Calcutta Untouchables
Dogs, untouchables. They limp about, diseased, pock-marked, patchs of scalded skin nearly flaking off before my eyes. They lie half-dead day and night wherever they chance to collapse, footsteps mostly give wide berths around them but sometimes fall near, still they do not stir. I am already so low, they intimate silently, what else can you do to me?
These are not the dogs of Kathmandu. At night, do they vivify, rise to prance like children in the streets, give snarling, toothy growls defending fantastic territorial claims, copulate enthusiastically and with impunity? In their eyes is death, agony. They nudge rotten garbage dumps gingerly, sharing the pickings with sleek, healthy crows, nibbling on poison-saturated ruinous scraps.
Just as when I am powerless I cannot look straight into the eyse of strangers, their flickering eyes avert from mine, not just meekly, almost as if squinting and wrenching one’s gaze away from the blinding sun. They sink lower into sulking crawls and slide away into the pools of shadow. A glass ceiling is stretched low across Calcutta, and they must constantly hang their heads to stay under the cramped space. They dare not bark at a human, rarely even at each other. With the zigzag-grated windows of our hotel room thrown open, a staccato of painful yelps suddenly punctures the undulating surface of street sounds. But where is the ensuing cascade of wakened cross-city howls and growls? For some reason they choose to keep silent.