Good Djinns

City of Djinns - William Dalrymple

I treasure an old copy of William Dalrymple's "City of Djinns" that I have in my possession. It belonged to my mother. A voracious reader and history teacher, she chose to mark her copy of that wonderful love letter to Delhi with a bindi on the cover, the red dot often worn by Indian women symbolizing the third eye, open only for those with great wisdom and internal energy. In times when I miss her energy, departed from my universe for more than 4 years now, I draw comfort from glancing through a random page within the book. Whether it opens out to the Nigambodh Ghat or New Delhi sections of the book is immaterial. To me and to anyone else who has ever understood how history weaves, both and the Delhis in between will remain Delhi.

Maa was a city-raised Calcutta girl with a soft spot for all fellow creatures, human and non-human. Rescuing kite-string embroiled crows, insisting on non-lethal mouse traps, stern reprimands to our miniature Dachshund (Putputti) when she would fetch moles from our garden in Kolkata - those were her kind of interactions with Nature. She was vehemently opposed to the concept of Nature that is red in tooth and claw, often scolding me for spending too much time watching the 'violence' of a lion hunt on a Discovery Channel documentary and reminding me that 'exposure' to such images can only desensitize the mind. I can only imagine how strongly she would have reacted to that first sweeping order of the Supreme Court on the mass removal of street dogs from Delhi and its use of cowboy language such as "...when it's time to shoot, shoot".

As for me, I am one of them. The kind that MUST pet and talk gibberish to every friendly dog everywhere, street or otherwise and peek into "Beware of Dog" signed houses just to glance at the pre-announced canine resident. I identify with dogs - identify with their diverse personalities, their toxic optimism for life and their relentlessly dumb sniffy curiosity. There is hardly a time after chicken at a roadside eatery that I won't carry the bones in my pajama pocket in hopes of meeting a canine wanderer and I know each house in my neighbourhood only by the name of the dog that lives there, not the family name. I agree with stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais when he says "I do not believe in God but I believe in dog." A lot like my Dad was, I am obsessed with dogs including my two adoptees at home. And a lot like Baba, my love for dogs is very different from how my Maa loved dogs.

This is because I understand why some people are terrified of dogs and can partially understand that fear too. As someone not fond of dogs once said, to him dogs looked like "a fireburst of emotions armed with lots of teeth". The ominous growl that my own dog lets loose when he thinks I am moving his filled food plate is proof enough that there is enough of the wolf in there amidst the buffoonery and cuteness. On morning walks with my dogs, I watch their alliances and rivalries wax and wane, a canine Game of Thrones if you will. I am well aware of their irrational dislikes (the clip-clop of horses, society's exploited rag-pickers and the rumble of distant autorickshaws amongst others). As much as it makes my blood boil, the timid queries of "Kaatega toh nahin? (He won't bite, right?" when my happy mutts are just walking down the road (leashed!) probably have its roots in some long-ago acquired trauma or a brainwashed worldview that all dogs can do and will do is bite you without rhyme or reason.

My aim is NOT to make a case for those irresponsible citizens who dump buckets of waste food in neighbourhoods outside their own fostering gangs of semi-wild dogs while they themselves disappear into gated colonies having earned their punya (good karma). They are wrong. My aim is NOT to make light of the horrors that delivery boys, early morning service providers, children of street-dwellers and senior citizens have faced due to (a) bad dog ownership or (b) aggressive dog packs. Such incidents have no place in civil society and every effective step needed to be taken must be. As someone with long personal experience of dealing with the canine universe and a veteran of two dog bites myself, the only deposition I am making is that certain draconian measures to address the 'dog problem' seem to me more about picking soft targets and defenceless scapegoats (scapedogs?) as opposed to handling the larger societal issues that the 'dog problem' is bringing to the fore.

For starters, the burgeoning street dog population is a direct result of notoriously corrupt Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme non-implementation and extreme mismanagement of garbage by our municipalities, both of which can go hand-in-hand to dramatically reduce the number of dogs on our streets. Clean cities and a natural reduction in canine populations - win-win couldn't have a better example. Add to that the simple fact that it would be the friendlier dogs which are likely to be caught up in any sweeping catch and imprison forever judgement implementation (now thankfully overruled). The wilder dogs on the other hand would turn ever more aggressive and reticent compounding the issue. The logistical nightmare or even practical feasibility of housing and sustaining the results of a "Catch 'em all" drive I am not even getting into.

Then there is the slightly thornier issue of "Community dogs" where I have had disagreements with even fellow pet-dog owners. Are community dogs even a thing, they ask? Aren't all dogs supposed to be attached to a human and/or human family who take FULL responsibility? If Singapore can get rid of its street dogs, shouldn't we aim to too? We are not Singapore, I tell them. In certain matters, I hope we will never be. I deeply regret that they grew up without the animal joy of knowing a 'community dog' in their own neighbourhoods. In our country lined with difficult days and half-born dreams, those happy faces, those familiar wags waiting for you OUTSIDE your home - free spirits that like you but do not bind you, bring the neighbourhood together like only dogs can. Yes, those dogs do ride on harsh fate but in the right neighbourhood, there is always shelter from rain and in return, for many unable to afford the privilege of keeping a dog a canine balm for pain.

They disturb your beauty sleep, you say, barking at random hours at things unseen? Tens of thousands of years together but beyond their basic motivations, we only know their universe as we would know a djinn's. For all we know, they may be barking at fellow djinns, spirits of uncertain provenance and intentions from a time before we had the security of four walls and concrete jungles. An age-old partnership based on trust, space and mutual understanding that you can now happily jettison but they cannot. 

Not all of the dogs came into the cave next to the crackling fire of your ancestors as they were torn between the call of the wild and the urge of gratitude to the leftover feeders snoring inside. In Delhi, they now have acquired names like Sheru, Laddoo, Rani and Tommy but to them we all owe them a debt going back to a time when history was not yet history or even prehistory, we the Yudhishtirs, Tomars, Tughlaqs, and Supreme Court judges of this mega-metropolis. As the blood moon rises tonight in Delhi and the eclipse takes over, think of all the complaints we make these days of having 'lost connection with nature'. Can we afford to be so relentless in our march to so-called progress that we sweep away even this most basic of bindings to where we began? Can we concretize our hearts against these very good djinns?

Good Djinns

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