Dogs. OK in Apartments? But who will scoop the poop on the street?

Dogs. I used to be afraid of them. Then, I got wary and found my way away from them.

Then I let sleeping dogs lie and licking dogs lick. 

But I still am not a warm dog-friendly person. In the sense, I don’t rub their necks or take them into my lap.

I did not have pets when I was a kid. My pets were newspapers and magazines. They got all my attention.

And then, this happened.

In my freelance days, I often returned home late. Home was then deep inside Pallavaram, then the suburbs on the south side.

Not that I worked late but late evening was the time to catch up with the mainstream journalists.

I’d take the electric train and then walk. 

Now, there was this section of the unpaved main road which ran down and curved into the last lap of my journey home.

One moon-lit evening, a dog began to bark and I slowed down. 

It came up to me slowly and barked.

I paused and walked on the edge of the rough road.

The dog got aggressive and I began to sweat a bit.

There was nobody around. I picked up a stone and flung it.

The dog barked and then slipped into a dark plot.

Then on, whenever I was walking here past the 10 p.m. hour, that very dog would be at its post and bark on seeing me.

Well, with my thick beard and locks of thick hair, that dog had every reason to treat me a suspect!

I recalled this ‘dog’ anecdote when I observed closely, the Rental Classifieds in Mylapore Times. Increasingly, owners of flats opting to rent them out are mentioning the ‘pets/dogs’ rule - the flat cannot accommodate a dog or the block is a pet-friendly one.

I have come across people sharing their tales on both sides of the issue. And I wonder if the city’s civic body is studying lifestyles where many people, not just the rich and landed, are now rearing pets and putting some good money into it.

So does the Chennai Corporation have to discuss regulations on keeping pets in residential quarters or is this an issue for some other state body?

I am aware that the issue of owners clearing dog poop themselves when they are out on a morning walk is severe but neither pet-owners are bothered nor are ward councillors debating this issue in the city council. Anyway, laying drains still tops their agenda.

This morning, I must have counted at least a dozen dogs on walks in the 20 minutes I was taking in some fresh air in this stifling summer. 

Meanwhile, if I am a guest at your place and you have a dog, just warn me and make the right noises. Put me at ease. You cannot but love dogs.

Discovering my own Malgudi. And encouraging teens to write.

        

        I discovered my own Malgudi in recent times. In a biggish village in south Kanara.

On the trips that I make to that spot along the west coast, the local bus station is my hang-out. I need to buy my daily newspapers there, that is if the few that are supplied don’t run out. I can sit here and sip a cup of tea and just look long. Even blankly.

I noticed an old post box tied to the pillar of the bus station office. Thoughts floated in me. Maybe I could walk up to the local post office which was also in that zone, buy some inland letters and write randomly to friends whose addresses I had on record. Or amble to the weekly 'sandhai' ( market) and wander from shop to shop - red chillies, greens, lemons, melons, tamarind and jaggery . .

Just write what I saw in my Malgudi.

I got talking to the drivers of the local auto stand. They had many little stories to share but they would bolt the moment they got a customer. More later, they would say.

I would ask them - but why aren’t there any autos in this place after seven in the evening?

Nobody needs autos and buses then, one said.

Another half-smiled.

We too need a break, he chimed.

Some of them would meet at the watering hole on the edge of the bus station. Order their tetra-packed drinks, lick the freshly-made mango pickle and zoom home after an hour of unwinding.

I have notes for a little book now!

I carry my Pigma Micron pens with me since I have begun to doodle. 

In the mood, I pulled out a pen and tried to draw the bus station scene before me. Rows of buses with fancy, colourful legends stuck to their sides.

I felt good on that afternoon in early May.

At Mylapore Times, we launched the Online Magazine for young people last weekend. We have been doing this for a year or two now. Since our neighbourhood teens are on a big break and some creative souls may want others to read, admire and react to their work, we want students to contribute their poems and short, real short stories, artworks and cartoons, anecdotes and essays, short essays may they be, to this Magazine.

On the weekend, we received two contributions. One from a student of Vidya Mandir: she has already published a book and it is sold online. The other, from a Sivaswami Kalalaya student, who showcased her ‘animated’ art.

Both are posted online - at the Magazine link at www.mylaporetimes.com

You have three weeks to send your creative work to us.

The details of what you can do and how you must send it are all there, online.

I am sure all of you who write well, or paint or doodle, or are poets in the making. Or even jot down scenes of your holiday or of life around you. All this and more can find a place in this Magazine. 

It feels good to be published. To be read by people.

Start young; start now. Our weekly neighbourhood newspaper is offering you the platform.

This summer, our Journalism workshop flopped. But one soul is striving . . .

