Aashray for Animals

With reference to the baby dog that I wrote about in the last post, my heart aches to write that I am now quite unsure about whether I shall be able to save its life at long distance. Too many ifs and buts... whether they will feed him regularly as I have instructed, whether they will keep watch on that damaged leg, whether the poor baby can take it all. I ran around quite a bit to find out about medicines to give it, then was told that I am not allowed to send liquids by courier or post. I can only pray that those hotel people are going to feed it daily for a while, at least. I have little hope that they will take the trouble to find the medicines and administer them regularly ... if it dies, I shall forever hold myself at least partially responsible. Believe me, it's not a nice thought to think. Anybody have any ideas, or contacts at or near Bodh Gaya whom I can beg to help?

Searching desperately for help online while still in Bodh Gaya, I learnt about Durgapur Aashray for animals, an NGO based in DSP township, Durgapur (19/20, Vivekananda Road, A-Zone). Their work, as described through Google and Facebook, seemed wonderful, but I wanted to see  the shelter for myself before taking a major decision. So I visited them  on Thursday the 26th. And by God, even at this age, I can say that it was a life-changing experience. My faith in humankind has been very powerfully renewed. Good people do exist, though they are sadly few and far between.

Mrs. Chaitali Roy and her family (along with a few dedicated young friends) have given themselves heart and soul to rescuing seriously injured and sick animals - mainly dogs - and giving them food, medical care and a loving home. I very quickly made friends with several of the furry inmates. The situation was as heart-rending as it was heartwarming, paradoxical though that may sound. There was one dog with its front legs permanently broken and stuck skywards, which crawls around on its belly; several are semi-paralysed, and several run around on only three legs, or the front two, their behinds supported on wheels in a frame. But all of them seemed full of life, and quite clearly not miserable or moribund. The organisation regularly arranges for all sorts of medical and surgical procedures too, such as curing dermatitis and acute malnutrition as well as sewing up wounds, restoring prolapsed uteruses and removing ghastly tumours which are potentially fatal if left untreated, besides running a programme of spaying and neutering young animals, so that they do not keep breeding indiscriminately, leading to accidents of all sorts to themselves and humans alike: a problem which has grown increasingly acute all over this country, ever since governments stopped regular culling and sterilizing drives.

They are running a full house, and new animals in pathetic condition keep turning up at their door all the time, besides the ones they continually pick up from the roadside. They often have to turn away animals in desperate need simply because they can no longer cope with more (and for that, as I read on the net, they are abused by people who would themselves, I am sure, never raise a finger to help in any substantial way). They very badly need more resources - space, volunteers, money, everything. 'What can I do to help?' I asked, after making an initial donation (note, I raised the question: Mrs. Roy never mentioned money before I did). She told me that some people do help now and then; but it is far from enough. Simply feeding that many animals daily and adequately costs nearly Rs. 60,000 a month, leaving aside everything else they do, and it was quite evident that they are not rich, idle people indulging a whim. 

So I am begging - that's right, begging - all my friends, acquaintances, students, their parents and every reader - to start a campaign at least to raise funds for this organization, even if we can't do anything else. I myself have vowed to give something every month. Do please first visit their Facebook page (Aashray for Animals), watch some of the videos, 'follow' them, then click a few buttons on your phone. You can send money to the following bank account

Account Name: Durgapur Aashray for Animals, Account number: 919010042770523 (Axis Bank), IFSC: UTIB0000213,

or you can send it via Google Pay/PayTM/Phone Pe at the number: 9609600920.

Please donate with a loving soul and an open hand. And please spread the word around in your own circles ... the more help that comes, the more lives will be saved, the more sufferers lifted out of misery.

Now here are a few photos I took there

Heartbreak at Bodh Gaya

I spent the four pujo days as I had hoped to, far from the madding crowd, 300 km away in Bodh Gaya.

I left on the morning of Saturday the 21st (saptami) and returned in the afternoon of Tuesday the 24th (Dashami). I had taken along ma and Koushik, who needed a much needed break of relaxation from his hectic work schedule.

I won't write much about the sights and sounds, because I have written in detail about the last trip (Buddha Vihar), in February 2017 (I went again in September that year - I love the place). The road is for the most part in excellent condition. We took in Rajgir and Nalanda too. Everyone agreed that the ambience of the Mahabodhi temple ('main mandir') in Bodh Gaya and the Venuvan park in Rajgir were the nicest highlights. 

