When a dog helps man earn his livelihood

Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 27

Around six years ago, when physically disabled Krishan picked up a pup from a busy road near his home, he never knew that she would help him earn his livelihood. The dog now helps 55-year-old Krishan by pulling his tricycle as he goes to work as safaiwala at various homes on Majitha Road.

“She might have got killed that night under the tyres of a vehicle. She was so small that she trebled while walking,” said Krishan while recalling the wintry night six years ago. Krishan had named her Sunaini (one with beautiful eyes). A spinster, Krishan lives alone at his home in Nawi Adadi ever since his mother died. His deformed foot and poverty had come in way of his marriage. He said, “Though my mother tried hard, but nobody was ready to marry off his daughter to a langra (lame).”

In times when people prefer to buy a costly and foreign breed dogs, Krishan says, “When I see stray dogs getting killed under tyres of vehicles every day. It fills me with remorse. Why can’t people pick up a stray dog from a road if they really do care about them? I think keeping a costly dog satiates their ego as they think that it is a status symbol.”

He said he had never intended or train Sunaini to pull his tricycle. “I just took her along where ever I went. When she grew up, I started tying her to the chair of the tricycle with a rope so that I can take her along,” he said adding that she herself started pulling the tricycle to help him.

“Because of her I can now go far off places to look for work. For me she is not a dog, but my family. It’s all that I have got,” he said with a lump grown inside his throat.