One thing about being a writer who gets paid to write well is this incessant obsessing about GSP issues. Grammar, spelling, punctuation. When you are getting paid to do something, you have to be perfect – it’s an obligation, and I guess I am so attuned to it that even a few seconds back I was obsessing about the title of this post.
Is it consistent with the previous ones in the series? Were the previous titles written in title case, or was it sentence case? Hmm… then I decided to let it go. This is one place where I do not need to obsess about being right unless I am totally wrong.
So, this post was supposed to a chronicle of a dog walker. I have a story… it has little to do with dogs, but it happened when we were out for a walk.
There is this little swamp in the neighborhood. It shouldn’t be there, smack in the middle of a concrete jungle, but it is. A long time ago, this place used to a large waterbody – an extension of the erstwhile Salt Lake lagoon. It used to be owned by the local “raj” family (loosely translates to small kingdom… but in terms of kingdom, it really was tiny).
When hard times began to befall their family, they stopped the upkeep of their properties. Slowly, silt and rubbish started clogging the waterbody, and before long, most of it had vanished.
As times got tougher, they started selling part by part of this natural landfill to different owners. Some fifty years later this community is a far cry from what it used to be. It is now a crowded concrete jungle.
This little swamp remains the last evidence of what used to be – the water body. My father recalls it as a large lake with a marble pathway leading to a small marble arch in the centre. That was of course a long time ago. All I have seen during my lifetime is a dirty swamp being gradually covered by rubbish and water hyacinth until it became safe for people to encroach on it.
Recently, some of the community old timers got together to restore the “lake”. They collected money and started restoring the lake to its erstwhile grandeur. It was exciting to watch the swamp slowly taking a lovely, well-kempt shape.
Then, as we were halfway through, work stopped. Local politicos and musclemen had interfered in the restoration work leading to squabbling, and ultimately to the suspension of work.
The swamp remains half done. It is connected to the river Hooghly (I think) because it always sees a rise in its water level when it’s high tide in the river. It was on one of those days that I was walking the dogs along the swamp.
There was a little more water in it than usual, but I wasn’t sure how long we would be able to see the water. Garbage is fast filling up the space, and the water is dark and dirty.
I didn’t really notice anything until the dogs stopped. They are not very big in size but are unbelievably strong. So when they decided not to budge, I had to look. They were all staring intently at the water.
I strained my eyes to see what was wrong. There was something in the water. Struggling, fluttering – it was a pigeon. It had somehow fallen in the water and was now stuck in the algae floating around. As hard as it tried to reach the embankment, it made little progress.
We stood and watched for a good 15 minutes. The little bird was tenacious. It had managed to inch quite close to dry land. Just a little more effort would do. We left the bird at that and walked away.
A little while later, on our second round through the same route, I noticed with alarm a little girl standing next to the swamp and pelting stones into the water. She had an audience too – an elderly gentleman who looked at her disapprovingly but did not say anything.
As I rushed towards the girl, I was afraid that the damage was already done. I was right. She had managed to scare the little bird back into the middle of the swamp and it was completely sapped out of energy.
I had to be stern with her. She was still pelting stones. So I asked her not to. She didn’t listen. I asked her again – this time rudely. She stopped and then frowned at me. I didn’t mind. I am anyway quite unpopular in the neighborhood for speaking against what I thought was wrong.
We had to get help now. We caught hold of a passerby and requested him to get some one from the nearby sweeet shop. They kept pigeons. It was possibly one of theirs.
As the boy left, the bird made a last ditch effort to fly. With all the energy it had left, it fluttered – one wing – swam a circle and was gone forever. Help came a little late and when they fished the bird from under the water, the stone pelting girl was still standing there wondering why we were expending so much effort to rescue “just a pigeon”!
It was sad to leave the place. We could have saved the bird. The dogs go unbelievably quiet when they witness a death. They were quiet that day as well… And behind the tragedy of a lost life, I could not help but shudder at how indifferent man will soon grow to the plight of others.
I know she will pelt stones again, and she is just 9.
