Image by Jeff Chabot from Pixabay
But strangely, I realised there were humans who loved us.
But I wondered whether it was superficial.
If they loved us so much, why did they not take us to their homes and
adopt us? All I got was a pat on my head sometimes and some kind words. But no
one was there to take us into their homes and make them part of their family,
like they did with the nice smelling, clean dogs that stayed in houses with
humans.
I am not saying we were well mannered. There were many among
us who would bark at everything that moved. Since I was big and muscular, I had
many friends and lot of other dogs took me as their boss for granted. One day I saw a dog named “paagal”, running
after a huge truck for reasons I could never fathom. A few other dogs would
also join him. He was named Paagal because he was actually a mad hatter. He ran
after anybody or anything that moved. When those silent electric two wheelers
started plying on the roads, Paagal and his gang ran after them too!
The truck incident proved very fatal for him one day because
he got too close to the wheels while barking and got trampled under them. He
was flattened within seconds and later when I took a closer look, I realised he
was plastered to the road. I barfed at the gory sight.
Strangely, I could follow almost everything what the humans
spoke, but they could not understand a single bark I said. “You are a cute
stinking dog and I love you lots,” said a pretty girl to me once. I replied
immediately, “Thank you, you are cute too. You look hot in your shorts. If you
love me so much why don’t you take me home, give me a bath, and give me good
food and a clean place to stay?” I asked her.
She did not bother to reply me. Neither did she take me
home. She just patted my head and walked away. Our numbers were growing too.
Since it is not the human way for us, everybody had sex with everybody. Brother,
sister, mother, father made no sense to us, like they do to humans.
There was never a single day when we were not cursed by some
human for defecating in the open. I could never understand that too. The dogs
with the humans too defecated in the open and no one bothered. I also realised
that in the human world too there were lot of poor and unwanted humans like the
way we were strays. One day I overheard a local politician telling his friend,
“it pays to keep them poor. They will always be our vote banks”. It was then it
struck me, maybe some humans wanted us to remain stray, not for our votes
obviously but maybe there was an ulterior motive. I could never understand
humans. Life in the gutter was a lot better than living a complicated life like
the humans!
(CONCLUDED)