I am a Mumbai dog. Not the kind that rides in a handbag down Carter Road. The kind with a notch in one ear, a limp I’ve long made peace with, and a permanent address that is, technically, a railway platform.
The slow-line side of a suburban station whose name you’d know. That’s my patch. I keep time better than the indicator board: the 8:14 that never comes on time, the crush at nine when the whole city pours through one turnstile, the strange soft hour after midnight when only the sweepers and I are left. The vada-pav man slides me the burnt ends without looking down. The announcement lady’s voice, tinny and eternal, I know better than any of my four names.
Four names, by the way. The stall owner calls me Raja. The morning regulars call me Moti. A schoolkid calls me Bhidu and means it as the highest honour going. Nobody calls me by a number, because I don’t have one. No ticket, no ID, no line on any register that says this dog was here.
I’ve seen the tracks bake white in May and vanish under brown water by July, the year folding over itself, and through all of it, same platform, same step. You learn a city from one spot if you sit still long enough. I’ve learned mine down to the pigeons.
Last week, men in municipal jackets walked the platform with a list.
Institutional areas, they said. Railway stations are on it now. There’s a date in August by which someone has to sign a paper swearing they can take me somewhere and keep me there. A shelter, they call it. Here’s what I keep turning over between trains: I’ve ridden the edges of this city for years, every siding and stairwell and out-of-service platform, and I have never once caught the scent of that shelter. It is a room that exists on paper and nowhere a dog can actually walk to.
There’s a notch cut in one ear. It means a van took me once, years ago, and I came back unable to add to the problem everyone shouts about. I did the very thing the courts keep arguing over. Nobody thought to notch the paperwork.
Do you ever think about Laika? A street dog like me, picked off a Moscow lane and given a one-way ticket up. A rocket, not a local, for a plan that was never hers. I think about her some nights, from this platform.
I’m not asking for much. A step that stays untaped. A bowl at a door. One human who decides that four names deserve an address.
The last local has gone. It’s just the sweepers and me now.
Go on, then. Before they tape it off, tell them a dog was here first.
Also read: I am a Gurugram dog… · and if there’s room by your door, adopt a Mumbai indie off the street instead of buying one off a website.
“I am a…” features snippets and stories of cats, dogs and other friends this roving dog has met in places near and far.