By Every morning between 5 am to 7 am, I see something phenomenal happening on the roads. The roads which are black at 5 am are decorated with a yellowish to brownish color designs usually at the sides and sometimes in the middle of the road. In south-India, there is a practice of washing the front part outside the home and designing it with rangoli, usually white in color. However, this practice of decorating not just the front part of the house but the streets in general is something which astonishes me.
I happen to proceed to yoga class at around 5 am every morning and am accustomed to see the early workers waiting for the bus, the municipal workers having their tea, the occasional jogger breezing through and heavy-duty trucks making their way into the city.
However, on my way back home at around 7 am, the landscape of the tarmac roads have changed. There is a poop-load of difference. Here and there, the road has the details of what the pet dogs had for last night’s dinner. I see some culprit dogs walking with their owners, giving me a look while taking a poop.
It seems the pet lovers believe that along with the pet, the road also belongs to their fathers. I cannot see any other reason for them to allow their pets to sh*t on the streets. My heartfelt sympathy to the municipal workers – they literally have to clean sh*t. Being a pet-parent is the new fad. However, are they really worthy of being called ‘parents’? I see parent-less dogs (stray dogs) to have more self-respect than these so called pets. At least they do their business in their privacy.
Now, there are three (3) solutions to the problem of poop:
- Don’t own the pet
A simple and elegant solution if you feel too embarrassed to clean it.
- Pick up the poop
When I was in 6th form, I used to live in a country called Bahrain, near the US naval base. There were a lot of navy soldiers who owned pets. I always remember them, carrying along a plastic sheet or packet with which they would pick up the poop of their pets and dispose it in the nearest dustbin.
- Own the land- the estate / Baap-ka-maal
If you can’t inculcate Options (1) and (2) above, then you might find Option (3) to be the easiest. In Soviet Russia, landowners owned large estates and many large dogs to guard it. These dogs would poop anywhere, but being such a big estate that it was, it did not require cleaning of the space.
So, if you are incapable of doing either of the above, then it is better to give up your pet!
