Category: Articles

What Makes Us Human

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

This evening, Geeta, Anand, Hamza and I were selecting names for the puppy who’s going to be coming into our home tomorrow. The story of the puppy starts around the 12th of August, when it was raining very heavily in Mumbai and my hairstylist, Riyaz, found a puppy huddled in the street, shivering in the pouring rain and covered in grease. Humanity overtook his heart and he picked up the pup and brought him home. Of course, he couldn’t keep it at home, so he would keep him at the salon while he was working, and then take him back to his house.

He reached out to Anand and me to have the pup adopted, and Anand managed to find someone who would take him. Prateek took the pup from Riyaz and said that he would give him a forever home. However, a few days later he contacted Anand, saying that his girlfriend had lost her job and it was difficult to keep a puppy at his house because of the financial constraint.

I was obviously very upset thinking about this, especially because the Supreme Court verdict that had just come out in Delhi had already torn my peace of mind. The thought of all those stray dogs on the streets being huddled into vans and carted away into non-existent shelters made my blood run cold. I made videos about it, I made posts about it—and then the Supreme Court again passed a judgement saying that the dogs would be rounded up, sterilised, vaccinated, and then sent back into the streets. But they also added conditions about “aggressive dogs” and declared that everybody who protested in the courtroom should pay fines ranging from ₹5,000 to ₹200,000. And this comes in a country where the killing of a dog carries a fine of just ₹50. It’s a bailable offence. 

Animal abuse is not taken seriously in our country. And now, with the Supreme Court’s verdict, all the dog-haters have risen up in arms against animal feeders and dog lovers across the country. The situation has gone from bad to worse for those people who go out at night—especially women—who feed strays in their makeshift vans or personal vehicles. There are people ganging up against them, beating the dogs, and even beating the women themselves. There have been incidents all over the country.

I have been a stray dog feeder throughout the lockdown. My partner and I fed the dogs on our street, and we know all of them. I used to take care of three dogs on our street—but we lost one to old age. I know that the streets are their home. People often say, “Take them home,” but I’m not going to get into that argument now. I feel it’s important to understand empathy and kindness. But that’s not going to work, is it? Because it doesn’t even work with human beings. Girls are being raped and murdered and nobody blinks an eye—so when dogs get killed, it’s just like another ant on an anthill somewhere in Africa dying.

The truth is, I have rescued strays before, and this fellow who is coming into my life today afternoon is again going to change my life in some way—because I’ll be helping him find a forever home. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that I’ll be able to find this for him. Every time I bring an animal into my life, they become part of my family, like my children. It’s very hard for me to give them away, but I want them to have better homes. I already have three dogs in my home, and I’m already facing problems in my society where people ask me to leash them whenever they’re out playing in the garden, even when we are all alone. My kids are well-behaved and we have long walks before play time so no accidents happen. I comply and leash them because it’s the law, but sometimes they just want to run. There are no pet parks I can take them to, no designated areas for them to play. If it’s so difficult for pet dogs, can you imagine how hard it is for strays out there on the streets?

So, I try my best. I couldn’t stop thinking about this pup—shuffled from the rain to someone’s salon, then someone’s home, and now finally to mine. I’m desperately trying to find him a home, and I really hope I can. At the end of the day, I think it’s what we see in them that makes us human. I wish I could say kindness matters, kindness makes me more human, but I feel it’s these dogs, these animals, who make us more human. I truly hope his life turns out to be a good one.

I know I can’t do much for all the strays I’ll never be able to help—but at least I can help this one. I still remember when there was a puppy in the gutter near my old home, yelling and yelping for help. I climbed into the gutter, picked him up, and brought him out. Or the time I rescued a puppy from being beaten by a security guard, brought him home, and within a month found him a forever home with a friend. The satisfaction I felt in those moments is indescribable.

I’m hoping this will happen again for the boy I bring home tomorrow. Because in the end, it’s very difficult to live a life that cannot, in some way, be used to serve others—without expecting any gain at all. Yet, I do it anyway. 

Love In Time

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

We grow up believing that relationships are supposed to deepen with time. That love, once found, only matures—its fire softening into warmth, its passion evolving into companionship. But lived reality often tells a different story. Relationships can grow distant. Passion dwindles. What was once extraordinary becomes ordinary.

In the beginning, everything feels charged with wonder. You look at someone and see perfection. You can’t believe they are yours. They look at you as though you are their world. Every touch feels like a revelation. Even the fights are epic because they matter so much, because they spring from too much feeling rather than too little. I remember once, he held me and wept, whispering again and again: “Don’t leave me.”

But time changes things. The gaze that once saw you as beautiful begins to notice flaws. What was once fire becomes routine. Sometimes one partner still longs, while the other retreats. That imbalance cuts deep—it leaves one yearning and the other indifferent.

