By Rajan Narayan

EVERYONE needs love. Not only humans, even puppies need love. Particularly motherless puppies. About a couple of months ago a cute white coated puppy suddenly where we live at Caranzalen, near Dona Paula, Panjim. I’m living here at present for the last two years. From my window I catch glimpses of this new young puppy as it tries to bask in the morning sunshine, waiting for someone to play with it.
The head watchman here tells me the puppy had lost its mother. A car ran over her on the busy inner Caranzalem road…a young person, here on a holiday brought the puppy into the colony. While he was in Goa in his flat he took the puppy out for a walk every morning. I could see him playing with the puppy and various residents bring food for Rascal, as the wife calls the little fellow. However, there are no doggy toilets in Goa. Owners of pet dogs take them out for a walk morning and evening so that the pets may do their jobs in the open somewhere down the street or in some bushes.
Till the young man was in the colony he looked after the puppy, still very young. However when the man went away he left the puppy homeless for anyone to adopt him and the entire colony seems to have adopted gregarious Rascal, particularly the Nepali workers who take care of the maintenance of the complex of flats almost more than 30 years now…it’s quite a nice complex but a little run down and somewhat “lawaris.” It has a swimming pool and some of the casino paying guests use it during their free hours (after all they work only evenings and nights).
Anyway the puppy is adopted loosely and various people take an interest in it. He also bit some of them and anti-rabies injections had to be taken. Now that the puppy is growing up into a bundle of hyperactivity many residents feed it but some are also wary of Rascal’s skittish and biting ways, constant search for attention of the fearless kind.
But nobody seems to have either time or enough inclination to adopt the puppy properly and officially, put a collar, so that Rascal feels like he has a permanent home and master or mistress or owner. In a sense this frisky young puppy remains a stray puppy in the colony. Loved by all but belonging to none. The motherless puppy is hungry for a little love and affection. It is becoming bolder as it is a little older in the last few months. It runs after everyone who comes out of their flats to go to work or to do some shopping. It chases after the few kids in the colony who are off to school in the morning.
The puppy seems to love cars. It chases people who are getting into their cars to go to work. The puppy does not stop at chasing people. The puppy does not make any distinction based on religion. The puppy is not concerned with the economic status of the people living in the society or visitors to the society. In it always ready and hungry to receive a little bit of love and affection any which way it comes its way. It chases everybody and mercifully nobody yet throws stones at it to chase it away.
The housing complex is like any other housing complex of old, blocks of three-storied flats of 2BHK and 3BHK. At least half of them are closed while their owners live out of Goa or India. A few are rented out. The few old-timers here go out in their cars and return in their cars quietly to retreat behind closed doors in their homes. The puppy has no admission or entry to any of the flats. So it is condemned to run around the complex the whole day from dawn to dusk seeking friends. Welcoming friends or shoo shoo-ing friends, a few make a lot of fuss for the puppy to be removed and warn their children from petting it.
However, I notice how Rascal, the puppy is beginning to feel at home with its lifestyle of accepting crumbs of love here and there. It also takes the liberty of rushing into any open door seeking both love and favours, since my door is mostly open during the day time it keeps coming in to be welcomed by Tara.
But I have always been a little scared of dogs and warn her about even thinking of gifting me with a pet dog. I was once bitten by a dog as a child. The puppy is non-threatening and threatening in turns depending on how much real interest you take in it. Of you shout at it to go out it may snap and growl at you. I do not know what this Rascal wants, food or just love, and presumably both and much more. Some people are very parsimonious with love, and will shell it out only in small miserable amounts…and this is true for human too, forget about four-legged stray dogs of the streets.
While the wife invites the puppy in, I immediately say out, out, go out. If I’m alone I normally try to chase it out firmly…and like little children, this Rascal too throws tantrums of bewilderment. If instead of welcoming it to play with him but try to chase it away…there is anger. The puppy is very keen on trying out its new baby teeth on my footwear, it wants to grab anything to chew on it and drags it out of the flat and I am unable to chase it in my wheelchair. So now this has become a favourite game, when I’m not alert Rascal creeps in and drags footwear out, hoping I will notice and come after it.
When my physio girl Dr Mrugna comes and parks her car in the compound in the evening the puppy is there to greet her, sensing she is a friendly person and tries to clamber all over her. One day Rascal followed her indoors to my ground floor flat and nothing would make it leave…when we tried to shoo it out it dragged the door mat with it in a temper. The thick soft indoors mat had to be rescued and I asked my physio to give a napkin to Rascal to chew on an release the door mat, but perhaps the napkin was not thick enough or tasty enough to chew on and the puppy abandoned it outside the door before leaving in disgust.
Puppies and children have a special connection. Every morning I see a lady taking her kid out for a drive or on some mission. On Thursday morning, February 13, I saw Rascal chasing the lady who was carrying the baby on her hip. The puppy felt drawn towards the human kid who is as young as the puppy in human years. The kid also responded and smiled and waved at the puppy and the excited puppy climbed all over the legs of the lady with the baby on the hip. She had to bend down with the baby to free herself from the over-excited puppy. Lifting it neatly but firmly and putting the puppy on a stone wall with a reprimand maybe.
On Valentine’s Day I hope all of you shared your love with all those in need of love. Not only with your beloved loved humans but particularly children of all ages who are always desperate for love and affection. Also all the stray puppies which may run up to you with hope, don’t wait for them to chase you. Reach out to them.