Who let the Dogs out?
China gave the world Mao’s Red Book. Ayatollah Khomeini gave us his Green Book. And India’s gift to the world was tech support from Bangalore, and the Kama Sutra.
Sex for Dummies, or Yummies depending on your frame of mind and body. Yet, we Indians
have always been the most notorious prudes. For the longest time Bollywood would not show a kiss, though our song and dance sequences in the rain were well into the realm of soft porn. If a contemporary artist were to re-create the temple sculptures of Khajuraho , he would be hanged, drawn and quartered. But, the ancient writhings are protected as part of our heritage , mentioned in history texts, and lovingly immortalized in coffee table books.
In grad school jargon, this is not about providing text, but context. The newly elected Deputy Mayor of Bombay just announced her grand plan to rid the city of the stray dog menace. There are about 600,000 strays in Bombay. I wonder who did the census, and how.
Her brain wave was to shift the stray dogs into ‘dog homes’ outside the city. The icing on the cake, for her not them, was separate male and female enclosures. According to her, having these separate girls and boys dorms would reduce the stray population over the course of a decade. Any time a politician thinks up a permanent solution, it usually involves banning sex for others.
Animal rights activists were outraged. You cant extern dogs. You cant deprive them of sex. It will breed aggressive behavior and devastate them physiologically and psychologically. I am quoting only slightly loosely.
How would dogs react, I wonder? There are some I know who would embrace chastity, even of the enforced kind. Every population has its kooky sub-sets. The kind who see the face of God in every bagel. These dogs would get born again, start an evangelical TV ministry, and soon have their private jets.
There are others who would decide to fly solo, even at the risk of going blind. The outskirts of Bombay would soon have a flourishing industry of sex toys for dogs.
But the large majority would rise up as one to seek out the joys of sex. First would be the frat boys, adept at organizing panty raids. Next would be the make up artists who would put on lipstick and skirts and sneak into the girls’ compound, or affect deep throated growls and find their way to the boys’ hangout. There would be the pole vaulters, the tunnellers, and the doggy pyramids. The Berlin Wall all over again .
Canines like humans, will not be denied.
The Deputy Mayor claims to have a Labrador doggy at home. I am sure that he too would demand to be externed once he heard of all the fun that the strays were having.
Scene change from Bombay to Delhi, where the problem is not dogs but monkeys. The High Court has made it an offense to feed monkeys, and rapped an official on the knuckles for not providing the justices with a hit list of those who have been fined for this misdemeanor. They too believe that the answer lies in externment. Monkey camps outside Delhi, with vet care thrown in.
I wonder how Yoda would react if he could read the papers and came up to speed on the world around him. Sex is anyway a hypothetical since he’s been fixed. But externment? No way.
‘Pack our bags folks. Its time to go to New York’.
Mar 28, 2009 | | Book