A series of vignettes of Dhaka dogs, exploring what dog stories reveal about compassion, violence, ownership, and privilege in urban Bangladesh.
Back home, we don’t keep dogs as pets
in the cities. Most dogs there are street dogs. They live on their own. Breed on their own. We let them live free and die. In those days, none of our friends had dogs. Not even our friends’ friends’ friends had any. But in one of our friends’ neighborhoods there was a house with a dog. A German Shepherd, of course. If you are super-duper rich in Dhaka and want to have a pet doggy in Bangladesh, it must be of that kind. That’s the norm. We never saw that Shepherd or Alsatian in full form, though. Back home, no one walks their foreign dogs in the street. Too many people and too little walking space (almost none and beautifully unwalkable and perfectly dirty.)
The house that housed the Shepherd had a main gate with a sign: Beware of dogs. To neighbors, it was a kutta-wala bari. A house with a dog. Behind that main gate was a big garage with a big solid iron sheet gate. The bottom part of the gate, one foot high, had visible strips of open bars. Sometimes, while passing the house, I would crouch a bit and try to catch a glimpse of that German creature through the bottom iron bars. The response was instant—thunderous, heart-stopping barking! And away I ran. What I’d heard was true, I thought. Such an aggressive, majestic dog must be fed two to three pounds of meat every day. And no doubt its monthly upkeep cost more than a family of five people like mine (who got to eat meat barely once a week). Hell, we were poorer than a dog!
“Look, these are all deshi kuttas. Local pariah dogs. They know how to take care of themselves. When we, the two-legged noblest of all creatures, Ashraful Makhluqat, struggle with basic needs, who cares about these kuttas?”
In villages and smaller towns
some houses keep them more as guard dogs than as pets. Even there, the canines are left on their own when it comes to food. They just get to stay there. No dog kennel or anything of the sort is provided. They make themselves comfortable in any corner of the house. At night, they lie in the yard, under the open sky. If it rains, they take shelter inside the open veranda. Or perhaps by the outdoor cooking area. Look, these are all deshi kuttas. Local pariah dogs. They know how to take care of themselves. When we, the two-legged noblest of all creatures, Ashraful Makhluqat, struggle with basic needs, who cares about these kuttas?
At my mother’s father’s house, there was one. A fawn-colored pariah dog with a white blaze. It never had a name. Some winters, I heard faint squeaking sounds coming from the firewood shed. The bitch has birthed, I was told. When the mommy dog was away, I would sneak over to see the puppies. A cluster of tiny creatures snuggled up to one another, writhing, twitching, yawning. Whispering to one another.
Sometimes, the mommy dog moved its litter to another quieter and warmer spot. To some abandoned clay chula stove hole. Almost always, when it was time for the litter to emerge from the den, my vacation would end, and I would have to return to Dhaka. The next year, or the year after, when I came back, the grown-up puppies were never seen. Either taken by some neighbors, or wandered off on their own.
In Dhaka, street bitches don’t have many places to hide their litters. Once the pups can walk, they become the property of the kids who play on the streets. These kids give the playful pups everything they crave—food, fun, attention, companionship—during their mother’s long absences. They play with them all day, give them names, walk them around, leash them with bits of string. Within weeks, the mother dog watches her entire litter drift away one by one (the chubby, nice-looking ones first). She doesn’t seem to mind. Before the pups hit two months, they are all gone. The one or two that still stick around their mother are the weak ones, with unusually pale coats the kids don’t like.
Dog mating
in the street pulls every eye. Adults give long stares. Smile a knowing smile. Some comment: These dogs have no shame, doing it all out in the open. Kids are the most valued spectators. They watch in awe, their mouths agape. The real fun starts after the mounting part is over. When the mating mates are stuck. Back to back. Ass to ass. Man, such free live entertainment on the streets doesn’t happen every day. Passersby who have time linger. Kids don’t want to miss the golden moment to taunt the canines stuck in love. They pelt stones at them. The poor lovers can only bark. Bitterly. Furiously. Because they can’t chase this time. Sprinkle salt on the bastards, some passing passerby will suggest. That’ll separate them.
