Sleepless in Marredpally

I haven’t slept all night. Neither last night nor the 7 nights preceeding that one. I am so tired. Yawwwn. This makes me lethargic, weak, and snappy. A dog needs to get all the sleep he can. That’s when we dream of a better world for all.

So, you may ask, what’s keeping me awake? It’s a no brainer, really. Have’nt you seen or rather HEARD the louder- than -my -ears can –handle music, drums, the bright lights that are constantly going past our house every evening? Big trucks with people covered with pink and blue colour, loudspeakers, big colourful and shiny statues of an elephant being driven by our house? And for some reason they always stop just outside our house and light those darned crackers, bombs really as far as I am concerned. Just when I think the worst is over, another round of music, drums and lights starts to go by. This goes on till early morning, and every single night in the last week.

Mum says that is the Ganesha processions being taken out for immersion in the lakes. She says actually they are supposed to go every other day for a 10 day period, but people either do not know or simply do not care, and 'party' whenever they want to. Maybe it depends on when they can rent the trucks and lights and drums she says. Basically its now more a 'party thing' rather than a religious event she says.

She is also tired and sleepy, poor mum. Having to open the door for me every few hours because I cant sleep and need to be with her [which is why I almost scratch the door down] and having to put up with the same noise cant be fun for her too.

She was telling G and Ria that this year instead of having lesser idols and smaller ones [ which , according to her, is much needed to save the planet and the lakes] there seem to be many more plaster idols and more processions. So instead of trying to improve our environment, this government is helping to run it to the ground by giving more permissions for Ganeshas, and by not implementing the eco-friendly rule where all idols should be soluble in water etc, they are causing grievous harm to the lakes of this city.

On the other hand they are spending millions of rupees to plant trees for an upcoming world conference on Biodiversity [ don’t ask me what that means] and trying to quickly repair the roads and potholes before foreigners see what a mess we live in, and not to forget raising the electric poles and cutting off branches which come in the way of the Ganesha processions!

Its like cutting off their own hands to spite their faces, only they seem to not mind it one bit.

Forget about all that. What about the noise pollution. And what about all the electricity that is wasted during these processions, for which we have to pay by going through long power cuts? So long that the battery also died yesterday! And most importantly What about my ear drums? And those of my fellow 4 legged creatures who must be surely suffering like me these 10 days?

Don’t ask me anything. I need all the forty winks I can get before the next one starts.

comfort blankets and other sweet smellers

I love old stuff. Old toys, old blankets, old bath mats, old pillows, old socks, anything that’s not just been bought [ except of course my chewsticks!] . Ohhhh …that gorgeous sock that I stole from Ria’s shoe many moons ago….that rubber toy that I carefully hide from Mom lest she washes it …and that blue blanket which I came to this city with 5 years ago- heaven!

The joys of sniffing around these relics, snuggling against their old comfortable smells that evoke memories of my childhood are to be experienced not discussed.

Of course Mom dosent agree. She is the only one with a cleanliness fetish that borders on madness in this home. Neither Ria nor G are like her. We flock together the three of us, siblings- in- arms. We love Mess. We adore Junk. We thrive on Piles of Clothes. We like the comfort of having everything around us.

But Mom? She is from Venus I think [ that’s what Snookers says].  She goes batty every few days, and cant stop yap yap yapping at the other two. ‘ clean the bed’, ‘ clear the table’ , ‘put away your books’, ‘why is your wet swimsuit inside the bag still?’, ‘ why are the vessels not put away yet?’, ‘Separate the garbage, Separate the garbage’ ‘ why is your half eaten sandwich from yesterday still in the fridge?’,  I could go on and on and on. She wants everything ‘just so’ [ she says a clean home makes for a clean mind, whatever that means. I am a clean dog, but I don’t like to keep my stuff clean] The rooms have to be dusted, cleaned, everyday and the garbage HAS TO BE SORTED.

