Street Dogs of India

I’ve read that were you to turn all the dogs of the world loose allowing them to breed at random that within a few generations an animal of about 35 pounds with short brown hair would become the dominant breed. The writer lived in the temperate zone and apparently expected dogs to become extinct in any but the lands of warm weather. However that may be, that 35 pound animal is a pretty good description of the Indian street dog. When you come from the West and have seen what we call a stray, to look at these eastern dogs who haven’t strayed anywhere except into the world without anyone to care from them, it is surprising to see how challenging it is to live. Scrounging will feed a dog but when you see their ribs beneath the mange, you know that these dogs were not born under a lucky star.

The first dog I saw in India upon landing at night at Calcutta International in 1967…well I’m not sure if it was a dog or not. In the dim runway lights and the random landing lights of taxiing aircraft, I saw an animal of 35 pounds etc. but with ears of a jackal. Since I’ve not seen a dog with ears that size it may have been some species of wild dog. (Update: India does have jackals and hyenas as well.)

As I’ve written before, garbage is informally deposited sometime out of sight and sometime in plain view and the birds, monkeys, cows, and dogs scavenge. On the earlier trip, my wife and I stopped the holy city of Varanase, site of the burning ghats. Hindus advance in their quest for heaven by dieing, being cremated, and have their ashes being deposited in the River Ganges at the holy city. The burning ghats along the river look to stay busy round the clock, round the year. A huge amount of wood is needed to burn the corpses and that all has to be brought from upriver. If you operate a crematorium, obviously you want to get the most burned body for the least logs of firewood. Like the compact car that Tata is about to unleash on the road system in India, the operator builds compact pyres. There is much in the way of ritual in boiling off the water and burning off the volatiles of a dead person before you finally reduce it to ash. But the operator moves at his quickest when a long body drops a foot or toe out of a short pyre. The dogs, several of them move in quickly, for what must be an awfully hot piece of meat. Seeing the dogs run off with part of the departed upsets the family and while the Untouchable, who is officiating over the cremation may behave as arrogantly as alpha monkey, he makes a genuine effort to reach the body part before the dogs get to it. It’s a matter of professionalism.

Another time somewhere in central northern India where I sat in a third class train carriage with my elbow sticking out in the air conditioner – the open window, we’d stopped for lunch and a fellow passenger was returning to the carriage with what might have been masala dosai. Image a piece of thin bread perhaps 18 inches across folded and holding some spicy potato salad. Both of us had to imagine that because a raven stooped out of thin air, grabbed a piece of lunch and struck the man in the face and me on my elbow with his wingtips. We both jumped back but the dog, which had been more aware of what was going on than humans lost in reveries, jumped forward to grab the falling masala dosai. The dog and the bird had done this before. They were a team. And neither dog nor raven seemed bothered by the spice.

Upon returning to India in 2007 I used the dogs as a measure of prosperity. They seemed to be eating better. The hair was still short, often made shorter by mange, but the ribs were tucked beneath a lay of fat.

On arriving in 2007 in Goa, the gray-maned crows glided over the state capital, Panaji. I wondered if they were the cousin of the masala dosai robber or whether I had confused ravens with crows. The cows were about but the dogs were always of interest. I had a question. How do they survive in this traffic? When I was a child in Texas, dogs ran lose and just about every one of them died by being slammed by a bumper of a fast moving car. Sled dogs in Alaska had no idea how to behave in traffic whether in harness or out for a lark on their own, courtesy of a snap that froze open. Driving through any town in Queensland was an adventure straight out of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” I was the bomber pilot and the Luftwaffe fighting canines strafed my attempt to complete my mission. I was advised by other drivers dealing with the packs of maniacs that one locked his foot onto the accelerator so as not to change speed and steer straight down the street. Dogs growled at the wheels and disappeared before the bumper. You never needed to honk. The dogs’ barking announced your location at any moment. But in India here I was in some of the heaviest traffic I’d ever experienced and the dogs navigated just fine although some move with a permanent limp. Of course the street is as Darwinian as the East African savanna. I saw the survivors but how did they become the fittest?

When life crowds the roads, dogs file behind pedestrians. In order to run down the dog, you have to take out a few humans as well. Another island of safety is directly before or behind a parked car. Of course the dog must be aware that the car may move. But no one will ram a parked truck. I can’t remember if I’ve seen the dogs trail a cow or not. The cows have a cabinet-level office that protects them from extermination. The dogs have no such political pull. It could be that they don’t make up enough of a constituency. And so cow, motorcycle, truck, auto, 1.2 billion Indians and I jam the street. As you probably know, in India they maintained the British perversity of driving on the left but it’s not something you want to bet life or limb on. Whether it is modernity or Indian creative driving, traffic may come at you on the left, the right, dead center, or from behind. And should there be a break in the traffic, vehicle operators use this opportunity “to blow out the carbon.” I never saw a speed limit in sign in an urban area. The government has better ways of spending its money. (Another update: there are no urban speed limits. And the Germans thought they invented the limitless limit!)

