Gurugramwale: The animal stories

This afternoon, the four folks are briefly lying in a public park in Gurugram. Dinesh and Mr Rawat are otherwise walking the dogs as part of their job. The dogs live with their employers, a human family, in a house nearby.

Both Guddu and Chuck are brown. They have the same flappy ears and exactly the same size.

Guddu and Chuck are dogs. Dinesh is a human. He is holding on to Guddu’s leash. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

They must be twins, no?

“They are step-siblings,” says Dinesh. “They have the same papa, but their mummy is alag alag (different).”

Guddu and Chuck are dogs. Dinesh is a human. He is holding on to Guddu’s leash. Chuck’s caretaker is another human, SS Rawat.

This afternoon, the four folks are briefly lying in a public park in Gurugram. Dinesh and Mr Rawat are otherwise walking the dogs as part of their job. The dogs live with their employers, a human family, in a house nearby.

“They are a little over a year,” says Dinesh, affectionately embracing his Guddu. Patting Chuck’s back, Mr Rawat explains the young dogs’ huge size, saying, “Some dogs grow very fast.”

It is the two humans’ assignment to escort the dogs every afternoon in the neighbourhood park. “We love Guddu and Chuck,” says one of them. Indeed, some personal histories linger on behind their fondness for dogs.

Mr Rawat confesses that he isn’t fond of animals as much as his colleague, “but I’ve grown attached to Chuck and Guddu.” Coming from a mountain village in Pauri, in Uttarakhand, he has a less friendly childhood with animals. “We would often see cheetahs and baghs (tigers) in the jungles.” Sometimes a bagh might appear at night in the village, looking to attack a goat for food, “and then we all would gather and scare him away by beating drums and by shouting.” The bagh would run away, back into the forest.

Both Madhubani and Pauri are far from the Millennium City, and the only intimate link to animals for these two men remains with their employer’s dogs.

By now, Guddu and Chuck are jumping over each other and one doesn’t know if they are fighting or playing.

Dinesh and Mr Rawat affectionately but forcefully restrain their respective charges, and get up to make a round of the park.