We have a big box in G’s room which is filled up with newspapers, plastic bottles, caps, milk bags, tetrapacks, old shoes and old clothes. Every week she rummages though Ria’s cupboards and probably her own too to throw out old clothes, shoes, papers, magazines. On those days I am safely out of sight, protecting my old treasures. I don’t know what I will do if she takes them away one day.:( So the box gets fuller and fuller and then one day Driver takes it away. After some time he brings it back, empty, and Mom starts filling it up all over again. This goes on week after week, month after month. I envy those lucky few who must be getting all those goodies from that box!

Recycling, is what Mom calls it, Separating garbage and putting it to good use, creating livelihood for the poor, clothing those who need it most. She says plastic dosent ever go away and will stay on earth for millions of years.

I don’t understand all this really. I just want her not to discard any of my stuff [ and to be fair to her, she hasn’t yet] But one cant be too careful, can one? 

To draw or not to draw- that is the question

Cartoons are a great thing. Mom is always giggling away at the daily cartoons like B.C, Garfield, Snoopy [ who is far more funny if you ask me, but I may be biased?]. They sometimes accurately portray what we think or feel and laughter is the best medicine anyway.

Now there is a new breed of cartoonists, I think, carefully cultivated, nurtured, and trained by devious politicians and other persons in power only to create disturbance, panic, uproar, affront, and shock value for their own personal or political gains. I hear Mr. A.T is one such homegrown  cartoonist. His recent attempts at being funny didn’t go down well with the powers that be and the fellow was jailed only to be let out shortly after. What exactly are his credentials that have rocketed him from total anonymity to extreme fame in just over a year, when truly great artists like R.K. Lakshman, Sudhir Dar, and Ninan have taken years of creativity and understanding the Indian psyche to attain their status among the Gods of cartoons today? Beats me.

My point is this, or rather I have several if you have the patience….

One, why do the people in power give so much mileage to such people. With due respect to Mr. T, his cartoons are neither terribly clever nor roll-on-the-floor funny, so why is a mountain made out a molehill?  Getting righteous about insulting an emblem whilst quoting a pointless law ‘State Emblem of India- Prohibition of Improper use act 2005’ is just attracting more attention to something that would have been otherwise ignored and forgotten as quickly as the paper on which it was printed.

Two, why do we Indians have such ridiculous laws which stop us from simply laughing at ourselves? Most other free nations today have no such impositions on speech or other forms of expression and it hasn’t especially harmed them or their culture or their governance in any way that I know. I’ve seen foreign models walking the ramp with colours of their national flags painted on their bodies and nothing else, but if we Indians even as much dare to use our tricolor in any manner except flying on a post, we will be prosecuted. And I can give you so many more examples to illustrate this point. But you get the picture.

Three, if the powers that be focused on important matters like a clean governance, above all, rather than spend time debating on whether the image with the ‘loo’ was worse than the one with the ‘three wolves’ or the other equally forgettable drawing, then it would only bring back the spotlight on themselves and their shortcomings and their total disregard for taking the nation forward. From their point of view, I guess its easier deflecting that spot on some poor fellow and breathing easy for those few moments before the dirt is aimed back at them.

And lastly but never in the least, these archaic laws against sedition were made for people who “do not respect their elders”. That simply means the government thinks of  people as errant children who should be punished for raising their voices or questioning wrongdoings rather than treat them as grown-up citizens. And they get their knickers all knotted up when cartoons appear in the press, which poke innocent fun at them!

At the end of the day, its all politics, isn’t it?

Bed-times

Secretly mom loves to have me on the bed. You will never catch her admitting this to ANYONE mind you…. No Sir, she wants to be considered a strict disciplinarian , but what she does not know is that all of us, Ria, me and of course G and Ganjoo, even Snookers - know that it’s a sham, a façade carefully built, but so easily crumbled !

