The lady with 65 dogs
Dogs, they say, are man’s best friend. Holding the saying true, a former municipal clerk Paurnima Shetye has spent almost a decade of her life taking care of not one but over 65 dogs. What makes Shetye a hero for these animals is her determination and pure love. Shetye skips meals but tries to not let the dogs sleep on a hungry stomach.
The road to Shetye’s house in Virar is covered with snake-infested bushes resembling a mini-forest. There is no address for her doorstep but the locals of Vatar, refer to her as ‘the lady with the dogs.’ Just like the habitat, Shetye’s life is riddled with snakes - of financial constraints, the gnawing worry of her dogs’ health and a search for a proper shelter.
Shetye is in her house tending to one of her dogs while the rest of them are barking. The area is quiet and their barks can be heard off the main road. The room situated precariously close to a mobile tower is dark even though it is noon. “There are not enough windows and hence the light does not enter inside,” Shetye explains later.
Shetye still thanks a man at a pig farm a short distance away from her house. The man, she says, supplied electricity so the dogs will not die of humidity before they would die of hunger and poor health.
The house is stretched to a vast 800 square feet but too shabby for Shetye and the dogs’ safe survival.
The entrance to the house is guarded by not one but at least 10 dogs. Sniffing a stranger, the dogs start barking. All of them are up on their feet, but the chain is holding them back. Some are in the cages.
They calm down soon as Shetye walks out of the house. The area which was ringing with shrieking barks is now enveloped in a pin-drop silence. A woman of 43, Shetye is dressed meekly in blue denims and a kurta. Her eyes look tired and older than she is.
“I have reached my limit. I cannot go on anymore,” Shetye says, as she sits with Pastry cradling in her lap. “Two of my dogsdied in July due to snake bites. I want to get out of here but I cannot.”
Shetye gave Rs 3.1 lakh to a builder Peter Lopez in April last year when the lease agreement of her Vatar house expired. Lopez promised her to build a house at a plot in Vasai. Months after he failed to live up to his promise, Shetye demanded the money back.
“There is lack of basic amenities here and I wanted the dogs to stay in an open area, where they could be free. Lopez gave me two cheques that bounced,” said Shetye.
Tired of several let-downs, Shetye approached the police in August. The Arnala police registered a cheating case against Lopez and he was eventually placed under arrest. But that did not solve Shetye’s problem. She is running out of her family savings and her sister Hemangi’s income is not enough.
“Hemangi is an insurance agent. It is because of her income we are able to take care of the dogs today but it is not enough,” said Shetye.
As per Shetye, the monthly expense of thedogs chalks up to Rs 50,000. Shetye said she has exhausted her deposit money in deducting the overdue rent.
Shetye started working as a BMC clerk at the age of 20. 7 years later, she was married to Venkatesh Kamath, who used to work with a shipping industry. The couple divorced in 2004 and she has been alone since until 2007. She took to adopting dogs that year. She was driven to care dearly for the strays a year after her own three-year-old dog Whitey died due to vaccination overdose in Dahisar. She still suspects that Whitey was poisoned by the society residents, who saw the dog nothing more than a nuisance.
“The society members in Dahisar used to poison puppies. I could not watch them die so I brought them home. How will a man feel if his son is poisoned? Don’t dogs have a right to live?” she asks.
Shetye finally left Dahisar in 2013 and moved to Palghar, on the outskirts of Mumbai with her sister Hemangi. There, the society did not allow the sisters to stay and she moved to Vatar, a locality in Virar. Her dogs came with her.
When asked if she stays alone, Shetye looks at her dogs tenderly and says, “I stay with them.”
“After adopting my first dog following Whitey’s death, I realised that these dogs need food. They have a right to live. They cannot earn; we have to take care of them. I am not going to let them eat out of garbage cans on the roads.”
At this moment, she points to a black dog she calls Jenny. Jenny is the newest addition to Paurnima’s family staying with them since June. Jenny was left by her original owners, just like at least 20 dogs at her house.
Shetye accuses the ‘bungalow-people’ of abandoning the puppies leaving them to die on the road. “The vehicles run them over as they stroll on the roads. This is one reason I have to keep them tied. Some have to be kept in a cage otherwise they would fight amongst themselves here. I wanted an open area so these dogs can roam freely,” Shetye reiterates
A couple of months ago, Shetye claimed to have approached NGOs asking for help.
“The animal-care NGOs wanted photos and said they will inspect if the dogs are healthy. I told the NGO that the dogs are starving, but it was a lost cause. I don’t know what will happen to me when I get old; the only thing I know, the dogs have nowhere to be as of now. It is my responsibility to take care of them.”
I got in touch with Fizzah Shah, president of In Defence of Animals (IDA), one of the NGOs Shetye said she approached for monetary help.
Shah’s response was, “Why do they keep collecting animals this way? I have 300 animals of my own in Virar and I take care of them with my own money. They keep on rescuing dogs but then want to give them away.”
Shah said, “What has happened to her, it is her personal problem. We are overburdened to the brim.”
IDA does not have a shelter house [for animals], Shah said adding that it is a charitable organisation. “We can handle one or two dogs but 65 dogs are too much. I will speak to her and see what can be done,”.
As Shetye sits in silence after talking for over an hour, her silence is broken by another growl. “She is hungry,” Shetye says as she runs into the house to feed rice to her friends.
