The Kolkata Report # 11
Anyone who knew my family when I was a child, will remember my mother's exasperation with my obsession with animals. Actually, what I have is a genetic 'dosh' (fault), according to my late mother. It started, in the recorded history of our family, with my paternal grandmother Sarala Sundari Gupta, and is carried down to my son, via my dad Ajit and then myself. I am glad that the genetic defect manifests in many others in our extended families, thanks to our common mater familias ancestor.
Being a sickly child, with imminent death hovering above my head on several occasions, my mother relented and allowed me what happiness I could derive from my zoophilia. Indeed, by the time I was about 8 years old, we had a veritable mini zoo at our home in Katihar, in Bihar. It helped that we lived in a large government bungalow with huge grounds, where the various animals were variously scattered and housed, far away from my zoophobic mother. However, she became, by default and great unwillingness, the zoo keeper, even while getting rather fond of our four dogs and the rhesus monkey. Her interest and oversight of the other animals was much reduced, the animals being cared for by other keepers. The animals, namely a cheetal deer, some 50 rabbits and some 30 guinea pigs, 3 cows, 1 rooster and 4 hens, and a large pNuti fish that was still alive when brought into our kitchen, and whose life was spared due to my tearful entreaties, lived a comfortable life, and I spent many happy hours with them until I was packed off to a residential school in the Himalayan mountains, in the hopes of becoming healthier.
Then came the much needed downsizing of our menagerie, with my mother gladly presiding over the division and rehoming of the various animals. We moved to the big city of Calcutta, with just the dogs and the hens and the rooster.
Eventually, we were left with just one dog, when we shifted into a much busier locality in Calcutta, and that too, was one that I brought from from a neighbor's home, as she was an unwanted puppy. That dog, Tippy Gupta lived to a ripe old age and won the hearts of the entire family due to her almost impeccable manners.
Well, with Tippy at home, we really didn't have room for more animals, other than the misadventure we had with some roosters. I believe I wrote about that much earlier.
Even so, I was like a magnet for the stray dogs of our 'para' or locality with at least three of them, later named Haripada, Kalipada and Jagaddhatri (Jaggi), who accompanied me to the bus stop in the mornings to see me off to school and accompany me home from the bus stop in the evenings. How they figured out my schedule, I don't know. But I am happy and comforted that they did. So I sallied forth with these 'smiling' dogs, their tails wagging and an occasional happy 'woo ooo ooo' doggie call. They scrounged around the Lake Market and were quite well nourished. In Bengali, we say 'Hrishto, Pushto' (lively, and well fed).
They passed on when I left Calcutta, and their descendants are probably still around.
In my current home, several blocks away from my old home, there were two black and white 'street dogs', very likely brothers, until a few years ago. Now there is just one; I believe the other succumbed to a leg injury caused by a car, when he failed to get up quickly from a deep slumber, being taken right in the road. This sibling is rather more cautious; preferring to sleep in the safety of a nearby roadside eatery, at times sleeping on the very counter top where food would be served a few hours later. There is a vagrant, who does odd jobs for the eatery and sleeps there at night. He loves the dog and they snuggle on winter nights, in a local version of a One Dog Night.
The eatery also supports other kinds of wildlife, the chief being huge rats, that have burrowed large tunnels underground nearby. They clamber all over the place, scrounging on leftovers and foods thrown away. The city of Kolkata has not been able to remove these illegal eateries and other pavement hawkers due to a lack of political will, afraid of 'uprooting the poor' and of denting their vote banks.
Then along with the rats, come an army of feral cats.Naturally. The Circle of Life, after all, demands that prey are balanced by predators.
In my old house, a short distance away, there were two tomcats that fought for their turfs, inexplicably on a an asbestos roof top of a small shed. Their caterwauling and fighting was especially intense during the mating season. They didn't care if people threw buckets of water on them to stop them, which they did from neighboring roof tops, The fighting would end when one hurled the other off from the roof. There was a Jamrul (rose apple) tree by that roof top. The next morning one could go and pick up a few that had fallen when the cats fought.
Yesterday, I went to the Kalighat Temple, as my faith demands I do, on a bare foot pilgrimage in the last 200 feet. There was a strange mewing of a cat from somewhere in the car. It was especially insistent and distressed when I got into the car. My driver said he had been hearing it for some time in the morning. He couldn't trace where the mewing was coming from.
I got out of the car and began to look under the chassis. We could find nothing even though the cat continued its piteous cries. As happens famously in Kolkata, within minutes, a small crowd assembled, and began to help in tracing the cat; to no avail.
We decided to drive on and finish our errands. After having been to two places about 10 miles apart, the cat mewing off and on (obviously it was still alive and somehow enduring the extreme heat of the day), we stopped for lunch. A new search party emerged from the bystanders willing and able to assist the driver.
This time around, the cat was found, lodged in the space behind the mudguard of the front passenger wheel. It required a little assistance to free it, and it bounded away. It was a young, white cat, unharmed, as was evident in the way it raced away.
I was thankful that it was unhurt. But at night, I lay awake, thinking of the terror it had endured and that it was so very far away from home. So it is for so many creatures and people all over the world.
