No motorist or pedestrians or the morning - joggers can be sure about the lurking danger of being chased or bitten by the animals. On an evening, a biker, who did not expect a stray dog to run across the road suddenly, lost control over his vehicle, fell, and suffered a severe fracture.
Coimbatore: 'Bizarre accidents of this nature are no wonders in a country where people have little protection even from the attack of stray dogs. What else have I got to say about it?
One morning, another motorist was on his way back home after leaving his little daughter at school. He had also promised the child that he would pick her up in the evening. But fate decided otherwise. While the biker was nearing his home, a dog, which suddenly ran out from a house, hit the front wheel of the speeding bike and gave the rider a terrible fall to suffer a severe fracture on the little finger of his right hand.
Sobbing in intense pain, as he narrated the incident to his family members, his mother-in-law asked him which dog caused the accident. The injured, who felt the question irritable, shouted at her:
'I am sobbing in the pain of a fracture, and you are so particular about the dog? Are you going to bite that dog in retaliation?'
Although the dog has been a friend of man for ages since the minute he tamed it to assist him in hunting, Indians apply a double standard in estimating the animal. While some admire the dog as a thankful animal, the irony is that many others use it as a metaphor for ingratitude and comment on the human being 'Nandriketta Naai'.
In a gruesome incident in Haryana, where some upper caste Rajputs allegedly burnt alive a Dalit family that included two toddlers, the then Union Minister V.K.Singh kicked up a controversy when he said that the government could not be responsible if someone stones a dog.
By drawing such an analogy between Dalits and dogs, he invited the wrath of other progressive leaders, and one of them criticized his comment as the 'Arrogance of casteism'
Though a dog knows little of castes, creeds, and religions in the world of man, it is sad that the innocent animal has been made a symbol to mean the so-called people from lower socio-economic strata.
A short poem by a Tamil poet reads thus.
"The master
shouted at his servant:
Hey, you, dog
Did you take care of Peter?'
In his home
Peter is a dog
And the dog is a man!"