Dog security

On sunday morning I found a notice in my mailbox that said something like this:

"Please take note that someone in the neighborhood is poisoning dogs. Non-veg food has been found laced with poison. It was determined by authorities that our dog died of such poisoning. Remember that killing dogs is a criminal offense and protect your pets."

Something like that. It was actually much longer and used big words.

The next day, I saw a banner sign hanging over the neighborhood park entrance that read:

"Killing dogs is a criminal offense. Street dogs are our security guard."

Our security guards? Really. These starving, mangy dogs wandering the streets eating from the trash?
Well, okay, if you insist. But I hope the security force I pay each month to walk through the neighborhood with whistles and lathis is also doing its part.

The thing that really strikes me here is not that I don't care about dogs or pets, or the owners who are saddened by the loss of them, but that there are children--real, live children, human beings--also walking the streets, starving, unkempt and eating from the trash.
I mean, what if one of them ate this alleged laced-with-poison non-veg food? Would there be banners and mailbox notices and "investigations"?
Why isn't there more concern about them?
Why are there overweight dogs and malnourished children in the same neighborhood?
How do we so easily close our eyes to the poverty and suffering around us, yet manage to get upset about dogs?

Hear me: Dogs are great. Having and loving and caring for pets is a good and responsible thing. It is legitimate to be attached to and sad about losing a pet.
But I will still insist that a hungry child is more important.

Preemptive love

I'm not familiar with military slogans and jargon, but I have heard of the 'preemptive strike'. So this strategy for peace and a world filled with love instead of war caught my notice. I think it must make God smile.

Reality

I was on a plane flying to the US when I overheard a conversation.
"Are you heading home for the holidays?" said the lady.
"Oh yes, can't wait for that cranberry sauce," said the man.
"Yeah," she laughed, "back to reality."
"That's right, heh heh heh."
And their conversation went on to complain of some of the deprivations their stay in India had included, how they couldn't believe the way people lived, and what modern conveniences they were about to enjoy upon landing.
Wait a minute, I thought, cranberry sauce and people speaking American English, that's reality? This experience that people are living by the billions on the other side of the world is not real?
Life for the guy sleeping beneath the Ambedkar statue isn't reality? There are thousands of people homeless and living on the streets. And, yeah, they bother you knocking on the car window at the streetlights, begging for money. But they're not imaginary, and flying to the other side of the world doesn't mean they cease to exist.
I don't think the goatherd's little girl--or anyone she knows--has ever heard tell of a cranberry, but her reality is just as meaningful as my own.
She puts a little sweater on her baby goat and brings him to graze in the shadow of the Taj Mahal--if that's not other worldly! She may never go to school, but all she experiences is still real.
I'd have to say that it's we here in America who think life needs to include instant messaging and drive-throughs that need the reality check. Since when do we need these things as if it's the only way to live?
If you've seen it, it's only fair to at least acknowledge that it's really there, this other place where people live and work and love and die.
Because it is. Real.

And be careful what you say on an airplane. Because someone might overhear you and form unflattering opinions of you.