If you talk dog it’s a natural urge to reach down and scratch a dog behind the ear. With no program for vaccinating you keep your hands in your pocket. Should a dog show up with an owner, then you get a chance to talk dog with the owner and talk dog with your fingertips in the dog’s fur. There are two pettable dogs - a little white dog who is an official greeter at the hospital and a teacher at Kodaikanal International School who owns a dog that is always leashed in the street. Hanging out with a dog is good for the soul. With the street dogs as with dogs Eskimos raise, you can avoid dog talk. The dog doesn’t expects it but then there is the exception.

Shabarat, a manager of a shop on Anna Salais, and I sat on the front steps planning his future, increasing his skill with English, and comparing our views of the world. He has a guy working for him who is called an assistant primarily because he (the employee) often needs assistance. So the assistant interrupted us for an uncountable time and Shabarat jumped up to go put out some little fire that the guy set. I was left to contemplate the passing traffic when a dog, possibly over one year old but not beyond two, walked up to where I sat. This was not your usual street denizen with short hair. He looked more like a sled dog than an off breed jackal. I’d seen him several times hanging out in what passes for a sidewalk café. The hair and mask showed a different ancestry. He did not belong to one of Kodaikanal’s older lineages nor did he behave like a street dog.

So he came over, tail wagging, and put his head in my lap. When I left the States, I had a string of Thou-shalt-nots a good deal longer than Moses’ list. My list included not eating salads, eating nothing from a food stand on the street, don’t drink the water. Certainly I was not going to pet any of these dogs. Here I had a near-grown pup flopped down beside me, cadging pets. He had a streak of lube down his back and his fur was gritty. He was a mess. He lay down beside where I sat and rolled his head over in my lap. Half his right ear was missing. The wound had healed. He particularly liked my working my fingers in behind either ear.

By now I ran through the scenarios of a mad dash by taxi to Madurai to get rabies shots and was now into the question of how can I get shuck of this dog? He gently gnawed on my hand and then my leg. He found where I keep my wallet in my front right pocket and chewed on that for a while. It is hard to believe that this pup came off the street. He must have been abandoned.

Shabarat came out of the store, saw the dog curled up against me and jumped back as if out of disgust. The young man is planning to immigrate to London. If he is to fit in, I’d have to talk to him about an Englishman’s attitude toward his dog.

I backed up. It could be that the dog would lose interest. He knew a dog whisperer when he heard one. He came forward. I got up to walk into the shop. What kind of street dog comes into shops? This one does! Shabarat was about to have a fit! I backed out of the shop, blocking and pushing the dog with my legs. There’s nothing to do but leave so I shouted a good bye and walked off toward the hotel and the sidewalk café where I’ve seen the dog lounging with the Israelis. He might drop off there for a visit.

Anna Salai is a narrow street that runs through, I guess, what could be called the middle of town. When drivers right angle park both automobiles and “two wheelers (motorcycles,) then double park behind that combination, the street becomes even narrower to become a one way of about fifteen feet wide. When the traffic ahead of the driver clears out and it becomes “his way,” the driver hits the gas and runs for it. I’m walking on the right supposedly facing the on-coming traffic, which doesn’t exist if you are on a one-way street with the one-way switching about every minute. The dog trots ahead of me and a little to the left. I’m walking as close as I can to the double parked cars. A white car hits the gas as it passes me and catches the dog in the left shoulder, spinning him around and at the same time snaps the left back leg. I don’t know what I hollered but there were several of us who saw what happened and had something to say. With the dog turned head to tail, he limped, yelping with every breath, back in the direction we had come. I walked on and followed the car to where it parked. The passengers got out. They were surely upset and then the driver got out, palms up saying in Tamil of which I don’t know how to say hello, “He ran right out in front of me!” And I said in English to the driver and passengers, who may know how to hello but not good bye, “Had it been a kid… You are the one responsible!”

They walked back the way we came, I walked on toward the hotel, and in the distance I could hear the dog yelping. I felt like a rat curled up in my belly and died but why? I needed to put things in perspective. What’s a dog’s welfare worth?

Just before the dog joined me on the steps of Shabarat’s shop, I’d been reading in The Hindu (February 10) an editorial on how the Israelis have fenced in Gaza, disallowing food, medicine, fuel, and other necessities. This is in retribution for the Hamas rocket attacks across the border. The editorial’s statistical source is an Israeli human rights group called Btselem. The rockets have killed 13 Israelis since their introduction in 2000. In 2007 two Israelis were killed. In the last two years Israeli “security forces” have killed 816 Palestinians, nearly a quarter of them kids. For this January add another 60 people dead. The point being that I wasn’t in a good humor when I began slipping along the bumpers and fenders of the parked and double parked cars. So with Israel’s killing at that rate, what’s the worth of the life of a stray dog? I’m walking in sunshine, breathing mountain air but the world is as rotten as the surface of this street with little thought of design, no maintenance, and jammed with us. I will be glad when I can no longer hear the dog.

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