There are many reasons that contribute to my liking of
street dogs.
They have always accompanied me, sometimes silently and
sometimes barking, on my midnight walks to home from an outing or a journey.
They have made me contemplate on the purpose of a job. They have made me
wonder, when they keep staring at an empty space while barking continually, if
they have seen something invisible to the human eye. They have seemed livelier
to me than most by-passers on the road.
But in Chennai, the tiny bubble of joy that slowly enlarged on
seeing a street dog having its noon nap or seeing a lazy dog trying to pull up a
fight with a lazier cow was always immediately popped by a sharp pang of
sadness.
Sadness on seeing their bony torsos.
Only on very few occasions have I
seen really healthy street dogs in Chennai.
Bangalore seems to be different, in a happier way, in that
sense. Most of the street dogs that roam around are very healthy – as a matter
of fact, a few are healthier than the domesticated ones that I see walking
along with their owners on breezy evenings.
And one need not dig deeply to uncover the reason for their
good health.
Most of the fast-food outlets (which are plenty in number
here) have a street dog waiting nearby like a cautious guard. And the majority
of the consumers of these outlets happen to be youngsters – boys and girls in
the same ratio and of the age bracket of 20-30 – who generally tend to be more
compassionate towards the street dogs than a father of a 5 year old or a mother
of a 10 year old. The bones that remain after the feasting of a gang of 5 boys
or a gang of 4 girls are dedicated happily to the dog waiting by their side.
The result – healthy dogs that walk the streets as symbols
of the younger generation’s
compassion.
****
“Bangalore ah
da?!! Ponnunga laam semmaya irupaangale!!” – This is a comment
I got to hear from most of my friends when they learnt that I was moving to Bangalore for my job.
Honestly speaking, I found myself agreeing with the comment after
having spent just a couple of days in the city. There was something different
to the members of the opposite gender in the city that made a new visitor take
notice. And I wanted to figure out the something different.
“Adingu! Azhagaa iruntha paathutu poga vendiyathu thane!
Ethuku da ithelaam oru vishayam nu discuss panni saavadikare?!!”, one of my
friends shouted at me when I asked him what he felt could be the reason for the
difference in the (additional) beauty exhibited by the women in Bangalore compared
to the women in Chennai. But unlike my friend, I believed
that understanding the reason would help me appreciate the beauty more, thanks
to Feynman’s views on beauty.
Weather, wider range of fashion/cosmetics, better cost of
living leading to more air-conditioned homes – these factors were some of the
many I considered to have had an additional impact on the opposite gender here.
But they did not seem to sum up satisfyingly.
And then one evening, as I was wandering about in a shopping
mall situated nearby my office, it hit me. I stopped walking and looked around
the mall.
Right. Left. Up. Down.
After I had finished observing the entire
mall, a smile appeared on my face.
In the entire mall, there were only two women above the age of
40 out of the 100 odd women shopping/roaming/picture-clicking. And there lay the reason.
Unlike Chennai where you get to see a majority of women in
the age category of above 35, Bangalore (in its entirety) functions like a very
huge mall filled abundantly with women in the ‘below 30’category.
And for innumerable pairs of ‘younger’ eyes of
the male gender, understanding the beauty that comes with age is a concept as
vague as dark matter.
****
Traffic jam.
If a poll was conducted among the residents of Bangalore as
to their least favorite thing about the city, I am pretty sure that the
aforementioned two words would emerge a clear winner by a very huge margin.
When a person drives a motorcycle very slowly, one of the
most common jokes made is that even a person on his feet would reach the
destination faster than the motorcycle rider. But very little did I know that
the vehicular traffic in a city could worsen things to an extent where,
literally, a person on his feet reaches a destination faster than a motorcycle
rider.
And the sad thing is that every person stuck in the traffic
jams realizes the reason behind it and yet does nothing to reduce its
severity.
One car for one man – if you wish to know the reason.
The
space that could have accommodated 4 motorcycles, thereby 4 men, is wasted on a
stylish looking four-wheeler carrying one occupant and 3 empty seats.
Will a man sacrifice his luxury for the benefit of others? I
have little doubt of what the answer would be.
And I would have no right whatsoever to advocate a
well-earning person to do away with his luxuries. He works. He earns. He buys.
The logic becomes as simple as that.
But then, what would be a solution to the problem of these
accumulating luxuries?
Nature always holds answers to the questions of men.
One morning, as I stepped outside my room, I saw a spider
resting in the web it had woven the previous night. Sometime later, a misstep
by my roommate destroyed the delicate web, making the spider rush to a corner
in our corridor wall. When I returned from my office at evening, I was
surprised to see that the spider had woven a beautiful web again.
The eight legged insect was leading a life so simple that it
could build its home in a few meager hours how many ever times it might be
destroyed.
But we, on the other hand, lead lives weighed down by assets and luxuries
that someday we would be out of breath, suffocating from the very possessions
that we had bought in the first place to make our lives admirable.
It’s high time we started leading happy lives instead of the
norm of leading happy lives in the eyes of others.
“In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience,
that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if
we will live simply and wisely.”
- Henry David Thoreau from Walden.
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