The prover­bial tail of this lap­dog is long and se­verely twisted. Since its birth, it has been bark­ing and bit­ing many -for no rhyme or rea­son. It has down­graded the prover­bial loy­alty of dogs. This dog was sup­posed to pro­tect and guard democ­racy but in­stead, it con­strued loy­alty as sub­servience. Its fe­ro­cious­ness has sub­dued many. It has a lot of sting and stench to gar­ner sim­i­lar pedi­gree who join the Noise Syn­drome every night -those who pa­tro­n­ise it and oth­ers who un­wit­tingly are prey to his bait, or shall I say bite. Who will tame it, how and when asks WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh -tongue-in-cheek. Read and En­joy.

THE ALL IN­DIA DOGS AS­SO­CI­A­TION HELD AN UR­GENT MEET­ING YES­TER­DAY, in the early hours of the morn­ing at Jan­tar Man­tar -the com­mon protest site in the na­tional cap­i­tal of In­dia -New Delhi. They were there even be­fore the Delhi Po­lice per­son­nel could join duty, as they were scared that they may be shooed away be­cause they had not taken per­mis­sion from the Par­lia­ment Po­lice Sta­tion nearby. I got wind of the meet­ing from one of my friendly dogs. At a re­spectable so­cial dis­tance, I heard one par­tic­i­pant pedi­gree af­ter an­other vet our their anger at hu­man be­ings. They used low bow-wow to voice their views about hu­man be­ings, es­pe­cially pro­tes­tors -who take them for granted.

The leader of the group said, “While we are grate­ful for the love and warmth that some hu­mans shower at us, we are re­ally dis­turbed about the reg­u­lar jibe against us at the drop of a hat.”

As po­lice­men with ba­tons started to leisurely stroll ques­tion­ing pro­tes­tors who had made the spot their home be­cause of long-stand­ing is­sues, the dogs hud­dled to­gether and unan­i­mously passed res­o­lu­tions. The de­tails of the meet­ing were tran­scribed by one of the dogs, who was well-versed in Hindi and Eng­lish. He told me, “I had learnt the lan­guages so that we could counter the pro­pa­ganda against the dog fra­ter­nity by the In­dian main­stream me­dia.”

“The All In­dia Dogs As­so­ci­a­tion con­demns the rou­tine com­par­i­son of in­dis­creet, un­de­mo­c­ra­tic, brute and un­wel­come hu­man be­hav­iour with dogs.”

In an un­equiv­o­cal stand, the first res­o­lu­tion laid the in­ten­tions of the ca­nine fra­ter­nity. It read, “We are good cit­i­zens. Re­li­gious texts have ex­tolled our qual­i­ties and mil­lions around the world en­joy our com­pany in the com­fort of their homes. We, dogs are not like this. There are some lap­dogs, but gen­er­al­is­ing it is un­ac­cept­able. The All In­dia Dogs As­so­ci­a­tion con­demns the rou­tine com­par­i­son of in­dis­creet, un­de­mo­c­ra­tic, brute and un­wel­come hu­man be­hav­iour with dogs.”

“We lend our full sup­port to the rights of the farm­ers, whose fields we ex­ten­sively use, most of the time with­out their per­mis­sion. We ap­peal to all Farm pro­tes­tors in par­tic­u­lar and hu­man­ity at large not to use any id­iom to de­scribe stu­pid hu­man be­hav­iour and dis­crim­i­na­tory bark­ing of a lap­dog with the an­i­mal dog as this is an in­sult to dog­hood.”

Up­ping the ante, the as­so­ci­a­tion stated, “This meet­ing warns those hu­mans who use dog barks to push through their agenda and free­dom of speech to de­sist from do­ing so. If there is no change in their be­hav­iour, we will ap­peal to the All-World Dogs As­so­ci­a­tion and ask them to take it up with the An­i­mal Rights sec­tion of the United Na­tions.”

“This meet­ing warns those hu­mans who use dog barks to push through their agenda and free­dom of speech to de­sist from do­ing so.”

This anger amongst dogs and es­pe­cially the barks of the lap­dog is hav­ing a domino ef­fect in Pun­jab and In­dia. So­cial me­dia is agog with funny memes about such lap­dogs that peo­ple have started tak­ing ac­tion. Re­spect­ing dogs and their wishes, in Pun­jab, peo­ple have started ask­ing their DTH and Ca­ble sup­pli­ers to stop air­ing the views of this dan­ger­ous breed. Par­tic­i­pants in the Farm­ers Mor­cha have put up sign­boards sell­ing them as they are tired of the barks and the re­sul­tant pol­lu­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment. They have even started to shoo away the lap­dog’s kith and kin.

When this re­porter spoke to young pro­tes­tor Sukhchain Kaur, who loves dogs, she said, “We will re­move those who bark with­out rea­son, so that we can con­tinue to re­spect our beloved dogs.”

Hmmm, the lap­dog is Re­pub­lic and his sis­ter Re­pub­lic Bharat, which has been bark­ing ha­tred since birth. In the last one month, since Pun­jab farm­ers laid siege to Delhi, this street dog has been call­ing farm­ers names and has been se­ri­ously jeop­ar­dis­ing their bar­gain­ing po­ten­tial. I could not hold back re­mem­ber­ing that when it was born, I had penned that the Ba­nana Re­pub­lic will sti­fle the voice of san­ity.

In the United King­dom, OF­COM -the reg­u­la­tory au­thor­ity of Broad­cast Jour­nal­ism has pro­vided some an­ti­dote to its bite -im­pos­ing a penalty as it barked so much that they could not take it any­more. They had to stop the spread of Sikhan­thropy -ha­tred of Sikhs and Pun­jab and Is­la­man­thropy -ha­tred of all things Mus­lim. Will the penal­ties, if paid, pre­vent the lap­dog from bit­ing more peo­ple?

As this lap­dog plans to spread its virus across In­dia and the world, we have to re­search new method­olo­gies and med­i­cine as we have done for COVID19, oth­er­wise, the ef­fect can be cat­a­strophic.

The Shiv­sena-Con­gress gov­ern­ment in the In­dian state of Ma­ha­rash­tra at­tempted to put a leash but it was not strong enough for this unique pedi­gree. As this lap­dog plans to spread its virus across In­dia and the world, we have to re­search new method­olo­gies and med­i­cine as we have done for COVID19, oth­er­wise, the ef­fect can be cat­a­strophic.

As I was leav­ing Jan­tar Man­tar, the gen­eral sec­re­tary of the All In­dia Dogs As­so­ci­a­tion was telling its pres­i­dent, “We re­ally thank the farm­ers for iden­ti­fy­ing friends and foes. We thank the British au­thor­i­ties for levy­ing fine on this black sheep from our com­mu­nity and we hope that the Shiv­sena will take some more strong ac­tion to keep this lap­dog on the leash.”

Bow Wow. Vow!!