Monday, July 30, 2012

A pinch of salt, and a lot of Pepper.

Okay, this post will probably make me sound like an 11 year old with a morbid belief in happy endings, and a complete ignorance of death. There are no witty one-liners today, no crazy metaphors, no lists and nothing that can be directly interpreted as, you know, happiness.

A couple of days ago, I came across a three legged pup, outside this swanky Bangalore hotel, I noticed her primarily when I saw the nice Virappan-looking guard kicking her to keep her away from the gate, maybe to make sure she didn't disgust the up-market 5-star guests that were probably scheduled to come. Anyway, I picked her up, walked a couple of kilometers and dropped her at what seems to be the ONLY animal shelter in Bangalore, well considering that I don't routinely qualify as a nice-human-being, and I do have a lot of things weighing down on my conscience, it did feel extra special to have actually done something that would have added to my share of positive Karma. That's when things got interesting.

The kick ass animal shelter people, who I had gladly outsourced my positive Karma to, just called me yesterday to tell me that her leg's damaged beyond repair, because some car or something's probably run her over, so they can't use her with the rest of the shelter dogs (who they take to play with autistic children apparently.) I can if I choose to, somehow drop her back where I found her, so that she can be kicked around a little more , because if no one takes her back in sometime, they'll 'put her to sleep'. 

So, my tryst with positive karma turned out to be a sham, and the person I 'saved' is in fact going to die. I mean, yeah it might be for the better etc, but it's just hard to imagine that something that barely reaches up to your ankle, and spent the better part your association with her crying in your arms, is going to that big dog house up there. So here I am, thinking of stuff in retrospect amazed at how the difference between 'having good intentions' and 'doing good deeds' is frighteningly clear now. 

I don't know what's the right thing to do, or why this is messing me up so much, but I sort off liked knowing that I did a cool selfless thing, sometimes life's a bitch even to 'bitches'.

P.S. Pepper is what I used to call her, on hindsight it seems weird that I gave a name to a puppy who I'd met for like 3 hours, but I guess I probably picked that up from a very benign (read: intolerable) soul.

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