16/ 100 Golden Hour Dog
I mentioned a little earlier on in this project that the weather in Jaipur was terrible. Even for an Indian winter it was very cold and grey and rained almost continuously for five days, apart from one in the middle which was a welcome relief.
We were tired and fed up and I had a bad cold. We had reached the point of even considering going home, wondering why on earth we had come all this way, and left our own little dog Chip, just to be stuck indoors freezing our butts off.
On one particularly bad day we had a whole cascade of fairly minor problems which accumulated through the day to leave us, to use a Scottish word, scunnered. A couple of miles from our apartment, with it’s little heater, we were completely unable to hail a taxi or get an Uber booking simply because every single person in the whole city also wanted one.
We were chilly and damp and decided to face our fate and trudge all the way back home on foot along muddy roads and broken pavements, past broken-down walls and heaps of soggy rubbish. This was supposed to be a reasonably affluent part of Jaipur but, as we so often found, what happens outside the gate of your mansion is none of your concern. Just look at the ceiling of your car when you leave through the electric gate each morning and ignore the decay.
Fairly close to home, but miserable as anything, we faced what seemed to be an insurmountable final hurdle. A massive and deep puddle that spanned an entire intersection. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it was probably a couple of hundred metres in each direction. Backtracking was an extremely unpalatable option, and we could see absolutely no way around. It looked as though we would have to wade through.
Then, out of nowhere, the god Shiva manifested himself in the form of an extremely kind Indian businessman in a very fancy Toyota 4×4. He pulled up alongside and asked if we needed a lift through the puddle / lake. The leather-trimmed insides of his beautiful car seemed a little unsuitable for two wet and muddy tourists but he insisted so in we hopped and he did exactly as he promised. Delivering us to the end of our street.
That little act of kindness (and the discovery that food delivery service Swiggy would get us some extremely tasty pizzas from a local deli for our dinner that evening) completely saved our day.
Why did this dog photograph inspire me to recount this story? On the floor you will see two chapatis. Someone has done their best for the dogs in their own act of kindness. A little kindness goes a long way, as they say.