The hotel was the same as the one I had stayed in on both the previous occasions, and yet I could recognize nothing about it, not the location, not the structure, not the rooms. Small miracle which was left unresolved. The staff was lazy and highly disorganized but polite and obliging, the food was good and the sleep restful, so I have little to complain about. The sun was hot, but everywhere it was pleasant in the shade, and the nights were very comfortable even without the air conditioner going.

Absolutely the most memorable thing that happened was the little stray puppy with a broken leg which had taken shelter in the hotel garage. I fell in love at first sight, cuddled him night and day, and parting from him broke my heart - I have been in tears again and again till the time of writing. I taught the staff to give it the right kind of food, begged them to put the leg in a splint, left some money for its care, and my only prayer to the Buddha these last few days has been that the poor mutt might survive, heal and prosper. If I had been a rich man with an adequate service staff, I swear I'd have brought that puppy with me and given it a permanent home. As it is, I am planning to do something more lasting and worthwhile for all such abandoned, sick and injured dogs around me, starting off with visiting the sole animal care shelter in my town that I have just heard about in order to find out how I can help. Maybe some of you can join in?

The First Noble Truth the Buddha taught: Life is suffering. Indeed. For me, and for all those I love. Become non-attached, He said, and yet no one ever strained every nerve harder lifelong to teach us all to be more loving, to serve, to heal, to save... did He ever succeed in becoming non-attached enough not to hurt so badly for every living thing?

Turning sixty

I turned sixty yesterday. If I had still been serving at that school, they would have officially thrown me out yesterday itself. All I can say is, 'Thank God I quit early.' And so, from today onwards, I am officially a Senior Citizen, and a voluntarily-self employed person hereafter.

There was a wonderful birthday celebration. The last time it had happened was exactly half a century ago (my mother, who arranged that last one, is still around), and this time round I had shyly expressed a mild desire for some sort of do on this day in my Whatsapp group of favourite old boys and girls. Several of them took it very seriously, and arranged a fun event that I shall remember with relish and gratitude till my dying day. There was even a round of cake cutting, and gifts (the most precious of which, it goes without saying, was that so many of them, Pupu included, had made time out of their busy schedules to come over, even from Kolkata, just to be here with me). There was an intercontinental video chat in which several others, who could not physically attend, enthusiastically joined in. There was happy cheering, eating and drinking, and almost all of them stayed the night, so we had the best kind of adda till the wee hours. Few people who are not rich and powerful celebrities (whose special occasions are attended essentially by chamchas looking for undeserved favours!) get such special treatment to warm the cockles of the heart. I am grateful to all of them, but above all to Providence. 'Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good'....

I am serene and happy today. Feeling much, much more upbeat than I was ten years ago, when I turned fifty. (and you can go even further back into the past if you read Forty five and counting). Maybe for the time left to me, I can look forward to being less and less anxious about the future, having more and more time for loved ones, and watching their progress through life with ever more benign interest and helpful concern. Nothing would give me more pleasure anyway. But most of my life's work is done, and it was a fairly tough and challenging life, and I have dealt with it in a way that does not make me feel guilty or ashamed or inadequate. Now I am going to enjoy all the perquisites of old age, from getting a discount on my income tax bill to having to care less and less about household chores.

But, and I am reminding the Man Upstairs daily these days, I don't want to hang around for much longer than three score years and ten, and the three score is done already. 

One little girl, a current pupil, has wished me Happy Birthday along with the remark 'Not everyone can make sixty look like you do.' I am both grateful and very, very proud.  

What nonsense!

I just posted something on my fun blog after more than a year. It is a little comment on Sukumar Ray's immortal nonsense classic Abol Tabol. Do look it up.

Childhood fun

Now that I am going to become a 'senior citizen' in a few days' time, I am dreaming more and more of things that I used to do for fun in my childhood days.

There were two brands of toothpaste that we used, Binaca and Colgate. The Binaca-s used to come with tiny rubber models of all kinds of animals, saving up which as toys was a bonus. Alas, while Colgate carries on bravely, Binaca has gone out of business. What I remember best is using the thin cardboard boxes that enclosed the toothpaste tubes to build make-believe buses, cutting open little rectangular doors and windows along the sides with a razor blade, and nicking myself sometimes while I was at it.

