It was a regular Sunday evening. The church announcements were longer than usual, and people’s facial expressions had given up long before the priest had finished his monologue.
Once the Sunday service ended, the next important question followed: ‘Where do I eat?’
A few minutes passed me by and, soon, I found myself waiting for a table at Bhaiyas Pav Bhaji in Panjim.
Shortly after, a seating space made itself available and there I was, placing my order like I hadn’t eaten in two days, when my waiting period was interrupted by a sudden loud explosion in the near distance.
Like any other normal human reaction, I shuddered at the sound and looked around wondering where it had come from, before resuming to wait for my butter-half-pav bhaji which was not out of sight, but momentarily out of touch until the people before me got their orders.
Silencing my hunger pangs, I shifted my gaze and what I saw next broke my heart along with my appetite.
Curled up under a plastic chair was a fluffy white dog. Not realising what the loud sound was or where it came from, the animal was terrified. Its fear was evident by the way his body shook and shivered every ten seconds and didn’t stop, even after petting and comforting him in the best way we possibly could.
Another brown dog walked by shaking. Same reaction, just a different colour.
I eventually left the place and went back home but that incident stayed with me and I carried it until here to pour it out of my heart and on to this space.
In the days that followed, I was more sensitised to my surroundings and the explosive sounds that I heard and saw. They angered me.
In that moment, all other important concerns such as road safety, noise pollution and environmental degradation took a back seat in my mind. At the forefront was the guilt and worry that set in every time I heard an explosion, knowing that every one of them meant a scared dog running away, shivering with fear, getting a heart attack or running frantically and getting hit by a high-speed vehicle.
Sitting down to decode and understand the problem, I feel a deep sense of helplessness. My plea is not against festive fun, tradition or culture, but to place three simple questions before humankind.
Do we really need explosive celebrations? Is the sadistic satisfaction in hearing a bomb go off greater than a life of a helpless living being? Would it kill us to be a little empathetic towards animals and other beings who call the streets their homes?
While the loud explosions are enough to traumatise the animals, how does one explain videos of people tying a string of firecrackers to a dog’s tail and cackling at its misery as it tries to run away from itself or goes round in circles.
Who is going to tell the innocent that sometimes the price of trusting a human being is a burnt eye or a slow painful death, one with nobody to say goodbye to?
Imagine somebody throwing an explosive into your window while you sleep, imagine your loved ones losing a limb or suffering burns with no one to attend to them. The thought itself is painful, isn’t it?
Now imagine a stray dog sleeping in the safest place he knows, under a parked car. Imagine his horror when he’s suddenly greeted with a firecracker that he cannot escape from.
Imagine the loud screams and the silent whimpers in those final few moments. Imagine dying in your sleep while the world around you celebrates. Now stop imagining.
This is the world we live in. This is reality.