A Memory for the Forgotten.

With a duffel bag on my shoulder and a makeshift cloth-mask wrapped around my face, I stood under the bright white, incandescent light of the veterinary hospital. I was in the main treatment room, and beyond the two examination tables in front of me, my eyes fell on the stack of cages built like compartments. Through which, a set of eight despairing eyes were looking right at me. I couldn’t turn away. The pensive, brooding eyes called out to me, filling me with a tragic sense of helplessness. It was unsettling. As I scanned the cages from left to right, top to down, I saw two cats, three dogs, and a little puppy. Four of them were analyzing the new being that stood in front of them. And the other two were too medicated to bother. But each one had a story. And over the course of weeks that I visited, I happened to get to know some of them better.

Some of the names of these fascinating folks are made up by me, as I saw them to be. Even though they may occasionally sound fantastical, bear in mind that this is a real, a very real story.

My visits had begun around the time the world was going through a crisis of its own, the coronavirus pandemic. As a consequence, a nationwide lockdown was announced, amidst which I routinely traversed the empty city streets to help and injured animals out of their misery. With social contact completely severed, and human interaction down to nothing, I began to feel disenfranchised, and strangely out of place. A growing sense of alienation that I began sharing with the animals I met, who themselves lived in isolation, banished from the kingdom of happy pets and friendly animals.

I began examining the cages. In the top row, first cage on the left, was Anna (pronounced Aana). A ginger cat of Eastern-European-skin-color fur, who looked like a Swiss Catholic nun. Her head stuck out of a tightly wrapped, white bandage that looked like a nun’s headdress, only much tighter and a tad too gruesome. It was the only thing holding her head together, that had suffered extensive, highly graphic injuries. Enough to keep her wallowing in constant pain. Her faith called out to the feline gods in the form of loud, low wails that begged for mercy and respite. The best she got was exceptional treatment and timely food, and only stayed quiet while she chewed painfully.

Next to her was an empty cage, next to which was an indie dog that seemed like a stray rescue. He blared high-pitched barks at every other dog he saw, possibly out of the frustration of watching them roam freely. He was still quite in his youth, stuck here between weird-smelling animals and even weirder smells of the hospital. The cages faced two examination tables where sick animals would get checked, including them, and this boy had the center seat. His grim yet oddly hopeful reality show was usually interrupted by a staff assistant drawing a cloth over the cage, as if drawing the curtains, while the show still went on behind it. The boy’s aggressive opinions about the content of the show were rarely taken into consideration. He usually settled with a whimper, and went back to his slumber.

Before we move to the next cage, I’d like to make a special mention to my two ginger feline friends across the floor in a different room. They were pretty grown to be kept together in one box-cage; it resembled people squeezing together in a matchbox apartment in Mumbai. But that didn’t stop them from being the loudest, chattiest ones in the hospital; the handsome hunks who struck up a conversation with everyone who passed by them. They were a charming, charismatic duo, brothers-in-arms, who loved calling out to everyone in their sight, in their distinct tones that very much matched their colorful, distinct personalities. I never missed out on greeting them every time I went to the hospital. Eventually they did start responding specifically to me. One took a friendlier tone, while the other, a more passive-aggressive one. Both, ultimately using their charm to try and break out of jail free.

In search of hope, we’re not always lucky to get to go too far. So we turn inward.

Back to the cages, we had the handsome Thom, a white cat with grey patches, silky coat of fur and beautiful sea-green eyes. He was a big guy who stood on his two feet and commanded the attention of the hospital staff (who he very well recognized). He had learnt to stand quite well, because a ghastly electrocution had taken away his hands and rendered him an amputee for life. But this didn’t keep from marching around like a thug, or crying out like a gnarly, middle-aged British woman who hadn’t gotten her 4 o’clock tea. By the order of the Squeaky Blinders.

The lower cages had two similar-looking, brown, indie dogs, one who was twice the size of the other. The big one took the space of two cages. Both had food and water bowls kept next to them, which they were barely interested in. Their gloomy faces reflected their doomed existence, like having reluctantly reconciled with the fact that they were fated to this life; and no matter how they were doing physically after months of treatment, their mental selves had deteriorated beyond the point of no return. They looked like the father and son of the same family, who had been sentenced to prison for a crime they had committed as partners, and were now growing old and weary together. The big one, in fact, was in for his kidney and liver issues and had trouble controlling his urine. The younger one was going through ailments of his own, and had to have an IV cannula fixed every morning.

