Author: Harpreet Chhachhia

Just me and nothing else but.

Be beautiful.

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Beauty is so important. We all say, to be politically correct, how beauty is only skin deep. but that is so not true at two levels. People prefer beautiful pets, food, wives, husbands, children. And beauty isn’t skin deep. people have beautiful hearts too. Most times, the outer shell doesn’t mean the inside flesh. It is uncommon to find beauty inside and out. Most times, one has either or. And one is either loved or rejected.

I see people adopt pretty puppies. I see them abandon them on various pretexts when the pretty puppies become adults. I see cruelty in so many forms. I see pets abandoned. Cows tortured. Elephants chained to march for a religion. Tigers bred for their penises. Rhinos brought down for their horns.

And I get so disillusioned. Because I have seen for what battles are fought over. I have heard of women being gang raped and killed. I have seen children being abused. I have felt abuse. I have been persecuted for being different. And I know that if humans cut down humans with no sense of remorse, there is no real hope for what humans consider any inferior species.

I have seen people where I stay disregard love for animals. I have felt religion encroach upon my love for animals. I understand that everyone cannot love animals in the same fashion that I do. I do not love children the way most people do. I do not go goggly eyed on cutest children. But I have no say in the matter when children are paraded in movie theatres and scream their guts out when we try to watch a movie. No real say in the matter when a kid screams and throws things in a food court in a mall. I am supposed to be okay when children are used as excuses for parents to cut short meetings, but it is not okay if I say my furkids are waiting for me at home.

I resent it. And I am disillusioned by it. I am generally very disillusioned by the human race in general. But I will say this: if you take responsibility for a life, be it human or animal, you need to see it through. Even your death shouldn’t be an excuse for not having made some provision made for them. Be worthy of your humanity. Be beautiful.

Help

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Today is Guru Nanak Jayanti. Today I burst into tears like I haven’t done in a while. I lost my faith in Divine Providence, a long time ago. But this isn’t why I cried. On my way back home, from a walk with the kids, I saw an old dog, lying prone near the gate of my building. I thought it was dead. But on a closer look, it wasn’t. it was just fast fast asleep, almost unconscious. On speaking to it, she got up with a start. She is very old. She was blind in one eye, and she staggered and got up. I told her I would be right back.

I took the kids up, because I cannot stay anywhere near another dog while Zach and Xena are with me and I came down promptly with food and water for this old girl. When I got back down with some kibble and water, she was sitting again but got up diligently. Almost as though she was waiting for some help to come his way. She looked like life had beaten her up and chewed her out. Humans must not have quite helped, because as she ate, I noticed that she had a wound on his left knee. It gaped. I could see bone.

I cried then. Standing there on the road. While she ate and drank a whole bottle of water. I had to move away because the other stray dog who stays near our building was inching closer and she was growling at her. So I sustained her and told her to leave the old girl be. She seemed to realise what I was saying and sat down. Pawing at me to pet her and I did.

As I walked back with an empty bottle of water in my hands I felt helpless… my partner’s words rolled in my head, ‘if we take her to Ahimsa, we don’t know what they will do to her. Maybe prolong her suffering? We can, if you want to.’ And at such moments my heart and mind revolted. I had taken a cat I had rescued to Ahimsa, a few years back. They said they would help. As I was on my way back they called and said that it had died. I had kept my third dog, with Parel hospital, for five days, his condition worsened, despite our constantly being there and by the fifth day he breathed his last. I took my fourth dog, suffering from DM and bladder stone problems, and they refused to treat her without us admitting her first. When we didn’t and asked them to help her as an out-patient, they inserted a metal catheter in her vagina and by morning I had to make one of the worst decisions of my life.

The long and short of this is: I don’t know who to turn to in matters like this. I cannot bring the girl home because my kids won’t be manageable and my girl is suffering from a spine problem and we are taking her to a neurologist tomorrow… when it rains, it pours. It is Guru Nanak Jayanti and I forsook Divine Providence a long time ago. And when there is no hope left in the divine, there really is nothing to do but count on your own self. So, I put out the word on social media.

But this fecund feeling of being helpless and not knowing where to go at 3AM is convulsive. There are these moments in life. As a child, I watched the stray puppy I rescued and helped grow into a lovely girl, Diana, being taken away by the BMC. I watched my grandmother hooked onto life support. I watched her lungs convulse. I watched Rolfe suffer at Parel and then lashed out at the doctors for being so fucking negligent and carted him away. And I watched Zoe suffer but I knew what I had to do – and I put her to sleep. I gave her the rest she needed. And I cried. These things weigh on you. they make you understand the horror of life and the complete chaos that surrounds it. Emotions tear you from within and the mind sets a noose on them.

I wish I could be clinical: Watch animals killed in labs. Orcas turn mad in swimming pools. Elephants shot through their heads. Wars fought. People killing each other for land, ideas on right and wrong, what god is or what he is not. I wish I could shrug it off and say, it matters not. This is life, this is the cycle of it. But I cannot. I am a part of this world. I am alive now. I fed this poor, old, miserable, wounded animal. I quenched its thirst. But is it enough? I am caught – between my need to do something more and my helplessness in trying to do so.

