I am tired.
Not the kind of tired that a night’s sleep fixes, but the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from having to fight—again and again—for the most basic decency.
We’ve just taken possession of my mother’s new flat in a Cooperative Housing Society. A Bank of India colony, no less. Two lifts: one passenger, one service. And already, the managing committee has decided that pets are not allowed in the passenger lift. We are to use the service lift—the one meant for goods, for furniture, for trash.
Apparently, our dogs are objects now.
When I heard the news, anger wasn’t my first emotion—it was weariness. I had expected this, of course. The script is always the same. First comes the suspicion, then the whispering, then the notice on the board. “Pets not allowed.” Always the pets. Always the easiest targets.
It took a week in my current home. When we first came in, in 2019, someone immediately complained that a bit of my boxer’s drool had fallen on the lift floor. A couple of small gobs of saliva—nothing more. We cleaned it, naturally. Since then, we’ve been cleaning the lift every time we use it. Fair enough. But when greasy fingerprints line the walls of the lift or the corridors, nobody blinks. When food wrappers are left behind, when someone’s child drops chocolate, when oil marks stain the walls—silence. But dog drool? Outrage.
And now in the new building, a notice appears. Without the secretary’s consent—without even her knowledge. My mother is the secretary, incidentally. Certain members of the managing committee went ahead anyway, decided on its own, and printed that smug, illegal diktat.
She was furious. I was furious. She tried reasoning with them, but words faltered. So I spoke. I told one of them that this was illegal—that no society in India can ban pets from passenger lifts or common spaces. The Animal Welfare Board of India has made this clear. He brushed it aside. “Other buildings do it,” he said. As if illegality becomes law through repetition.
When I pressed him, he cut the phone.
Cut. The. Phone.
That’s what bullies do when logic corner them—they run.
I called a friend, who put me in touch with a lawyer. The lawyer told me I had been too respectful. He was right. He said I should have demanded they put their order in writing. Because once it’s in writing, it’s actionable. Illegal. Enforceable—in court, against them. He was ready to take it up if they dared formalise their prejudice.
And then I realised what this truly was: not about dogs, not about hygiene, not about drool. It’s about control. About people desperate to assert dominance over what they don’t understand.
They will tolerate drunks, loud music, cracker noise, domestic violence, gossip, hypocrisy—everything that corrodes the soul of a community. But not dogs. Not love. Not innocence.
It made me wonder why I even bother calling this place home.
I’ve fought my whole life—since I was a child—for the right to exist, to love, to be. I’ve been beaten, bullied, spat on, mocked—for being gay, for being different, for daring to be myself. I fought then. I fight now. And I will keep fighting.
Because this isn’t just about my dogs. It’s about what kind of people we have become. We cage compassion and call it order. We humiliate empathy and call it discipline. We dress up cruelty as “society rules.”
But I refuse to shrink.
I will speak up—for my dogs, for the voiceless, for those who cannot explain that drool dries and hearts break. I will call out hypocrisy when I see it, even if it’s etched in a printed notice on a lift door.
Yes, I’m tired. But I’d rather be tired from fighting for what’s right than be comfortable in the company of cowards.
So here’s to the next battle.
Because peace, apparently, must always be earned from the people who fear kindness the most.
Hearts Still Care 