Krishna and Kaali

Foreword: As we see the final hours of 2017, I have penned down a short reflection from the old year. I hope you will enjoy reading it. I hope to continue to share my thoughts with you into the new year. Many thanks for reading and liking my works. Happy New Year and Thank you for reading!

If Kaali was a subject to be studied in schools, she would probably be Geography. Everyone likes Geography, but very few actually study it. Talking of geography, high school graduates these days think that Hong Kong lies near Chile. Of course, that is not true. That ignorance is the result of the confusion created by our half-baked lessons and full-blown abandon of general knowledge. Today, our youth rather know the name of the Italian villa that Indian Cricketer Virat Kohli got married in or the name of Christiano Ronaldo’s girlfriend, but don’t care if Hong Kong lies east or west!

The entire neighbourhood liked Kaali. She was dark, but lovely. Her squinted and foxy eyes mesmerized everyone. However, Kaali belonged to non-one. She lived alone at the foot of the staircase with her small family. Kaali was about eight months old when a local ‘boy’ impregnated her. The boy was slightly bigger than Kaali and acted like James Bond amongst the community bitches.

Stray dogs are a menace in Bhutan – bigger the town, bigger the menace. Thimphu with nearly 29% of the country’s population has the biggest stray canine population. Dogs are everywhere. They relax and chill out during the day and bark and howl at night. Sometimes in September, a black bitch in my erstwhile neighbourhood in Changzamtog, near the Muscle Factory, gave birth to four black pups. Very cute and tiny bundles. The mother dog was lovingly addressed as ‘Kaali’, after her dark colour, by the inmates of DSB building.

Kaali earned her own keep. She knew who to wag her tail at and who to snarl at. My wife was one of her favorites as she would collect all the kitchen leftover and offer it to Kaali. Like a good dog, Kaali was grateful. I was neither her favourite nor outright adverse. However, Kaali’s favourite was Krishna, a retired banker, who lived on the ground floor of our building. Krishna is a jovial and kind person. All of us knew that Krishna would offer Kaali meat and rice every day. If, perchance, meat was not available, he would hand-mix rice with clarified homemade butter and feed Kaali.

One day, the municipal dog catchers came with a Mahindra Bolero (a small truck) to our neighbourhood. They were tasked with collecting stray dogs and taking them to the Serbithang dog pound. They started chasing, lassoing, trapping and catching the strays. Before long, it was Kaali’s turn. The catchers ran after her as if Kaali was a criminal. Her only crime, though, was that she was an animal, and even worse a stray-dog. She was lucky, though, that she was born in Buddhist Bhutan, where compassion for all sentient beings is preached, if not entirely and always practiced. Kaali ran for her life, but then she was responsible for four more lives. After a brisk sprint, she looked back, she snarled, she ran and finally she stopped.

 From the corner of her wet eyes, she saw that the catchers had collected her babies and put them in the Bolero. A mother is a mother, whether it is a human mother or the mother of stray pups. One of the catchers held one of Kaali’s pups in his hands and wagered! He knew that the love of a mom would bring her to her kids, no matter what danger lied ahead.

Kaali whined, gave a sharp bark, looked towards Krishna and with her tail at 3:15 angle walked meekly towards the Bolero. It was too much for Krishna!  He could simply not look at Kaali being trapped and taken away. He took a last look at Kaali, threw his glance at the small house he had made for Kaali and her pups out of cardboard and plywood pieces and walked into his house!