An old woman and her dogs

Just to spread the word about one of the most amazing people I know: an old woman who lives in a small makeshift shanty next to the PVR Anupam complex in Saket (near the entrance leading to the main parking lot). Pratima Devi – called “Amma” by most of her acquaintances – has been looking after street dogs for years now, on her meagre earnings from collecting and selling reusable garbage. She feeds them, gets them sterilised through Friendicoes or other local organisations; dozens of them sleep huddled together in and around her little home – it’s a truly wondrous sight for anyone who knows how territorial street dogs are, and how aggressively they keep newcomers from encroaching on their spaces.

I’ve only actually known Pratima Devi for the past six months, though we have both been in Saket – living five minutes apart – since 1987. I was vaguely aware of her existence over the years: when passing her side of the PVR complex on winter nights, I would see a couple of charpoys with dogs on them, a bonfire burning nearby. Once or twice I saw her looking very dishevelled, yelling at someone in what seemed an ill-tempered way, and I may have formed the impression that she was a belligerent nutcase who communicated only with animals and didn’t like people.

There was a story with a very interior, contemplative tone that I read as a child in one of our Hindi textbooks – I forget the title, but the premise has stayed with me all these years, long after much of what I learnt in school has been forgotten. It was told in the voice of a privileged man who sees a poor person and wants to go across and talk – to try and understand something of this person’s life and circumstances – but finds an invisible force holding him back; some combination of self-consciousness, social conditioning and perhaps an internal prejudice that makes him believe meaningful communication with someone from such a different background is impossible.

Whatever the case, though I was intrigued by the “kutton waali amma” who was often spoken of in our colony, I didn’t make an effort to come close or get to know her. That changed last June, after Foxie went. Driven by an urge that overrode all our hesitations and procrastinations, we went across and said namaste to Pratima Devi, and were relieved to find that she was extremely warm and friendly, and most happy to talk – not just about the dogs but about her life, and ours.

As we spoke to her over the next few days, many little details emerged. She left her village in West Bengal’s Nandigram in the early 1980s, she told us, mainly to get away from her husband, a lout and wastrel. She once worked as an ayah for the family of the actor-model Rahul Dev (and is still in occasional touch with them). A tea-stall she ran in the spot where she currently lives was shut down by the MCD; later she set up a little temple against the wall near her shack – it has, in a way, legitimised her presence, made it more acceptable to the people around (including the many youngsters who park their bikes nearby and are unnerved by the dogs). One of her sons lives in Sangam Vihar, working as a mistri – she has the option of staying with him (I’ve met him, he seems a kindly, concerned chap), but she can’t leave her dogs, and besides one senses that self-sufficiency is important to her. She was awarded a Godfrey Phillips prize for “social courage” a few years ago and proudly shows photos from the ceremony to anyone who visits her. She has applied for an Aadhaar card but is puzzled by the complications of the procedure; a card was once despatched but never made it to her because she has no fixed address. (I’ve seen the application form – it simply says “Near Saket Shauchalay, PVR Complex”.) Many of the dogs have film-star names - Raj Kumar, Dharmendra - which they live up to with their strutting and preening.

Every week or so I go across and check on Pratima Devi, take some food, but hardly ever has she given the impression of being in need. When I show up and ask if I can get some bread and milk for the dogs from the nearby Mother Dairy, she nods with an indulgent little smile, as if she is doing me a favour (and of course, in a post-Foxie world, she is). Or if the evening’s ration has already arrived, she asks me to come after a day or two, or to call her beforehand to check. On one occasion my mother, cradling one of the new pups, remarked aloud that she felt like adopting this one. You’d think that Pratima Devi, given her hand-to-mouth situation, would be only too glad for people to take dogs off her hand, but she practically jumped up and said “Nahin nahin! Abhi yeh bahut chhoti hai – isse mere paas kuch din aur rehna do.” (“No, she’s too little now – let me look after her for a few more days.”)

But it isn’t my intention to paint a rosy picture of her life. One often hears clichés about the “warm smiles” of the poor – clichés built on the sentimentalising of poverty, on the self-serving myopia of the well-off person who chances to see poor people in their moments of relative comfort and tells himself “They have nothing, but look how happy they are.” I have felt strongly about such hypocrisy for a long time, so it came as a jolt to me one day when I realised I may have been adopting a similar attitude to Pratima Devi; taking for granted her apparently infinite capacity for cheerfulness and optimism.

It happened on a day I went to see her after more than a week. She was with a couple of her associates – a parking attendant and another garbage-collector – and looking more depressed and agitated than I had ever seen her. The previous few days had been particularly hard: she had been laid up with a bad fever and cold, had been unable to work or to go to INA market to buy meat for the dogs, and it happened to be one of those phases when hardly anyone had come across to see her or offer help - her son wasn’t in town either.

Moaning through a backache, describing how one of her pups (a tiny Dalmatian, abandoned by some heartless sub-human) had a festering wound and was being treated by a local doctor for an exorbitant Rs 100 a day, gentle Pratima Devi muttered and fumed, half to herself, half to us: she used maa-behen gaalis as she spoke of a man who had promised to help her secure an electricity connection through the MCD, but who had then made off with more than a thousand rupees. “Gareebon ka sab phaaydaa uthaate hain,” she wailed, her face showing no trace of its characteristic warmth and openness. She wondered aloud what would happen to her dogs after she passed on. (It’s a thought that worries everyone who knows her; though these are street dogs, they are more pampered and loved than many house pets. When she’s away even for an hour or two, they get restless and start chasing after passing autorickshaws to see if she has returned.)

This encounter was a bucket of cold water in my face. I have seen her many times since that day, and she has mostly been back to her upbeat self – but that one day, when the mask slipped, is not something to forget.

I didn’t intend this post as a call for aid, but Pratima Devi has had more bad days than good ones recently (being old and living on the street as the Delhi winter gets worse will do that), and she could always do with some help, even if she doesn’t ask for it. So do go across and see her if you are in Saket sometime, and if you like dogs. (I wouldn’t normally put in that second proviso – Pratima Devi is well worth meeting even if you aren’t an animal-lover – but one must be practical and spell out these things; if you get within 10 feet of her you’ll have to contend with a few dogs first growling softly and then, when they know you mean no harm, sniffing or nuzzling you.) Or if you’re interested in meeting her but would prefer a sort of “introduction”, send me an email and I’ll take you across.

P.S. must say this, though I wish I didn’t have to. It infuriates me that people sometimes come by in their cars and leave their animals with this poor old woman, treating her like a fully funded animal shelter – which she emphatically is not. (Not that registered animal shelters have it easy either.) Her heart is big enough for all these dogs (her son tells me she holds the compassionate but highly impractical view that she should get bitches spayed only after they have had one litter of pups), but it increases her burden enormously, as well as adding to her worries about the future. So please, DO NOT use her as a dumping ground for unwanted pets.

P.P.S. Here's a photo of Pratima Devi with two of her friends at an event held to mark Anti-Rabies Day; Abhilasha went with her.