 

After a great run, a whimper. That is how our newspaper’s summertime Journalism workshop for children ended this season.

But let us look at the sunny side. The one bright spot.

M. O. P. Vaishnav student Smurthy Mahesh, who promised to sign up with our newspaper for her internship this season, kept her word on May 2. Her first call -  report on the condition of a playground near her home in Mandaveli. She was not even aware of it, leave alone know its location. Prodded on, she trudged on, located the space and threw up her hands.

“There are some puddles of water after the rain,” she called back.

“Talk to the youths there,” we advised her.

She stuck on. 

And mailed back a little news story. 

Her next assignment was to write on a newly-opened ‘Wellness Centre’ of the civic body, again close to her residence. She lost her way, despite using Google Maps. We did not let her off the hook. She was game.

She located the place but the doors were shut. “Ask around,” we told her. She did and drew a blank. “Go there tomorrow,” we told her. She went but the doors were shut. She was enterprising. She trudged around the San Thome zone and located a summer camp that was on and wrote on it.

“Now you are on your own,” we told her.

She took up the challenge. And wrote on the birds that have fun inside the Tholkappia Poonga every morning.

“Redo the story, you have got some facts wrong,” we advised her. She revised it and improved.

The last I heard from her was from San Thome again. Trying to pin down a coach at a football camp.

But six others, all from high school fell by the wayside. Days after we started the workshop. One gave up in 24 hours. Two others sought leave for personal functions. One who showed promise also faded. We called it a day, early. There was no time to waste, on both sides.

Cut to 2015. We rounded up that year’s Journalism course with a tough field assignment. 

One group, a trio, set off to the seaside Nochikuppam zone, the one which has been in the news now - because of the Marina Loop Road case. Then, the families vacated from the run-down tenements had been forced to live in tin shacks on the swathe of sandy land and the civic conditions weren’t good at all.

The trio had to talk to the families, the kids there and report the situation. The young ones worked, gamely. 

This week, the parent of one of trio, sent me a social media post of that assignment.

Children are laboured in our schools. A majority hardly have a feel of real-life, not even of their neighbourhoods. Parents to blame too. 

Journalism teaches lots of skills for life.

If we can teach these to a few neighbourhood teens, through our newspaper, we have shared.

- Photo used here, courtesy Rajagopalan V., is of the trio at the 2015 workshop

(( )) WHATSAPP your comments on the theme of this column to Mylapore Times  : 8015005628

Summer Hols: How about community work? Locally.

 

Over two weekends, some cool ones, we chose to do some personal community work.

I was invited and said ‘yes’.

The goal was to give a new look to a sprawling sand and vegetation plot of land my friends owned not far from the city.

Work would be in two sessions - 6 to 8.30 am. And 4.30 to 6 p.m.

I am not a hard-labour person. Nor am I good at using all kinds of tools.

But my group knew how best to use my little talent.

They made me the landscape artiste!

A green hedge was planned and okayed. And knowing well how good ‘paper rose’, the common name for bougainvillea, is for creating what was wanted, we went shopping at a nursery. 

I mixed up the magenta, orange, red, white and the hybrid, carted some 30 saplings at 15 rupees each and got them planted in a slight zig-zag line. On the second weekend of our community work, some paper roses were blooming, proud in the April sunshine.

This summer, when the kids are having their annual holidays, are you choosing to allot a few days to a domestic project?

This could be at home, for your apartments’ campus or as part of a community outreach project.

Greening the interior of your home with plants can be one idea to work on.

Now this is not about picking up some potted plants and plonking them on a window sill or kitchen ledge. It is about sitting down and making plans, debating them and making a list. There’s some joy in doing this over a nice tiffin spread!

You then go shopping to the nursery and execute it over a couple of hours.

Greening and colouring the exterior walls of your apartment campus is another holiday activity. This transforms the drabness of a colony. 

Again, organise a meeting of youth and seniors to make plans; enlist the creative souls in the group; shop for paint and brushes and crop plants in the campus that will grow outside too. And then, one weekend for the hands-on work.

Outreach is also an engaging activity. As is volunteering.

There are many organisations around you who will welcome your ideas and hands. Perhaps, colouring the wall of the civic body-managed local primary school.  Or de-weeding operations at the local park. Or re-setting a private library.

Top of this week, when I was bouncing some field assignment ideas on school children, we found that three out of five in this group had not stepped into Tholkappia Poonga ( Adyar Poonga). I have gently nudged them to spend a weekend there.

One of them then shared this piece of volunteering news - that Sri Ramakrishna Math in Mylapore welcomes hands at its library, health centre and its campus this summer. Go for it!

- Photo courtesy: Smruthy Mahesh