Sunday, March 25, 2007

JP told me once, "at the end of it, no seems to want the stray dogs, whether it is those of us who love them and want to bring their population down by ABC or those who want them dead." What he said is true and it made me very sad.

I look at the dogs on my road. The world for them is one happy place. They sleep, legs in the air, rolling in the pavement sand, their hearts and minds free of worry. Do they know the battle we are fighting for them? They are licensed, collared and I want to imagine that they are safe. I cannot. Even those with collars are being picked up because for their death, someone gets Rs.50.

Can you put a price on chocolate eyes full of life?

Three legged Jack, who runs faster than his able bodied gang of browns, hangs his pink dotted with purple tongue out in the noonday sun. A watchman gives him water. Some years ago, another watchman had almost scolded me for not providing him with an artificial leg. He had heard that Jack had lost his leg after an auto drove over it. It was something he constantly worried about. How will Jack manage, he asked me angrily.
His three legs melt everyone’s hearts and he takes full advantage of the extra treats and cuddles he gets because of it. For now, he is safe. But who knows, with the way the media is feeding this raging fire against dogs.

Is loss of a human life justification enough to carry out this massacre? Is it enough to condone it? Dogs injected with cyanide and thrown in landfills by a bulldozer? Dogs hung with their necks between trees and left to die? Dogs beaten on the ground like clothes against a stone till they die? How different is this from the many torture camps we read about. Saddam Hussain’s men would pull out the nails of the POW’s and use many such horrific torture methods. We shudder at the very thought. Yet, somehow torture of animals is shrugged off by most people and those who fight against it are dismissed as eccentric and interfering.

Any torture, any cruelty any willful act of harm is wrong. Animal or human. We are cognitively more developed than animals, true but animals share the same emotions as we do. They as capable of love, fear, anger joy, sorrow as we are. What gives us the right then to inflict suffering on them? They were not made for our enjoyment and use as some religious texts choose to put it. We share the planet with them and all we seem to be doing is behaving like a very psychopathic school bully with them.

People should think. Those dogs catchers and killers who have so easily and seemingly pleasurably killed dogs in the last one month in Bangalore, will not think twice, given the chance to do the same to a human being. This is because the manner and method they are using show classic text book psychopathy. Here they have the license to kill by a corrupt and bloodthirsty BBMP, steady practice on these animals will perfect their skills to eventually replicate the crime on other easy targets. Children perhaps?

6 comments:

JP said...

That isn't even a wild speculation. Check this out: http://pangaea.org/street_children/latin/brazil.htm

Jellicles said...

i would like to think that the stray dogs ARE wanted. i want them there..they bring so much joy and centeredness(if that's a word) to a lot of people. the dogs on the street of my childhood were a fixture...like the trees. i loved the tall ashoka trees and the wild flowers on the road, but just because i didnt want them in my home doesnt mean that i do not love them. but i'd be damned if anyone had come to chop them and would have fought with my life.

i suppose there is a little defensiveness in what i am saying...

anyways, here is what i am thinking...stray dogs have always been around, yes? but i dont remember this kind of population explosion(there was no ABC in those days..the dogs used to go at it with a romantic vengence..we all remember that) or aggression among them. so what has changed? surely, more dogs are being fixed than ..say 15-20 years ago..i am certain of this because that is the time frame of my childhood/teenage years. they werent biting the heads and noses of children then..so what has changed? i am sure there is a rational and logical explanation for all of this. the solution to this problem lies in cracking it and targeting that problem.

Jellicles said...

(grammar is overrated)

Jellicles said...

to JP, it is shameful re the street children of brazil. just like in goa, child prostitution rings thrive on the streets of brazil.

Yasmine Claire said...

yes..i wish i knew what was causing this. if you visit orkut dog lovers of bangalore, you will see horrific photos. a 14 year old boy doing bounty killing for rs 50 a dog. they way those dogs suffered, i see no reason why, if i were a dog, i would shred thse horrible repulsive humans to bits.
UGH

I HATE THEM THESE PEOPLE I HATE HATE HATE THEM!

Anonymous said...

Very hard hitting post Yabs..

I've recently been reading Peter Singer's "The way we eat" http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Eat-Choices-Matter and Michael Pollan's http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals..

Very insightful reads both- taking on industrial agriculture and factory farming of animals . I'm very grateful for books such as these and organizations like PETA that are helping north americans become more aware of their food choices and the ecological footprints of their actions..

However, one thing that stands out rather glaringly to me,a vegetarian ,who has never owned pets, is the double standards when it comes to certain animals. As a culture, here dogs and cats are treated with the utmost care and attention (which of course they should) but cows and pigs -even legally -are treated as inanimate objects or worse.

Great post...