An update: 15th November, 2019

Aban, another animal lover on a whatsapp group, mentioned that she got news of the injured, old girl, last night. Some girl called Loretta had discovered her at D N Nagar Police Station. Aban called me at 10 and Anand and I left immediately with the bag we had kept packed. I have been hunting for her in our area but the girl had reached D N Nagar.

I picked up Aban and we went to see her. Loretta had fed and watered her but she had been starving and was very thirsty. Seeing all of us she panicked and walked away and I had taken a leash and aban had too. So, we got her leashed but she became terrified and aggressive. We had to tie her mouth down. She just didn’t understand what was happening and it was so damn dark there… these BMC people keep shutting down all the street lights!

I took her over to a gate which had some light and Aban cut her nails and I put some spray on her wound and the gotbac powder. I had taken wet food and put some antibiotics in it but she didn’t touch it after we released her. She would not even have water. She does get attacked by dogs of the area and she is so scared. We followed her via the ymca road and back towards Westside full circle. She kept walk away the moment we approached…

Aban said that we should take her to Ahimsa. I don’t think it’s a very good idea. But I have told Aban that if she needs us again to just call. Seeing her again has upset me but not so much now, because I realise there are people out there who do care. I have given up on the human race and when strangers are kind, I am shocked and awed.

And since we cant not talk of her without a name… thinking of calling her Bell – it means Brave in Sindarin.

Preeti Sikka

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I wasn’t going to write a review on a movie like Kabir Singh. But today, I had another discussion with a friend who liked the movie. I don’t consider it to be a good movie. Socially or technically. The movie should actually be called Preeti Sikka. Because let’s face it, the person who breaks the fourth wall is her.

I know where the movie goes wrong. So many places. But look at the way it seems to be earning bucks. Most of the people on social media seem to be loving it. It was made with a budget of 60 crore and it earned 380 crore at the box office. What was I missing?

I decided to save my opinion until after I saw the movie. I first started watching Arjun Reddy on Netflix, and then after a while, the subtitles and what was going on was too much to process for my mind, so I switched over to Kabir Singh. The same director directed the two and the scenes have been replicated to a letter, so I don’t suppose I missed out on nuances in the original. Though I have been told by a director friend, who has seen both, that Vijay Devarkonda version has portrayed sensitivity – attributing it to Vijay’s depiction of the character. I don’t think I shall be able to see Arjun Reddy though.

Most of the vignettes (if I can call them that) in the movie reek with such machismo that it sets feminism back several decades. I have been told of the culture of med college life, but first year college girls, walking like subjugated slaves, (the heroine in virginal white) isn’t something that I can still quite get over. The movie is like the over-the-top, male-dominated Hindi movies you watch, where the brash hero is filled with such ego that the match stick he flicks from his lips can skewer the villain standing yards away. I guess it’s a different sort of fantasy genre.

Maybe not.

Maybe these things actually happen in our society. Where a woman is taken over without a by your leave and branded as a Texan cowboy would do to his cattle. It’s a fair analogy. Because that is exactly what Preeti becomes, essentially.

If I may, psychologically dissecting the character, her father seems to be no better. So she was raised to be subservient? And of course, when hero and father meet there is a furthering of catastrophe. And then there is a slapping episode. Again, I must note, the scene seems to be the rage on tiktok, with most influencers on tiktok, using Kabir’s dialogues, castigating Preeti. (Sometimes, I wonder if the dark ages really left.) No one really thinks about how overwhelming his ego is. And if they do, they are actually celebrating it. Not a very healthy phenomenon.

I am say that this is also really worrisome, because this sort of thing actually happens. People go catatonic after a break up. I know I did. Of course, I am a different breed, because I didn’t go tearing into my ex’s life, demanding an explanation. I did however demand that he choose between his family and my love … but there was no violence. There was a tearing apart. It was a wrenching so devastating, I could feel what Kabir went through. But once again, I just realized that people love differently, some not so strong enough to withstand pressures of the world, and I let it be at that.

There is that kind of love that makes you break all bonds of sanity and society and head into a turmoil of passion. Some would say, that is what passion and love are. Haven’t romance novels written copiously of strong, hot headed heroes lifting girls and carrying them off to their castles? I should know, I used to read them by the dozen. Have society and age influenced me so strongly that I have forgotten what it was to be in the grips of passion? Of course, if I met my ex, I may ask for an explanation. Because I don’t believe that true love ends. It carries on. As is shown in this movie.

Which is the only part of the movie I liked, the fact that he overcomes his ego enough to take on the girl and her baby – even if it was not his own. And then the about turn by Preeti. Seriously though, the movie should have been named after her. The only character that sticks to her guns and lives by her code. I mean, she could have started drinking and hooking up, too… but I guess that is just too much to ask – to even be thought of for a woman to do. Or maybe, let’s just face it, the movie wanted to portray that women aren’t stupid enough to be so utterly selfish and self-destructive.