The Dog Stories

A funny thing happened when I was on my way to the office at quarter past eight today (Yes, I came to office before nine today and have successfully managed to publicize it ;-)). On my way to the metro station, I saw a man walking his dog. The dog was well clothed, I guess even more than the man. (Don’t worry that’s not the point of discussion here!). The dog was sniffing wherever it wanted to and this man was quite happy as if the dog were his master dragging him wherever the animal wanted to go (I know calling a dog by the name of an animal may hurt some people but alas, dogs are nothing else but animals). And after a while I saw the dog sniffing a man sleeping on the pavement along the road. I thought that this gentleman would pull the dog back but to my surprise, this man was not bothered about the comfort of the man sleeping. He was happy letting the dog sniff around the poor guy sleeping on the road. It looked as if the man sleeping was some bomb wrapped in garbage and the dog was with the police petrol squad trying to detect a bomb.

The result was as expected, the poor homeless guy work up with a startle. Who would not if being sniffed by a dog while having a nice sleep? And then this hypocrite gentleman, instead of being apologetic of letting to dog sniff anywhere, waved his hands to the poor guy as if saying, “It’s okay, nothing has happened. You can sleep well, it was just a dog.”  Why didn’t this sleeping guy get up and slapped the (so called) gentleman? That would have been a nice lesson.

Another dog incident occurred with me three weeks back when I was going from AIIMS metro station to S J Enclave. On the pavement along the road (Looks as if the dog story happens only on the pavement!), there was a dog resting in the shade of the tree. Since it was already dark and I moved from a brightly lit area into the shade of the tree, I couldn’t sense that there is a dog sitting there. And I stumbled onto the dog and fell down hurting my knees badly. And when I got up, I was blamed by this servant of the dog (or the dog’s owner) for not walking properly. As I could guess, he must have been asked by the dog’s owners to take their son-like dog for a walk and our dog’s servant (or the owners’ servant) let the dog have rest and was busy gossiping with a fruit vendor when all this happened.

What I can’t figure out is why people need to keep dogs! Do they have so much that they need the excess supply of everything to go to an animal? Or are they so bored of life that they need a living creature to entertain them? In any case, can’t they see that there are thousand s of people who remain hungry every day? And for those who say that dogs are there for security purposes, why don’t you hire a watchman and give employment to a person than wasting money on a kutta?

I wish people become more thoughtful so that they realize the difference between a dog and a man and get senses to understand who is more valuable between the two!

P.S. I don’t care whether you have a dog or no! But if you have one, just take care that:

• You don’t send it for walk with your domestic helps. Because they never walk with you ‘son-like’ dog.
• You must take care what your dog is sniffing when you go out with it for a walk.

They Said it!

The following are three quotes picked up from the Times of India dated 25 November, 2011:

“Why should I pay the Rs 15000 crore? …They have given the loan to the earlier government.” – Mamta Banerjee, Chief Minister, West Bengal

“He was slapped? Was he slapped only once?” – Anna Hazare, social activist, initital reaction to attack on Indian Agriculture Minister.

“Anna is mad. I do not drink but that does not mean those who should be treated like this. It is Taliban mindset.” – Gurudas Dasgupta, Communist Party of India Leader reacting to Anna Hazare’s prescription of public flogging for those who drink.

Talking of the first statement, it’s true that the CM of West Bengal has nothing to do with the debt as a person but now as she is heading the government, is she not bound by the obligations of the previous government. Is this not the way the country runs?  Think of what will happen when the next BJP government says that it was Congress government in 1991 which went for liberalization, we don’t follow all this. Sounds like madness! Anyway, Mamta is in the habit of being ignorant about what her predecessors did. She did the very same thing when she became the railway minster in 2009 and the result was this.

Anna Hazareji is a very daring person, if not respectable. It is a very big thing in a country like ours to go against the government and bring it on its toes. But by appreciating the humiliation of a minister, what he is doing is a complete mockery of the democratic framework of the country. Why does he forget that this minister was chosen by the people of this country? When he is clapping on the disrespect of the minister by an ordinary citizen, is he not slapping the very integrity of the democracy of the country and its voters? I know that the honorable minister might be at fault for many things going wrong in the country but before people enjoy this ‘slap’ as killing of a demon, they should check in retrospect that they are the ones who gave the power to this person to be a minister.

The third statement is a reminder to Annaji and his followers that the pillar of democracy which he (Anna) is holding to disrupt the smooth functioning of the parliament and the government is being broken by his aforesaid treatment of drunkards. Not only this is against ahimsa (non-violence) but also it is shear dadagiri and gundagardi.

The moral of the story (and this post) is only that it is easy to blame others and government for all our problems, but if we look within, we can find solutions to most of the problems. The government can’t do everything for us unless we are willing to take some efforts on our own. And as far as honesty is concerned, it is we and people among us who form a part of the government. The bigger question then is whether we are honest or not. If we can’t be honest in our day to day dealings, how can we expect someone there making policies and decisions for us to be honest? As Kahlil Gibran says in ‘The Prophet’:

“And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,

 So the wrong-doer cannot  do wrong without the hidden will of you all.”