I remember a house near our high school where two dogs lived with one body. Well, not exactly. They were born joined at the scrotum. They sat together. Stood together. Moved together. One always dragging the other, like a constant tug-of-war. The only thing they never did was face each other. Kids on the street always had fun with the duo, pelting stones, tossing things. There was no dirty pleasure in tormenting these helpless creatures. I would walk by, watching and murmuring to myself.
In the attic
of my friend’s house, we began raising rabbits. A joint venture between four friends. Weeks later, there were signs of a thief. We recruited a three-month-old dog to guard our rabbits. Pale white coat, pink nose, light gray eyes. An albino, I realized many years later. Cutler, we called him. We fed him, played with him, and bathed him with shampoo every month.
Of the four bunnies we had, the cinnamon-colored one was the cutest and the prettiest. Sumu was named after a girl one of us loved. One day, when I brought him his noon meal, Cutler didn’t come running with his tail wagging. He rather approached slowly, head down. Didn’t even make eye contact. A minute later, I discovered Sumu, headless. Her corpse lay outside the hutch, its compartment door half-open. No, the head was not found anywhere. Black, beauty-eyed Sumu’s head just vanished.
Every one of us was shell-shocked. Heartbroken. The protector had turned into a killer. The hutch door was locked. God knows how the dog managed to open it.
Two months later, Cutler developed tiny worm-like parasites near his ears. By then we’d lost our spirits. Realized our rabbit-raising project wouldn’t work. No kits had ever survived a week after their birth. The heat in the attic was the reason, we figured. We couldn’t do it on the ground, sadly. No place to place the rabbit hutch. Soon we abandoned the project. Then, the dog. Someone from several blocks away agreed to keep Cutler as a guard dog for their house. We left him there. Three days later, Cutler was back! When someone opened the main gate, he snuck through and headed right for the attic. A problem, we thought. Who would take responsibility for him now? Then one day, Sagor and I took Cutler on a long rickshaw ride. We arrived at Thatari Bazaar, one of the oldest markets in Old Dhaka. Deep within its bustling, tangled alleys, we left Cutler in a winding lane of the meat market. The air was thick and pungent, heavy with the stench of overflowing garbage and slaughter waste. A place where he would never have to worry about finding food. Saying goodbye to Cutler, we turned our rickshaw around.
This is something
I heard from a friend. About a dog that lived in a small town, in the house of a man named Saleh. They called him Rostam. A pariah dog he was, but bold and daring. He would beat the hell out of any stranger who walked into the house. Once, Rostam chased a visitor straight into the pond. Saleh did everything to control him. Punished him, even. But aggressive behavior was something the dog was born with. And so began a strange problem. Rostam would chase the chickens like crazy. Neighbors complained every day. Then one day, Rostam killed a neighbor’s big rooster. Just killed, but didn’t eat it. That day, Saleh lost his temper. He tied Rostam to a mango tree, grabbed a piece of split firewood, and brought it down on the beast like mad. Rostam didn’t react the way he should. He simply accepted the punishment. Eventually, he collapsed. Dragging the unmoving body on an areca leaf sheath, Saleh left him by the river, thinking he might be almost dead.
A few days later, Saleh didn’t see the dog near the river. Nor anywhere else in the village. Almost a decade passed. One morning, Saleh noticed a dog standing at the entrance of the house, staring inside. As if hesitating to enter. When he drew closer, he recognized Rostam. Slow, burdened with age, his coat patchy and shedding. Saleh’s eyes filled with tears. Rostam had remembered, and at last, returned home! He patted Rostam lovingly and invited him inside and fed him with his own hands—once guilty of driving him off. Rostam lived for about a week. Then, one beautiful morning, Saleh found him lying still. Motionless. Sleeping peacefully.
Image Credit: Ifteebd10 / via Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY-SA 4.0)