On mornings when I woke up with a thunderstorm raging outside and there was no compulsion to set off for school, I used to pile up pillows and bolsters around me on the bed and pretend to be a captain sailing his little ship across a wild and billowy sea. Those who have read some poems in Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses (A good Play, My bed is a boat) will be able, perhaps, to share the thrill and joy that I felt, and still imagine can sometimes feel when the clouds roar and the rain falls in torrents at daybreak.

During school vacations my grandpa frequently left me at evenfall at the gate of Children's Little Theatre (aka Aban Mahal) close to our house in Gol Park Kolkata after buying me a ticket, and I spent a couple of enchanted hours watching children little older than me enacting wonderful fables on stage. Two of my perennial favourites were Jijo and Rooplekha (I still sing one of the ditties from the former, tupi chai tupi, and I managed to fall head over heels in love with two successive heroines who performed in the latter!)

One image that keeps coming back is digging a tunnel through wet mud with a friend in our garden, and the triumphant joy we felt when our fingers met underground. Great explorers discovering new countries could hardly have felt prouder of themselves.

Trying out new shoes (only once a year, at Pujo time, and only those which were to be worn to school) was a tickle like few others. The first time they came out of the box, I always put them on and walked about on my bed. And reading Tintin comic books... I have read them in e-book format, and watched all the movies, including the Spielberg stuff, but I would still like to curl up with one of those illustrated books,if only I didn't have every line and picture in every book by heart.

In two of the houses I lived in during our sojourn in DSP township, I could clamber up the walls to the roof, and there I was 'monarch of all I survey'. I spent many a happy autumn night sleeping on one of those roofs when I was in my early teens, after having rigged up a lamp hung from the chimney, and feeling like a great engineer over the achievement. At no other time have I felt so happy and full of vim waking up at sunrise, throwing off the dew-sodden coverlet and slipping downstairs before my mother's angry voice could summon me. 

Making portable fire-fountains (tubri) with a team of friends on the occasion of Diwali was pure bliss, but I have written about that before, so I won't repeat myself.

On winter afternoons my mother sat together with her friends on the outer verandah of one of the houses in the neighbourhood, while we children indulged in horseplay around them - it was quite like one large, happy family - and the highlight of the occasion was when the young peanut vendor arrived, his tiny ponytail swinging from his shiny shaven head, with his trademark cry which sounded to me like 'aye badambhay chanachurey....'. He put down his long wicker stool and doled out his wares, warm shelled peanuts roasted in sand, accompanied by hot dhania chutney served on large sal leaves, and we ate together with our hands, squabbling and squealing with pointless laughter: few five-star dinners have ever tickled my palate half as well. Which brings to mind the many chorui-bhaati s we organised, traditional neighbourhood picnics the likes of which today's kids will never know.

Even at 15, while reading for my secondary level board examinations, I went off after lunch with an air-pillow tucked into my schoolbag along with a textbook or two and took a bus to the railway station. I lounged the whole afternoon on a wooden bench on the thinly crowded platform, studying only occasionally and paying much more attention to the trains coming and going (some still drawn by thundering, steam belching iron dragons in those days); waited for the chaiwallah to wake up from his siesta and serve thirsty people like me, then came home. My parents, leave alone scolding or even objecting, hardly even bothered to ask: they must have been very funny people, but this weird habit did no harm to my examination results. Today's parents will probably die of shock just to imagine their children doing something like that.

So, on the whole, it wasn't such a bad childhood after all, though nostalgia rarely makes me feel sad. Good times, well enjoyed, and happily left behind.

If, Reader, you liked reading this, you might do me the kindness of wishing me a happy sixtieth birthday. It is due in eight days' time :)

P.S.: According to Google, there have been a thousand visits to this blog within two days. A personal record! In comparison, the number of comments is measly. How unkind (or at least insensitive) most people are... especially since I am the sort of person to whom people have come whining and snivelling and asking for all sorts of help or at least a ear to lend to their tales of woe or a shoulder to weep upon for ages and ages, and I have never been short of time for them. Maybe it has been well said that your rewards are waiting in heaven, and you should have very low expectations of your fellow man...