Pooper Scooper
If there are dogs, can poop be far behind? A Senior Police officer, one with a rather long rank, is supposed to have walked into some doggy doo and decided to launch a campaign against owners who don’t pick up their dog poop.
So on the Carter Road sea face, you began to see these signs “Please do not allow your dogs to commit nuisance. Fine Rs 500″. Right beside them were signs that said “Please do not commit nuisance. Fine Rs 250″. Now I have the answer to that very existentialist question – what’s the price of dog poop in Bombay? Twice the price of human poop.
In a city, no, in a country where human excrement is a fact of life on almost every street – maybe Rajpath is an exception, but I haven’t been there at 6 in the morning recently- it is wonderful to see so much energy expended on dog poop. Almost as exotic as the proposal in Germany to collect the DNA of all pet dogs, so that poop collected on the streets could be tracked back to the dog’s owners, and suitable Teutonic fines could be levied. CSI meets Tin Tin.
We took a decision some time ago. If we could scoop up Yoda’s poop in New York, Frankfurt and Paris, we could scoop it up in Bombay as well. We did not have a ready stock of the small sandwich baggies, so Mina got some low cost plastic gloves from the local grocer.
Our morning ritual works like this. We take Yoda down to the basement garage. He heads straight for his ” pissing post” to let loose a stream. He then jauntily strides off to a far corner of the garage, where after much sniffing around and tentative stops, he goes into his crouch and does his bidness. I reach into my pocket, whip on the gloves with a surgeon like air of authority, and scoop the poop. I turn the glove inside out, and voila, it is ready for disposal.
Here is where the Indian ethos comes into play. Joseph our driver is a dog lover - he has a Pom bitch called Jimmy. He is also a retainer of the old school type. The first day he came running up and told me that he would do the scoop. When he saw that I would not give up my right, he insisted that he take the glove from me and walk it across to the dustbin. We agreed on the compromise.
So, here is how this plain tale from the Raj plays out. Joseph brings the car up, leaves it idling so Mina can sit in air conditioned comfort while Yoda does his thing. As soon as Yoda is done Joseph bounds forward, picks up the reversed glove from my hands, and jogs off to get rid of it. Yoda in the mean time finishes his inspection of the premises and saunters over to the car.
Joseph is by the door, ready to open it as we approach. Yoda goes up, “kicks the tyres” and signals that he is ready. Joseph opens the door with a flourish, I pick up Yoda and deposit him beside Mina, and we are all set to go to work.
Our ritual has now begun to attract a small audience of other drivers and cleaners in the garage. Opinion is equally divided between ‘see how much they love their dog’ and ‘that dog has made a monkey out of them’.
It may not take a village to raise Yoda, but it seems to take two full grown adults to deal with his poop.
Aug 12, 2009 | | Book