And so I ask: why does this happen? Do we not understand what love really is? Or does love itself alter with time? For me, love doesn’t fade in intensity. I still feel connected to the movies I watched as a child. The people I knew in my early years continue to live vividly in my memory. Yet I also recognise how we outgrow many things. Parents, once gods, reveal themselves to be human, flawed, vulnerable. Lovers, once idols, become people—with their own limitations, their own irritations.

Yesterday, he told me he disliked certain things about me. He called me obstinate. Such a small remark, and yet it cut deeply because I was already spiralling low. I was desolate the whole night and day, and they both noticed—Anand and he. But they stayed silent. They kept their distance. And in that silence was the sharpest wound of all.

Perhaps this is what time does to relationships. The grand passion softens, the idolisation fades, and what is left is a quieter truth: not what we feel, but what we choose to do for one another.

Losing Them, Finding Me

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

So, I would write a blog post on myself. I just had a skirmish with a friend who has known me for 16 years. And I look back on all the people who have come into my life and have been with me, loved me, partied with me, eaten with me, stayed in my house with me, known my family, created bonds of friendship—and then one day just decided to up and leave.

The friendship and the skirmish that I had today did not quite end the friendship itself, but that was because I stood my ground. And I always do, actually, because what happens with me is that I am a very honest person. I say things the moment I feel them, especially when I’m around people that I’m comfortable with and whom I think know me really well. So when they retaliate in indignation, it surprises me, because I think that they already know who I am. The way I behave shouldn’t be a surprise to them, and they shouldn’t be offended by it.

But that’s how it works, I think, with people—because they can’t be honest, they can’t be open, and they can’t address an issue when they’re thinking it or when they’re feeling it. So they store it inside and, in some way or the other, I feel that it comes out in the form of an outburst: a filling up of indignation, a filling up of animosity that surfaces when one least expects it—at a certain word that I say or at a certain experience that I narrate or talk about.

That being said, I have always prided myself on being someone who speaks his mind, and also being someone who tells people the truth—or at least my truth, the way I see things. And I communicate it openly and I communicate it well, because I have a thing with the way I speak: I can really, really talk, and I can express what I’m feeling very lucidly, very eloquently. I think the best part of me is that I’m honest. Sometimes I can be brutally honest, uncaring about how other people feel, which may be a negative on my part.

I also tend to think that people will relate with me and interact with me on the same page as when I first knew them. But as I have grown, I have realised that people grow too. I think I make a mistake in assuming that they stay the same. They grow up and form different opinions; they form a certain pride of character, a certain development of personality, which I take for granted. I don’t always understand that they have evolved into something different from what they used to be. So I interact with them at the same level that I used to at the get-go. I don’t take into consideration the fact that what I could say to them, I can’t say anymore. Because if they talk to me in a certain way, I expect them to keep talking to me in that way. But dynamics change, and I think that is my drawback. I don’t see people changing and I don’t change the way I deal with them over time. Maybe that’s the problem.

I have now come to a point in my life where I can say that I have also become extremely saddened—and apathetic, probably—towards how life is. I’ve realised that it can get really, really depressing, and I’ve had so much loss in it that I have become hardened by the fact. And I don’t care if I lose people along the way, because I think that the loss is not mine.

I have come to respect myself a great deal and to realise that people who are honest are few and far between, and people who are brave enough to speak the truth—or their own truth—are very rare. I am one of those people. I give of myself, I give of my time, I give of my energy, I give of my emotion, I give of my own space, I give up my private spaces, I give up time, I give up my home, I give up certain relationships that I should be paying more attention to. But I address the needs of everybody and I try to please everybody. I used to do that a lot, and I don’t get that in return. I need to, I think, stop doing that.

I was preparing for my 25th anniversary. I’m completing 25 years with my partner, and I thought of giving a large party, calling people, and celebrating with them. But I realised—after celebrating my 50th birthday this year—that a lot of people are not really appreciative of me. And I don’t seem to understand why I care so much. I am beginning to understand that I shouldn’t be caring so much.

I’ve come to that stage in my life where I feel that it’s all right to choose the people that I want to be with, and to cut off the people that I do not want to be with, those who bring me pain and problems. So I thought that I’ll spend the money on myself, on doing things that bring me happiness, and not on making a big do and letting everybody know that I’m celebrating my 25th. Because, eventually, it doesn’t matter, and they don’t really care about it. They just want a good time, and I’m tired of giving other people a good time and not having a good time myself at the end of the day.

I hope this makes sense. And I really don’t care now if I lose people—because if they could be lost, then it really wasn’t worth my time anyway.