May 18, 2018
Anyone who knew my family when I was a child, will remember my mother's exasperation with my obsession with animals. Actually, what I have is a genetic 'dosh' (fault), according to my late mother. It started, in the recorded history of our family, with my paternal grandmother Sarala Sundari Gupta, and is carried down to my son, via my dad Ajit and then myself. I am glad that the genetic defect manifests in many others in our extended families, thanks to our common mater familias ancestor.
Being a sickly child, with imminent death hovering above my head on several occasions, my mother relented and allowed me what happiness I could derive from my zoophilia. Indeed, by the time I was about 8 years old, we had a veritable mini zoo at our home in Katihar, in Bihar. It helped that we lived in a large government bungalow with huge grounds, where the various animals were variously scattered and housed, far away from my zoophobic mother. However, she became, by default and great unwillingness, the zoo keeper, even while getting rather fond of our four dogs and the rhesus monkey. Her interest and oversight of the other animals was much reduced, the animals being cared for by other keepers. The animals, namely a cheetal deer, some 50 rabbits and some 30 guinea pigs, 3 cows, 1 rooster and 4 hens, and a large pNuti fish that was still alive when brought into our kitchen, and whose life was spared due to my tearful entreaties, lived a comfortable life, and I spent many happy hours with them until I was packed off to a residential school in the Himalayan mountains, in the hopes of becoming healthier.
Then came the much needed downsizing of our menagerie, with my mother gladly presiding over the division and rehoming of the various animals. We moved to the big city of Calcutta, with just the dogs and the hens and the rooster.
Eventually, we were left with just one dog, when we shifted into a much busier locality in Calcutta, and that too, was one that I brought from from a neighbor's home, as she was an unwanted puppy. That dog, Tippy Gupta lived to a ripe old age and won the hearts of the entire family due to her almost impeccable manners.
Well, with Tippy at home, we really didn't have room for more animals, other than the misadventure we had with some roosters. I believe I wrote about that much earlier.
Even so, I was like a magnet for the stray dogs of our 'para' or locality with at least three of them, later named Haripada, Kalipada and Jagaddhatri (Jaggi), who accompanied me to the bus stop in the mornings to see me off to school and accompany me home from the bus stop in the evenings. How they figured out my schedule, I don't know. But I am happy and comforted that they did. So I sallied forth with these 'smiling' dogs, their tails wagging and an occasional happy 'woo ooo ooo' doggie call. They scrounged around the Lake Market and were quite well nourished. In Bengali, we say 'Hrishto, Pushto' (lively, and well fed).
They passed on when I left Calcutta, and their descendants are probably still around.
In my current home, several blocks away from my old home, there were two black and white 'street dogs', very likely brothers, until a few years ago. Now there is just one; I believe the other succumbed to a leg injury caused by a car, when he failed to get up quickly from a deep slumber, being taken right in the road. This sibling is rather more cautious; preferring to sleep in the safety of a nearby roadside eatery, at times sleeping on the very counter top where food would be served a few hours later. There is a vagrant, who does odd jobs for the eatery and sleeps there at night. He loves the dog and they snuggle on winter nights, in a local version of a One Dog Night.
The eatery also supports other kinds of wildlife, the chief being huge rats, that have burrowed large tunnels underground nearby. They clamber all over the place, scrounging on leftovers and foods thrown away. The city of Kolkata has not been able to remove these illegal eateries and other pavement hawkers due to a lack of political will, afraid of 'uprooting the poor' and of denting their vote banks.
Then along with the rats, come an army of feral cats.Naturally. The Circle of Life, after all, demands that prey are balanced by predators.
In my old house, a short distance away, there were two tomcats that fought for their turfs, inexplicably on a an asbestos roof top of a small shed. Their caterwauling and fighting was especially intense during the mating season. They didn't care if people threw buckets of water on them to stop them, which they did from neighboring roof tops, The fighting would end when one hurled the other off from the roof. There was a Jamrul (rose apple) tree by that roof top. The next morning one could go and pick up a few that had fallen when the cats fought.
Yesterday, I went to the Kalighat Temple, as my faith demands I do, on a bare foot pilgrimage in the last 200 feet. There was a strange mewing of a cat from somewhere in the car. It was especially insistent and distressed when I got into the car. My driver said he had been hearing it for some time in the morning. He couldn't trace where the mewing was coming from.
I got out of the car and began to look under the chassis. We could find nothing even though the cat continued its piteous cries. As happens famously in Kolkata, within minutes, a small crowd assembled, and began to help in tracing the cat; to no avail.
We decided to drive on and finish our errands. After having been to two places about 10 miles apart, the cat mewing off and on (obviously it was still alive and somehow enduring the extreme heat of the day), we stopped for lunch. A new search party emerged from the bystanders willing and able to assist the driver.
This time around, the cat was found, lodged in the space behind the mudguard of the front passenger wheel. It required a little assistance to free it, and it bounded away. It was a young, white cat, unharmed, as was evident in the way it raced away.
I was thankful that it was unhurt. But at night, I lay awake, thinking of the terror it had endured and that it was so very far away from home. So it is for so many creatures and people all over the world.
May 18, 2018
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