ThePanda

A lot of people, who have left Delhi over the past years, have been telling me about things they miss. Most of their nostalgia has been directed towards power cuts, water shortages, dirty roads, and crowded streets. Well living in a dirty, crowded city, without electricity, water and broadband internet is overrated. Rabid dogs, now those would get my vote for the most interestingly memorable inhabitants of Delhi. Rabid dogs are one of those things I am not expecting to run into in Providence, and frankly I wouldn’t want to either. Oh and there’s a theory that Edgar Alan Poe died of rabies, but then again there are a hundred theories about how he died (alcoholism used to be the most popular one, that’s before the rabies theory came along). Poe is not overrated.

Anyways coming back to the rabid dogs. Well a few days ago they had these leopards going around mauling people somewhere around the financial capital of India (sadly they didn’t chomp on too many brokers and CEOs) and you had people moving around with guns, cages, traps, live animals, amulets, charms, images of God, and God knows what else. Well at least they had a leopard. I am locked in my house (actually I am not locked in, my parents have been requesting me not to go out) as are a hundred other people around me because there’s this rabid dog moving around my block (it’s supposed to have bitten eleven people till now, frankly that gives him a legendary kill rate, 11 people in a day, wow) biting people, spreading rabies, using up the rabies vaccine. Now the rabies vaccine is expensive, and though no longer painful (stories of 10 injections in your stomach, are umm well stories) the entire course does tend to stretch out into the better part of a year. Oh well it’s expensive, that gives a lot of people the required incentive to avoid the dastardly animal at any cost, besides Poe died of rabies, so rabies kills. We’ve had everyone from baton wielding security guards to gun totting police officers trying to avoid the dog menace, kill it or something but most of them seemed to have failed in their efforts, and the municipal corporation cannot be bothered to pick up stray rabid dogs. Besides the municipal corporation needs to fill out lengthy paper work before actually capturing or killing a dog, because dogs are protected by laws which are more stringent as compared to those meant to protect humans. But well at the end of the day I am locked inside a house (not that I step out usually, it’s just reassuring to know the I can) because a rabid dog is patrolling the streets outside.

I also got to see my parents carry metal monopods (this is what one of them looks like) to work today, they needed those for safety while walking to and from their respective cars, and well that was funny. Besides carrying a monopod to office is ok, doctors at Baghdad were supposed to have carried AK47s to work during the looting and well this surgeon told RD that he keeps a handgun with him even when he’s operating (the guy doesn’t go around killing people, so I guess the hippocratic oath is not overrated either), but well Delhi is usually supposed to be an okishly peaceful city, umm except for all those murders, rapes, bomb blasts, police encounters and other such things which seem to crop up every now and then. Oh well I am not gonna miss those either, I am gonna stick to missing rabid dogs.

Ze Panda

PS: This is an hour after the original post, and the dog has seemingly been killed by someone. However they have discovered a new jet-black rabid dog, which can operate more stealthily at night.

PPS: Seemingly the dog killed earlier, wasn’t the original culprit, and well we now have four rabid dogs at large.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2004 at 3:27 am and is filed under article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.