It’s amazing how one sight you saw when you were a kid can have more impact on you than your critical years in school or whatever. When I was about five years old, a 'caged' truck came and some people caught all the dogs in my neighborhood. (Rajaji Nagar , Bangalore). They yelped like I would if my eyeballs were touched up with cigarette butts. When they were sitting comfortably in the truck’s grilled enclosure, they were silenced, peering at passersby with gleaming soulful eyes.
My brother told me they were going to be electrocuted in some place. I imagined a special place just for killing dogs. Dogs would be thrown into a machine and feel lots and lots and lots of pain and finally die. I knew even then that it was because they spread rabies and all that. BUT there had to be some other way!!!!. The solution surely was not in just killing them so brutally. This was way back in 1991 and even bear trainers would walk the roads of Bangalore, their living sources of livelihood were often bleeding while being forced to do ridiculous tricks. Their small eyes looked so helpless; parakeets, monkeys, elephants.
Which perverted mind will see an innocent adorable dog walk on the road, minding his own business, aim a stone and laugh at his pain??
I don’t know. It’s always bothered me. While my friends were on their way to becoming engineers, lawyers, doctors, I always confidently said, I want to be an environmental activist. Now in the real sense, I don’t know how but I want to find a voice in me.