The lockdown walk and getting to know the Colaba dogs

In pre-pandemic days, my regular exercise was a game of tennis, usually singles, at the club I belong to, the Bombay Gymkhana. An hour of singles would leave me happily tired, guaranteeing me a good night’s sleep. There are essentially three types of tennis courts worldwide: grass, clay and hard. However, for many years, the Bombay Gym had what must be unique – a court surface which was a mixture of mud, straw and cow-dung (Hindutva-wallahs would have rejoiced). I have no idea who discovered this unusual mixture, but it worked. Visiting foreigners, when told about it, could not believe it. Stray cows wandering the streets of the city was quite a strange sight for them. But playing on cow-dung courts simply bowled them over! The big advantage of these courts was that they were easy on the knees, as you could slide on them. But they were difficult and expensive to maintain.

Anyway, technology eventually won over. About three decades ago, hard courts became the norm. They usually had a concrete base, with a rubberised surface. They lasted for a long time and could be easily maintained. What’s more, when it rained, the water drained off quickly and they were ready for playing soon after the rain stopped. However, they were hard on knees, as you could not slide on them. Yet, playing regularly on those hard courts was my main form of exercise. Then came the March 2020 lockdown and all clubs and gyms were shut down. I hate walking (except in the hills), but that now became my only exercise. Which is when I saw the neighbourhood I had lived in for so many years, with new eyes.

Except for a few years in Chandigarh, south Bombay has been my home all my working life. I was first staying as a paying guest in an area called Churchgate, named after the local station. Then I moved to Colaba, named after the causeway which linked north and south Bombay. Colaba has some of the city’s most iconic structures. There is the imposing Gateway of India, built in 1911 to commemorate the first visit of British royalty to India, King George V and Queen Mary. Facing the Gateway are the Royal Yacht Club and one of the most renowned hotels in the world, the Taj Mahal Hotel, built by the Tatas. Boats for the Elephanta Caves go from the Gateway. About a kilometre from my flat was the Sassoon Dock, named after a well-known Jewish family with a close connection to the city. Internationally-famed hair dresser Vidal Sassoon also comes from that family. A little further south was the start of the military area, where the armed forces are housed. It is full of greenery and gives an idea of how Bombay looked like before it became a concrete jungle. The area includes an 18-hole golf course.

Colaba became my post-pandemic ‘walking’ section of town. While walking, I also realised that I was actually tracing the footsteps of the terrorists who attacked the city on November 26, 2008. Ten of them had landed on a small fishing village on Cuffe Parade, a 20-minute walk from my place. They had split up and made their way to specific targets. One was the nearby five-star Oberoi hotel, in a business centre, Nariman Point. The other was the Jewish Centre, a stone’s throw from my residence. And the third lot of terrorists headed for the Taj hotel, via a restaurant popular with foreign visitors, Leopold Cafe. It, too, was a target, despite being opposite a police station.

My greatest joy during my Colaba walks was to greet the many dogs that their owners, or their domestic help, would take for an outing. I got to know almost all of them by their names. There was Symphony and Lenny, the first an adorable brown cocker spaniel, who would jump on you in excitement, the other a beagle, constantly sniffing everywhere and with a will of its own in deciding exactly where it wanted to go. The names of the dogs and their breeds are too long to list here. But the most popular were beagles, golden retrievers, labradors and pugs (craze for whom began with the Vodafone ads). There was even a French bulldog and a fearsome rottweiler.

Easily the most loveable were Cocaine, a handsome dalmatian, and Monty, a basset hound whose ears almost touched the ground and whose affectionate wet slurp would soak your trousers. Cocaine’s owner revealed that he had found the pup abandoned on a busy highway, petrified, and in imminent danger of being run over. He had taken it home and adopted it. That was when he realised that Cocaine was stone deaf. I then learnt that people buy pedigreed pups for large sums of money mainly as a status symbol. But when they later discover a defect in them, they sometimes simply abandon them on the streets. As a people, we are heartless, not kind or gentle, at least as far as animals are concerned, except perhaps towards cows. Cocaine had found an exceptionally compassionate owner who loved the dog all the more for its so-called defect.

Then, there are ‘rescue’ dogs, adopted strays from the street, of indefinite breed. Their ‘rescuers’ are the people I admire most. Many of these dogs are traumatised due to cruelties they must have suffered, such as stoning and kicking, before being fortunate enough to be adopted. Even after adoption and loving care, they usually back away from strangers, and are only comfortable with their owners. I also noticed that these ‘rescue’ dog owners are mostly Parsis. It is no coincidence that this tiny and admirable community is probably the most charitable and philanthropic one in all of India.

The Bombay Gym is now open and I can play my tennis again. But I do miss my Colaba dogs.

— The writer is a veteran journalist