The last cage is what really broke my heart. A tiny puppy, barely months old sat in the darkest corner, sniveling. He was one of the pack of six healthy puppies who had fallen terribly sick, and didn’t have much hope to live. Probably the only emergency case, he had to be monitored round-the-clock. I felt bad for the little one, thinking that he had to spend most of his bubbly childhood confined to the depressing atmosphere of the hospital. His eagerness to communicate with others was even more heartbreaking because there was no way he could be let out. Even the slightest eye contact, would get him to start barking in a little, high-pitched voice, screaming out with such hope to play. Poor kid had an IV fixed to his tender paw for most of the day. But he looked past all that, and called out with all his earnestness to anyone who would bother to spare a moment for him. I spoke to him daily with little clicks of my tongue, which instantly widened his innocent, droopy eyes, dilating his pupils revealing a hint of glassiness that made it look like he had been crying. I had to hold my tears back just to be able to give him few words of motivation everyday to comfort him. Something within him clicked, and he responded to his treatment so well that he was discharged after a tumultuous fortnight. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I went back home feeling grateful that day.

There were a few more cages in different rooms of the hospital, home to a lot more forgotten beings. I slowly grew acquaintance them during my daily visits for my own cases, for which I had to often wait patiently.

In one of the OPDs, I feebly tried to get the attention of a big, light-grey, female tabby cat, who had arrived one fine day. She looked strikingly different compared to the regular, indie tabby cats. Her fur was asphalt-grey, and had a sense of sophistication that any street cat lacked. She was of mixed breeds, fated to a life that she hadn’t chosen. And that street toughness showed, when she refused to even spare a look at me. She wasn’t asleep, just disinterested. And despite repeated attempts, I was denied her curiosity with equal persistence. She was surely in some kind of pain. Later I discovered it was labor pain, and she was pregnant with a litter of kittens inside her womb. But her internal organs were insistent on coming out before the kittens did, and the doctors had been repeatedly stitching her prolapse back with the utmost level of precision so as to not harm her little ones. While the doctors always looked out for the better of these animals, the animals didn’t always quite trust the humans back. And it was this distrust with the classic sleight of a cat, that led to her escape on a rainy night, into the deep woods. No one ever heard about her after that. The one that flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

On a different day, a fashionable pair of extremely shy and scared cats made a cameo. They were siblings with alternating colors of black and golden brown, with a slight degree of pattern permutation. They could well have been in a music video with Lady Gaga or Katy Perry, but at the moment they were caged in the hospital. Their fluffy bodies were curled up over each other, trembling from the fear of being temporarily abandoned in an unknown place that smelled funny. But they didn’t move a muscle. Only their flustered eyes sharply traced my movement and their ears followed the different sounds I made by the clicking of my fingers. That’s the only reaction I got from them for the two days they were there, and I was glad when they got discharged ever so quickly.

One of the days, a dog of very light brown fur made an appearance. He was nothing out of ordinary at first look, just a regular streetie. On a second glance I noticed something truly fascinating. He had a bright red tika drawn across his forehead, accompanied by an elderly couple with a similar tikas. Now I don’t know if dogs believed in any superior power that was above their master, but he looked like he belonged in a temple and had surrendered to the deities for a daily chapati-bread meal. As a result, I didn’t quite feel the need to pray for his good health.

I’m no Doctor Dolittle, but I did seem to understand these animals better than I’ve ever understood humans. Every evening, I came back to my house, and saw their reflections fall on my windowpane. Trapped between my own four walls, neither did I have any companionship, or any tangible relationship that I could find comfort in. We were all alone with our thoughts and anxieties, and a common paranoia that things would never go back to being the same. They just didn’t express it like we did.

It was that moment of solace every day, that was the cool shade from the scorching reality. Where hope bloomed somewhere deep inside of us. However fleeting the feeling, it was the only constant reminder that freedom was just around the corner. And we would find each other again.

I held onto it as tightly as I could. The next day, I was back on my feet, duffel bag on my shoulders, mask around my face. I read the news that the country had recorded the highest number of coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, as I made my way back. With a heavy breath in, I let out a deep sigh and thought of the lives that were in my control. Or were they?