
Some wear a forbidding, melancholic countenance. Yet
others, cheerful, lap up the awe and
rank.
Roads and parks are their preferred haunt. Street markets fair game.
Chubby and drowsy, they waltz around in the livery of their grey fur. A power nap is a right. Any spot will do.
Theirs is no dog’s life. For the dogs of India, life is a regal picnic.
Busy roundabouts. Thronged pathways. Their comfort is guaranteed.
Tuk tuks show homage. Motorists oblige. Volunteers offer treat after treat after treat. Their appetites are on fire.
The overzealous wrap favourite political party T-shirts around the paunch midriffs.
They roam as they choose. The lavish care has gone to their heads. These are the lazy street dogs of India.
A far cry from their street-smart, harried, starved, abused cousins in the dog-eat-dog dump heaps of Nairobi.
Man’s best friend at his laziest best. The years of pampered life has morphed into a major national security challenge.
But the sloth is the handiwork of Hinduism, which believes dogs are sacred animals, often associated with loyalty and protection.
Only last month, Delhi High Court judge Subramonium Prasad observed, after a petitioner brought a complaint, that: “People are coming in vans and feeding these dogs. That’s why these animals are not going anywhere and becoming too territorial. They tend to attack anyone who comes in their territory.”
In 2023, two brothers aged seven and five were mauled to death by a pack of mongrels in a suburb of Delhi.
As a result, India is grappling with a gigantic rabies problem, with 36 per cent of the rabies deaths in the world in a country of 60 million stray dogs.
And to illustrate the gravity of the mess, a prominent Delhi tea company executive, Parag Desai, 49, fell while running away from a pack of bloodthirsty dogs and subsequently died in hospital.
A desperate Delhi High Court bench only in November 2024 expressed its frustration over the perils posed by stray dogs in public places and sprawling parks.
“The city has been taken over. Nowhere in the world will you find a whole city taken over by dogs and monkeys,” Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Gedela are quoted in the Times of India of late 2024 as saying?
“Today it is impossible to walk on the main streets. Try taking your pet out for a walk, and the strays will attack you.”
The judges took issue with misguided public sympathy for dogs and
monkeys. As the debate rages, will it
be a case of dogs bark but the caravan
moves on?