food. Dogs only bite someone if they feel threatened or if they are nervous about the safety of their babies. In our family, the first roti made in the house was for the cow and the first bite from the plate was for the dog.”
This was the norm for many households in that village.
My mom too lived in a village in western UP for the primary 9 years of her life. Her household moved to town greater than seven many years in the past, but she talks about her village years fondly. She instructed how every time a canine had a litter, the village children took a damaged terracotta pot and visited homes within the neighbourhood, singing, “Kutiya byahi choon de, gadha byaha noon de (the bitch has given birth to a litter, give some flour for her, and give salt for the mother donkey). The second part of the sentence was just tagged on because it rhymed, she said. The children would collect flour from five or six houses and an adult would add a small piece of jaggery. Then, a small brick stove would be made in a corner of the street, twigs would be placed in it and the flour and jaggery would be cooked in the broken pot. For two days, the mother dog was fed this concoction. If the dog gave birth in winter, the children made her a small covered shelter. My mother was sad that she could not be a part of that gang of dog lovers as her parents didn’t allow her to play in the street. She wouldn’t admit it but perhaps there was a caste angle to her not being allowed to mingle with those children.
Culturally, dogs have been an integral part of our lives. Not just dogs, many stray animals can be seen even at our sacred places. They are given food and shelter, and they rarely bother visitors. The Mahabharata starts with the story of a dog and ends with Yudhishtir insisting on taking his fellow traveller, a stray dog, with him to heaven. As everyone familiar with the epic knows, Yudhishtir’s canine companion who persisted with him even as his wife and brothers fell by the wayside, was Dharma himself, in the guise of a stray dog.
The G20 is a huge event, which will probably have many ramifications. Sadly, one of the unforeseen ones is the displacement of the city’s strays. Street dogs from different areas in Delhi especially those near the G20 venue have been removed
That the dog is man’s best friend is well known. They have lived alongside us for centuries. Yes, there are instances of street dogs attacking children and adults and barking at them aggressively, but there is no overnight solution to the issue. You may like them, hate them or ignore them. But we need to find ways to live with them. A balance has to be maintained between the safety of people and animal rights. There are very few cases of stray dogs attacking people in villages. Why is the conflict mostly in urban areas? I asked my mother about this.
“They did fight amongst themselves,” she stated.
“How do you know, you left your village when you were nine.”
“There are still some people I know, who live in the village,” she stated in an irritated tone.
“There were rare cases of biting when the dogs felt threatened. One of my cousins had to get injections when she was bitten. It was a mad dog; otherwise usually they don’t bite,” she stated.
The reality is, you possibly can’t want stray dogs away. As Mahatma Gandhi stated, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.
The earth belongs to all of the creatures of the world.
Prerna Jain is an artist and photographer primarily based in New Delhi. An intensive assortment of her work could be discovered at her web site www.prernasphotographs.com and at fb.com/prernasphotographs. She is the writer of My Feathered Friends and a group of quick tales, Stories Usual, Yet Unusual.
