Beware Of Sarama's Curse

 Everybody knows that Mahabharata ends with the story of Yudhishtira refusing to walk into the gates of heaven without the dog that accompanied him all the way up. Well, that’s a story about Yudhishtira passing the test of Dharma; not about the dog. Whereas Mahabharata’s opening chapter tells the tale of a “stray” dog getting beaten up at King Janamejaya’s yaga by the royal siblings as is the wont of most rulers.

The dog complained to its mother that it neither tasted nor even looked at the priestly offerings. The mother, Sarama, went to Janamejaya’s yagashala and cursed the king for meting out injustice, which is the worst that a ruler can be accused of. The curse of paranoia or adrishta bhayam, unfounded fear that cripples a person from all actions, is what Sarama divined as punishment for the king.

There are no all-knowing-kings and blind subjects in Sanatana Dharma, but equal beings who have the moral force to curse the ruler for an unjust act. What the BJP’s Union government is doing to Indies or the Indian Street Dogs is worse than what King Janamejaya’s brothers did to Sarameya (Sarama’s son). The government wants the complete erasure of the dog populace from the streets of Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad, locking them up in faraway shelters, which are practically impossible to maintain. The logic that non-vegetarians should not be animal lovers and hence have no right to speak for the Indies was not expected of top government dignitaries.

There is a reason why vegetarians and non-vegetarians equally love dogs. Unlike any other species in the animal kingdom, dogs are ready to lay their lives down for their human friends and can be controlled by a word or a biscuit. No other species can sniff out human beings under the debris of high rises when machines fail. Nobody asks a dog whether it eats chicken or mutton while it tracks down terrorist hideouts. Was Indra, the king of Devas, a vegetarian to be raising Sarama? One must look into the scriptures.

But the scriptures clearly spell out that ours is not an anthropocentric culture. Indians have been imagining anthropomorphic roles for animals long, long before the invention of the idea of dog parents.

Stray dogs make roads all over the country unsafe in the night. But Indies are only like packs of Indian men, who make strangers, particularly women feel unsafe on Indian roads. I am scared of all strange dogs and while on vacation in Kerala I had once requested my brother to pick me up from his own street because I was challenged by a pack of strays. Well, the situation can be rephrased. The pack was guarding the neighbourhood in the night, and I was a stranger there.

Packs of Indian strays can quickly turn hostile and make deadly attacks on strangers in the night. Gregory David Roberts’ novel Shantaram has one of the best descriptions of such an attack. Their behaviour as a pack somewhat reflects that of an angry Indian mob. But individuals are never equated to blood thirsty mobs in this subcontinent that have killed millions of neighbours and fellow beings.

Whereas, as individuals, the people of the subcontinent have only tales of generosity and hospitality to say about each other. So, is the case with our dogs. Then, why try to cleanse Delhi of the poor community dogs? Yes, there is a big difference between feral strays and community dogs. For instance, our neighbourhood community dogs are like Sarameyas. Each one of Govanti’s litter has collars and names: Gontu, Blackie and Chotti. They are all sterilised and vaccinated. Then there are Jojo, Socks, Bru and Rani on the main road. Rani is missing and the feeders are still searching for her.

The most striking point is that there is not a single pup in our community and proves how effective the feeders have been in keeping them all neutered and spayed, which is actually the government’s job. The so-called dog menace can be tackled effectively by spaying and neutering, and the failure thereof can easily be detected by spotting young pups. The kindest of creatures cannot be culled for the failure of those who are supposed to do their job of sterilisation and vaccination.

Those who feed these community dogs are not elites as is being mistaken. They are common people who because of some quirk of mind took to loving instead of hating. They are cobblers, street vendors, shopkeepers, lonely guards, angry aunts, busy homemakers and also careerwomen. Yes, most of them are women and there is a distinguishing feature of an undemanding parenting instinct in them –– cherishing the joy of having forever toddlers around them.

The aggressively biting dogs, no doubt, should be picked up and euthanised. But the rest of the community dogs have nothing but love to offer in return for a pat on its head. They even stop barking when you tell them so. The greatest ego-booster recently was when Blackie, charging at a boy, stopped on her tracks and tamely retreated when I just said “No”. What we don’t understand is that the Indies like Indians are always anxious about their survival, about getting attacked by friends who turn foes. Our dogs’ genetic memory is fear of the humans.

Politically, this topic is a hot potato. Even those who spout the vilest abuses against Rahul Gandhi have reposted his comment against the attempt to relocate Indies. Some BJP voters are convinced that the government’s stand against the Indies is an attempt to distract attention from Rahul Gandhi’s Vote Choricampaign. In fact, between dogs and the BJP, at least a small chunk of voters may favour the former and endorse the Vote Chori allegations.

Rabies is a deadly reality but can be prevented by vaccination. To capture community dogs and to put them in cages is a Nazi Final Solution for the simple problem of corruption in the vaccination and sterilisation programmes.