‘Not my job’ is the first thing you say when you see a dead dog on the street. Job is to get rid of the carcass by either calling some municipal corporation or D-I-Y (doing it yourself). Do it yourself? Are you insane? You think you can put that body, half rotten, half-open, intestines hanging from one side, and a distorted head falling from the other, to somewhere where the ongoing traffic won’t crush it more.
Bangalore is a busy city. And also sleepy when it comes to traffic at 9 AM in the morning. Now if someone has to rush to office, one will. No matter what lies on the road in front of one’s vehicle. As I was coming to the bus stop in the morning, there was a dog, lets name it Tommy, dead, on the middle of the road. Most of the vehicles were avoiding Tommy but those big buses and all won’t care for a dead dog, and named Tommy.
Now as a sane citizen of this country, anyone could have joined hands to remove the body from the road because, in a way it was disturbing the traffic badly. Also, the holy place called Silk Board was already traffucked ahead. So it was adding ghee in the fire. I could have done it but should I do it? Why should I do it? Not my job. Mornings are not the right time to touch a dead body, that too of a dog, named Tommy. Isn’t it derogatory for a person like me, a Brahmin, to touch a dead dog?
Thankfully, a guy couldn’t handle it more. He looked yet-another-IT-person with fully dressed up to wrestle the traffic and the chores later in the day. He came forward, showed hands to stop the traffic for 5-6 seconds and picked the dead body and put it in between the divider which was the only place he could have done.
I felt sorry for sometime seeing that. That guy then moved ahead as if nothing happened. I adjusted my ear-phones, kept singing to Eminem and concentrated on the traffic which was again in full flow with no dead body to avoid.
Bloody hypocrites we are. What we expect other to be. What we are. What I am.