All day long she nags me to get off the bed, the sofa - I mean consider this, every single night a white cover is put on the sofa, so who is she kidding? Its for me to sleep on,isn’t it? Then why she goes on about “get off, sparky!’ every time she spots me, I just cant fathom.She knows I sleep there, she makes sure the white cover is on each day, and yet this drama!!

She has tried for 7 long and delicious years filled with jumping on her bed, Ria’s bed, the sofa, the balcony bench, at every given opportunity, but she does not call this particularily inane game[ of trying to stop me] a day yet. I’ve even stopped snapping if they accidentally kick me or even so much as nudge me when I am up [ well, almost but not quite, its not an easy habit to give up you know. But I am on the wagon, I’ll get there yet.] 

You should have seen me at my worst, this was years ago, when I had to be taken to a dog psychiatrist to sort out my ‘alpha male dominant behaviour’ That lady made Mom put away all my toys and bean bags away for a long long time till ‘ I was cured’ and then they were brought back. I was in severe withdrawal for days, but eventually I got over it.

So this is what happens on any typical day. After lunch when she snoozes, and on weekends when Ria joins her, obviously I want to get in too. Then there’s this ‘go away sparky, go to your room’ drama that goes on for a bit, and then I leave the room,  looking back dolefully. They nod off. I wait for the right moment and slowly creep on to the bed, sometimes from mom’s end, sometimes from Ria’s. I know she is awake, from her breathing, but this time she does not say anything and lets me get on. Then slowly but surely, her hand or her toes will curl up on my back- as if she is in deep sleep, and I sigh in contentment.

Drama is her essence, my warm and cuddly Mom’s.But I've got her genes too, ha!

Food Pollution

Lately I have been busy with the problems that face humans, more than those that affect me directly. Perhaps in my 8th year [ thats 50 something for you two legged people!] I am getting.... wiser? One such hot topic is the quality of food we eat.

Mom was recalling how till 10 years ago, she had to wash, soak in salt water, peer into and extract worms and other crawlies from many vegetables like cauliflower, lady finger, spinach, and now- thanks to the unrestricted use of pesticides, she has an easy job in the kitchen. No worms, easy to cut and chop veggies, and better utilization. One would think that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

But I hear otherwise. How the cauliflower is transported in buckets of pesticide infused water in order to reach the vendors worm-free and pristine. How every single vegetable is sprayed, dusted with poisonous chemicals just to improve their productivity, shelf life and better returns for the farmers, and how some farmers actually grow their own vegetables and grains separately without these additives because they are well aware of the harmful effects of using toxic, often banned chemicals in farming.

And the profit mongers don’t stop at anything. Almost every food, drink that we consume is today treated with chemicals, just sometimes in order to make it look bigger, better, fresher, pest free, and allows them to maximize their investments, many times at the cost of the consumers' health. Cows and buffaloes are fed on a diet of antibiotics and hormones in order to increase milk production, which leads to resistance to those antibiotics in the humans, and irregular growth due to the imbalance of hormones. Poultry is fed with unnatural foods in order to increase their body weight .

There are a few farming professionals who try to take a different approach by using safer pesticides and keeping their farmlands organic, but their efforts are often fraught with losses and disappointment because in fact by avoiding harmful chemicals, their farms become escape routes for pests from neighbouring farms who have warded off pests with liberal spraying. So unless all the farmers collectively decide to stop using harmful chemicals, the project will not bear fruit, pun intended! That nice lady with the 4 dogs [ how about sending them off to a zoo-eh?, so that I get to have a run of her lovely garden?] is one such farming professional who is constantly trying to reinvent her own crop strategy without totally compromising her values in terms of harmful substances used in her fields.

You may wonder how I am concerned about all this, but hey! Am I not part of this family, and therefore the larger community? And should I not have an opinion about matters that matter to my dear ones? 

I think we should all just go back to the basics of olden days, grow what you can eat, and stay away from those healthy looking poisons on the supermarket shelves.