From earlier this month… my dear friend (and fabulous writer and poet and fellow mythology buff and cinephile and all-round inspiration) Karthika Nair couldn’t make it to Delhi during her recent India trip, so I hopped down to Trivandrum to see her on her home turf - in the quiet and picturesque Vellayani Lake area. It was great to spend an afternoon talking about this and that, and to meet her family. (Including the dogs who, after some initial yelling, recognised me as the alpha dog I am and paid respectful tribute.)
I also looked through the beautiful book Electric Birds of Kothapudi, a modern fable written by Karthika (I had read an early draft of it a couple of years ago) and brilliantly illustrated by Joelle Jolivet. The book isn’t published in India yet, but it really should be - fingers crossed.
A couple of pics from the book are below, and here is a post about another superb collaboration between Karthika and Joelle, The Honey Hunter. And a conversation with Karthika and Sampurna Chattarji about their book Over and Under Ground in Paris & Mumbai, which also had drawings by Jolivet and Roshni Vyam.
(Last few photos: at the end of a long, long early-morning walk around Kovalam, I found myself at the lighthouse beach, where this black-and-white fellow contemplated me a little fearfully. Glad to see that "progressive" Kerala hasn’t slaughtered all of its community dogs yet - I also found a few lazing on the beach outside the Uday Samudra resort. Sand, shadow and sleeper in the last pic.)
(A long conversation with Karthika about her superb Mahabharata book Until the Lions is here)
Just responding to the snark about progressive kerala and its dogs.
ReplyDeleteNot trying to be defensive on behalf of my state; and i completely understand that this an issue with strong opinions.
But dekhi and kerala are in my opinion the places with the worst televisions with community dogs. The populations are larger and individual packs are much more aggressive. The only thing I've been bitten was one morning in malviya nagar, where i was just on my morning jog and gif nothing to provoke them.
This kind of thing is happening very frequently in kerala. I find it very hard to blame people for responding from fear in whatever way they can. The onus lies on dog lovers to keep humans safe. Not for any ideology or sense pf fairness. But because that's the only practical way to navigate this power dynamic.
I day this as singing who has adopted an indie but can't let her off leash in kerala because she's likely to get hold of poisoned food that some vigilante has left out. Feeding strays is likely to make this worse, because what we need is for people to stop leaving garbage around so that the population terms stays under control..
To me a dog control programme is a garbage collection programme.