Every dog has its day

We have heard many descriptions before. We have heard the strange juxtaposition of Americans and dogs as in the running dogs of US imperialism, Pakistan described as America's hunting dog, Blair as US President George Bush's poodle. A leader of an Indian Hindu organization, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Praveen Togadia, called the leader of the Indian Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, as an "Italian Dog". Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all see dogs as unclean, scavengers of dead flesh, noisy, greedy, and scaring off people, potential disease carriers, and the like. Religious Hindu's would consider their body unclean if a dog touches them. However, humanity is clearly divided into two diversely opposite camps about the animal.

"Dogs are good guys", Morley said, "No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does". Aldous Huxley corroborated, "To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs." Bhopalis are specially fond of dogs. There is a professional "Home Delivery" food service available for the dogs, where the menu reads Non-veg Biryani, Mutton with Rice, Chicken Soup, and Beef Rice, Mutton Soup! According to the same report the organization even runs a mobile beauty parlor for dogs. The creator of a fascinating character in the Booker Longlisted book Animal's People is also an honorary Bhopali. Recruited by Satinath Sarangi to the Bhopal cause, he was instrumental in raising funds for Sambhavna clinic. As he rightly states in his book, any Bhopali in their right mind would not dare to pity animal (Animal, incidentally, is the name of the main protagonist of the book). In torrents of spectacularly bad language Animal expresses his contempt for those who would label him a victim, mocks the heavy sympathy of visiting western journalists and derides the earnest efforts of his do-gooding activist friends. As any typical Bhopali, Animal cheerfully lies, cheats, peeps at bathing women, thinks unprintable thoughts, dreams wet dreams, verges on betraying the campaign for justice but throughout remains starkly real and immensely lovable.

There is no dearth of critics as well. Edward Abbey said, "When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem." A Karel Caprek quote goes: "If dogs could talk, perhaps we'd find it just as hard to get along with them as we do with people". It appears that politicians at Indian capital, even those with strong Bhopal connections, do not like animals. As per a report,

Packs of stray dogs, which roam the streets of New Delhi, should be rounded up and sent to Korea for making soup, one of the city’s exasperated councilors has suggested. India's capital is suffering from a 300,000 strong plague of feral dogs that scavenge the city's open rubbish dumps, hunting in packs and terrorizing cyclists and pedestrians who venture into the city at night. At a meeting to canvass measures to curb stray dog numbers ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games one local councilor, Mohan Prashad Bharadwaj, ventured the "Korean option" after saying he'd read that nation was fond of dog-meat.

Many are inviting the "Kampany" responsible for "the animals", as in the "Animal's People", to come again and start the process of creation of more such animals. The Kampany computers, meanwhile, have been registered as deleting wikipedia entries about the Bhopal gas disasters.