A Poignant Story

Karuppan could not get rid of the images of the event that happened in the morning. He sat for his lunch and tried his best to get rid of the grueling images that had on their own triggered a slide show on his cerebrum-monitor. Four men in ugly clothes with staves in the hands of each of them that had wiry, elongated, circular iron string with a diameter of thirty centimetres, used as a hooking device to pull in animals like dogs and pigs by letting them connivingly put their snout in it were marching on his street when he was on his way, on his bicycle to buy some screws for the hinges of his impaired toilet door, that was in the process of being mended with the assistance of a carpenter.

Karuppan was followed by 'Vellai' on his way to the ironmonger. 'Vellai', which in Tamil means 'White' was one of the street dogs that had been patronised by Karuppan and his mother. It was the usual habit of the Vellai to follow Karuppan wherever he went and it had its own territorial boundary beyond which it would not follow him and return to his house. As Karuppan was on his way back from the ironmonger he found the four men cleaving the snout of the Vellai with a bamboo staff and it was hollering and writhing in pain and was wringing its body to escape the tight wrench of the grip. Its mouth was sanguine with blood squirting out and the men had managed to tie its legs together with a band and were on the task of tying its snout. The sight made Karuppan jittery. He had seen many carcasses of dogs on his travel, some of them were decapitated, some of the skulls of the carcasses of the dogs were crushed totally to have been one with the layer of the tarmac, some of them lay with a gaping mouth exposing their horrendous fangs and some of them lay quiet as if they were sleeping. He stopped there on the spot where gathered a large number of children watching the act with awe and anguish.

He cried out to one of the men to stop the act and who they were to inflict such suffering on Vellai. One of them told him that they were men from the local municipality and they were catching male dogs at the behest of some superior authority who got public complaint of proliferation of street dogs and unchecked increase in their menace and number. PETA an organisation that fights cruelty to animals strongly opposes the killing of street dogs. Hence the government came with an ingenious idea to make all dogs impotent by ingecting some venomous liquid or castrating them. It was for that that Vellai was caught. It was very unfortunate to have been caught as its brethren were prescient of such ominous act and had found shelter somewhere. Karuppan stood tongue tied as did not know what to do in that circumstance. He wanted them to release Vellai forcibly but the mentioning of an authority made him think twice. He was not afraid of any consequence, how ever he had been a conscientious follower of the dictum of society.

Karuppan was anguished by his idleness and felt humiliated by his act. He thought he was rebellious and could oppose any body if the need arose. He failed miserably that morning in his appraisal of himself. A few minutes later he thought that he should have made them release Vellai, as the recrimination got entrenched by the sight of some of the street dogs (of course male dogs) some of them were patronised by him roamed the street after making themselves quite clear of getting themselves caught. As he sat before his food, the thought that came to him was the puerile attitude of humans who consider seeing four or five dogs on a street is a threat to their safe existence. And making them impotent is one of the holy things in the world to do. Whereas an issue-less couple spends a lot of money to beget a child, being not happy with the status of not contributing to the exploding population. He felt more pain as he was responsible for its plight. Had he not gone out, it would not have followed him and would have dozed off in a remote corner of the street. He wanted to go to the local municipality office to check whether there was such an operation in vogue as he suspected the men. He wanted them to produce some supportive evidence but they told him that the van was waiting on the corner of the street. He had nothing to do except hoping its return as he had believed that they would only castrate Vellai.