Some years ago I was passing through Kunming in the Yunnan province in China and eating in a small restaurant on the outskirts of the city. An elderly woman was peeling some boiled eggs sitting on the pavement outside and feeding a stray dog. There seemed to be a touching and perfect understanding between the stray and the woman. To me, it was another illustration of the bond that exists between us humans and dogs, even if the mutts don’t belong to anyone and are not pets in a household. I have seen this all over India and South East Asia where these mongrels roam free and at will and somehow survive and make connections with random people.
Lalitha Krishnan is certainly not a random person… I first had the pleasure of making her acquaintance in 2015 at a common friend’s house in Bellingham in Washington state. Subsequently in 2019, she and her husband Kutty opened their house for me and a friend as we passed through Landour en route to Uttarkashi.
I have just finished reading her maiden venture as a writer : The Stray Dogs of Landour Network.
Straight off the bat I must confess that as a dog lover myself and as one who had the strongest of bonds with our own Baby – a mix of American Bull Dog and Pitbull – Lalitha’s book touched a chord in my being and the bittersweet story which revolves around a stray called Pretty/Roshini is bound to break your heart.
Lalitha invokes the remnant colonial charm of a hill station town as she narrates her involvement with the stray dogs who come into her life and sometimes go away. It is a tale of a network of people who care and love these strays and who in turn give back much more to their human benefactors.
Lalitha writes extremely well and has a natural flourish and her prose is never labored….the phrases flow straight from the heart and some I found extremely moving and I must quote one such passage to illustrate my point.
“One day Pretty arrived at my doorstep with a look alike named Barbara. The tail that wagged the dog was squirming for favours with relentless licks…. She had the charm of a practised manipulator, her submissiveness almost too perfect.”
She weaves a story filled with personal challenges and the sometimes painful learning curve required to deal with strays. She brings out the quirks and characteristics of each of the strays that she dealt with and has tried to understand the inter relationships in their packs.
If you live in any part of India or have ever lived there you will empathise with and identify with these strays and the relationships that seem to form naturally between them and some of us.
Lalitha’s book is a labor of love, written with compassion and a naturally fluid narrative.
I shall not give away the plot of this beautiful story… you have to read it for yourself .
(The book is available on Amazon and other online outlets)
Wandering, One Gathers Honey 