“Death begets death”, or at least
harm/injury does so – This is the nature of nature. But what if? The question
lies so because Mother Nature plays her own tricks and everything changes the
course. Whether it be life or death. So, the question is what if the nature is only for a few selected
species? And if it is so, is it right or does it need changes? This brings me
to mention fact that weather a person or not, no one is treated fare. There is
something gravely wrong going around. No one cares. Even if they do, they don’t
have the strength to stand against it. You can decide for yourself what is good
or bad. But what about the other person’s perspective? Don’t you think that not
considering their views is not alright? That one must give a shit to all the probable
happenings.
Born in the month of October to a
homeless mother, the fate of the newly born was sealed to a ‘stray’. He had
siblings. He was different though. He didn’t know that his life was totally
going to change in a few months. This was because of the young Samaritan who
had shifted recently to the locality. Preparing for the toughest battle in the
country, with an iron fist in the feathered gloves, the Samaritan came as a ray
of hope in the cloud of darkness. His extreme natures brought him to the light
among the actors of the society, viz., anger and love.
With the arrival of the season of
lifelessness, came the need to sustain: sustain life. The compassion of a
rational being will always tell one to comfort others. So did him. Blended with
puppy love and need of the hour, the Samaritan was tempted to provide a home to
the homeless. The newly born thus found its new home. A square meal twice a
day, mostly bread and milk and a warm comfy bed in the chilly night was what
the puppy just needed. Even if that didn’t make him domestic, it just made him
feel loved and cared about. He felt special to the care of the Samaritan and
his friends. No one knew that such a deed, which gave a new life to the puppy,
will lead to his demise. People gave him names. But Faizy is what we considered
to stick to. The coining of the name is yet another story to be narrated
another time.
Months rolled by and so did Faizy’s
age. He grew up to be a strong hairy dog with a bark of a hound. The locks of
his hair were fluffy and dusty. He was characterized by his non violent nature.
He never got involved in any street fights. In the mean time his mother grew
old and got crazy. The MCD sterilized her and brought her back to the neighborhood.
His siblings too got older and stronger. Rumors had it that the four members
were united with the other members of the family making them seven of a kind.
Interestingly, it happened during the breeding season.
Meanwhile there was increasing
differences between the Samaritan and his friends. Innocence of a child is
seldom remembered once it has stopped being a child. The one who has a
domesticated special breed dog back at his home often asked the Samaritan to
despise Faizy; he was the one who had coined the name. Argument placed by him
was that the strays don’t give a damn to the love and affection shown to them.
They just want their mouth to be fed. They will always choose the man to be the
master who feeds them. However, with time it started to seem to me a false
notion as Faizy never turned his back on the Samaritan even after letting him
out to the real world for months till this date, the date of his death.
Today is 11th of May
2014. The day which affected our lives a lot. For us, the day started at 11 in
the morning, when we woke up owing to fine cooling of the cooler which made our
bladders to expand and thus gave us the wake up call. The next few hours were
the usual, having a cup of tea with a puff of cigarette; not to mention the
word of caution by our friend who having had quit smoking recommends us not to
smoke in the room. Then there were three hours of movie ‘Abraham Lincoln-the vampire hunter’ and lunch. We went out to have
some sticks more and a glass of cane juice each, when we heard that Faizy had
gone mad. He was accused of having bit 7 persons in 24 hours. The day being a
Sunday was a day of government holiday for the MCD. So, there was no question
of them coming and taking him for treatment or whatever they call so. The
Samaritan and I saw him and found him in the same friendly nature as he always
had been. As for me, who never had pets, did not have much affection for the
animals but had a humane feeling for them, insisted the situation to be taken
care of the next day by the MCD. We went back to our rooms. I was having a
telephonic conversation with an old friend, when the Samaritan called me, “Faizy
is dead. The people killed him”. I was not so taken aback at that time as when
I saw the body of Faizy lying by the roadside with people surrounding it. By
making my way to the body the ghastly act of inhumanity was revealed. Faizy was
neck tied to a wall with his upper limbs inside a manhole. He had a deep bruise
in his forehead which was bleeding profusely. Dark red, semi coagulated blood
drew a line on the road up to his muzzle. Unconscious to the pain of broken
bones and bloody head, the body lied still among the large number of merry
making spectators rejoicing to the senseless, inhuman, painful killing of a
speechless animal. Someone from the mob shouted, “It’s still alive”. Another
voice came, “kill it”. Dumbstruck by such an act, I noticed the sorrowful eyes
of the Samaritan. He tried calling the ambulance from the veterinary hospital,
but was in vain. He then asked one of us to bring a vehicle and me to bring a
piece of cloth to cover and carry his body. Within a few minutes the
conveyance, a three wheeler arrived. I and the Samaritan picked him up and took
it to the hospital. On our way, he cried out loud in pain and agony. The passersby
glanced at our vehicle. He gave sudden powerful jerks with his leg, as I was
holding them tight. Out of the many things going on in my mind, I thought of
the ‘the beauty and the beast’ as many beautiful young ladies passed by. The
cry of pain and the look of a beauty mixed up my feelings totally. Another was
the fear of getting bit, in case he could reach up to my hand and holding him
firmly and not to cause much distress to him. We reached the hospital in 20
minutes. The lady doctor prescribed a pain killer, an IV of 40 ml and an
anesthetic after few minutes. Close examinations by the doctor and an X-ray
report revealed that he had two broken spinal bones in the neck and a cranium
full of blood from internal bleeding. The chances of survival were narrow and
the doctor recommended euthanasia. The Samaritan signed an undertaking saying ‘I
hereby authorize the destruction of the body of the animal subject to brain
dead or rare chance of surviving…’ Sodium thiopental (Barbital) was
injected to his body intravenously, sedating him and then leading to
respiratory and cardiac arrest respectively.
This points out that surely
something is not happening right in this world. The world has become result
oriented. Humanity hardly matters. Besides all the other queries, the thing
which still rings in one’s mind are the questions; the questions of ethical
reasoning, without knowing the mental and physical parameters of an animal. The
questions based on mere general understanding that if a dog bites many,
specially a stray one, it has gone mad. The questions are: Whether the animal
be restrained and retained before hurting it? If it’s to be done, then how? Or
should it be killed? Out of the many reasons propounded by the people, one was
that the animal was injured a few days back and a mistreatment by someone must
have pissed it off to bite others. Well, do you go and kill your friend if he
is disturbed for some reason and acts irrationally? No, you don’t. Instead, you
try to comfort him and listen to his problems. Just because an animal couldn’t
talk doesn’t mean that the one and only reason is madness. There are
specialists to take care of such cases, doctors, NGOs, the MCD. But why to take
pain to call someone, when one can be a community hero by doing social service
of killing the mad animal. Yet another reason cited by someone who had
experiences with dogs was that it must have bit the people out of rage of his
increased heat in the season of breeding and its inability to breed with a
female- As I have said already that Faizy was known for his non-violent
character and it takes a fight to mate with a female at least among the strays.
But above all the reasons, I think love and care killed him. Not finding the
special attention once he used to have as a puppy from the Samaritan and his
friends, at least not to that extent led him to a path of hatred and
loneliness, resulting in extreme steps.
