A photographer encounters lonely stray dogs on Goa’s beaches during the pandemic

The other day, a wet black dog with a red collar appeared on our balcony.

It was the season of Ganesh, Goa had lit up in festive thanks. For weeks the firecrackers sounded against the dark night. The dogs were running. Every morning the village WhatsApp group would show us dogs lost and dogs found, dispersed from their homes and the hearts that had held them. We posted her picture. Black pelt, a muzzle of white. WhatsApp, Facebook, the redundant electric pillars and the red walls of the post office. No one came. No one claimed. She slept on the bench in the balcony for many nights but now she has a small black bed inside the house that perfectly matches her coat. She is used to us now. She is happy to see us when we come home. She fell sick too. Some kind of fever, the vet said. Now she is better but I see it in her sad eyes sometimes. The family she left behind, who must be thinking of her, worried sick.

— Prayaag Akbar.

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To start with, I was a cat girl. Papa gave me two Siamese cats when I was five, to stop me from being miserable when Amma went on tour. He thought they were males. Actually, only one was, and I soon had twenty-one cats.

For many years, till my daughter Anahita was born, I didn’t think of pets. By then I was touring all the time and I thought a nice little dog would help the kids not miss me too much. Instead, as it turned out, Freddy Bach, my first dog, a Dachshund, became my third child.

My daughter is now thirty-four. And I am on my thirtieth beloved dog. Over the years they have grown to be my most treasured friends, each and every one of them. The children are gone, they have moved on with their lives, and I am at home surrounded by my loves.

They dance with me, run with me, laugh with me. Lick me when I weep. Destress and relax me when I am feeling defeated after having taken the world on. They sit on me, they lie under me as I come down from my shirshasan. I call them and speak to them when I’m away.

My colleagues indulge me. They learn to love the dogs. As do our students. My Begum has recently had a litter of six pups. So right now we are a family of ten. And who cares about scratched arms or sofas or torn clothes. Give me my dogs, any time.

— Mallika Sarabhai.

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There’s an empty stone quarry
next to our house
that is slowly filling up with the garbage
of our community
Sundari would bark her head off
whenever she heard the tinkle of a bottle thrown into it

And there were times
when she would suddenly let out
a deep guttural sigh
sitting on her favourite rocking chair
behind my work desk

And the hollow sculpted by her sigh
would swallow me whole

But I have used too many words already…
I just had to
chase her a little distance with these
hollow things
that are never equal to the world we live in

She would have liked it.

— Salil Chaturvedi.

Excerpted with permission from writings by Prayaag Akbar, Mallika Sarabhai, and Salil Chaturvedi in Rain Dogs, Rohit Chawla, HarperCollins India.