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Journalism of Courage
Sit! Stay! Heel! Come! These are the basic commands that every pet dog needs to be taught to obey. But often, it’s easier said than done. My last dog, Wag, a very chalta-phurta Labrador, applied cunning psychology to get his way. When I held up my arm (like a traffic cop) and ordered him to ‘stay’, he would sit down and look at me, waiting for the release command (come!). I would naturally try and make him stay for as long as possible, and he wanted to sit and stay for as little as possible. So, he would shift around on his bottom, giving me the impression that he was about to get up and wander off. Before he could thus blatantly disobey such a direct order from his superior commanding officer, I’d give him the release command and he would run over with a triumphant bark. But the canny fellow realised that he could get me to give him the release command as soon as he shifted his bottom — so began doing that almost as soon as I ordered him to sit! He was training me!
At the other end of this spectrum are dogs trained to turn from slavering attack dogs into lap dogs at the utterance of a single word — and, in a sense, that is as frightening. One can only imagine what might happen if we had the power to do that to ourselves (which has probably already been done by the sweeter regimes in the world).
Even so, I think we all need some basic training as to how to deal with the animals we are likely to encounter in our daily lives: be they cats, rats, dogs, monkeys, snakes, lizards, cockroaches, cows, bulls, elephants and even leopards. It needs to be taught in schools — and it will be more useful than a lot of the other rubbish we make our kids cram up.
My personal mantra is to keep an eye out when animals are around and don’t interfere with them. Most likely, they’ll leave you alone. On one occasion, (foolishly) I walked through a gang of around 50 assorted rhesus macaques blocking a narrow path on The Ridge: I avoided eye contact but watched them as they watched me — some even moving away slightly as I walked through. No damage was done, just a few grunts. But another time, while walking in the garden at home, I rounded a bend and came across another lot, taking them (and myself) by surprise. One of the leaders made a grab at me and the other teenage thugs in the group suddenly also got brave. I yelled and kicked out and they backed away. I now walk armed and scan the horizons!
Gangs of monkeys and dogs can be dangerous: the former if they suspect you are carrying bananas for some other group and the latter if you are moving briskly and their chase/hunting instincts kick in. Then they can be as lethal as any lynch mob who suspects you of cattle-lifting.
Animal lovers will, of course, say, ‘How can you ignore these poor starving creatures (mainly stray cats and dogs and monkeys)?’ I too have faced the same dilemma. Whenever I make chicken soup, all the cats in the complex line up neatly outside the door waiting for the bones. And as it is winter, I’m having chicken soup pretty frequently, so they’re now turning up at every mealtime. One even climbed through the exhaust fan outlet and got into the kitchen. Another shoots inside the house the moment the door is opened. And yes, they are thin and probably hungry, but by feeding them like this I am making them dependent — and that’s something even their parents wouldn’t have wanted for them! They’d lose the ability or desire to take down pigeons and what will they teach their kittens?
With monkeys, of which there are far too many, we simply need to stop throwing them parties every day. Once the khana-peena, naach-gaana stops, their population will gradually decline. Again, by feeding them namkeen, and parnathas, we are weaning them away from their natural diet — and their ability to find it.
As for rats, (which sometimes scuttle out of the oven when it’s turned on!) we trap them and release them in the cemetery next door, letting the owlets deal with them. But a mouse once perched itself on the sideboard and watched Ratatouille with me, with evident interest, so I just let it enjoy the show — what else could I do?
Leopards seem to have plans to settle in Gurugram, Faridabad and Noida (in this part of the country), which we usurped from them and are causing a lot of panic. Here is where our training really needs to be applied. Instead of forming hysterical mobs, chasing them from gully to gully, which can be lethal for them and us, we need to sit, and stay and wait for them to decide that this is not the property they wanted after all — and go back to the nearby forests they had come from. Mumbaikars mostly settled their issues with leopards living in the neighbouring Borivali National Park: capturing and relocating the animals far away backfired terribly (the relocated leopards were dangerously traumatised and just came back, causing havoc en route.) Now I think the people just keep out of their way and ensure there are no easy pickings for them.
Wherever you live In India, a little bit of jungleland will always be present and we need to know how to live alongside it.
