And now a festival of kindness

Near the crossroads at Hurkisondas Hospital, a pariah with almond eyes painfully lumbers to a shelter when a group of boisterous men wielding a box of firecrackers gets ready to explode a Laxmi bomb to mark the arrival of a procession for Durga visarjan. The pariah haplessly curls up behind the chipping door of a mithai shop, trembling in fear and letting out stifled wails.The shop’s salesman says the dog was scarred by a group of lumpens last Diwali, who knotted a string of crackers to its tail and watched the fun as it ran about panic-stricken and ultimately burnt the dog’s tail, back and legs.
Not every animal is subjected to the inhuman treatment the pariah suffered, but it is a fact that for dogs, who can hear sounds ranging from 67 Hz to 45 kHz (the human sound range extends up to only 20 kHz), firecrackers can be apocalyptic. Rajesh Vinod Pawla, who works for a pet ambulance, says he’s on call 24 hours every Diwali. “Strays are the worst affected, they get so scared that they enter one another’s territory, get into fights, get run over by speeding cars and are targeted by cruel revellers. Last year, we had 22 distress calls, out of which 12 were major injuries from being burnt as a result of firecrackers being tied to tails. Some revellers don’t have a heart,” says Pawla, who worked with an NGO before joining the pet ambulance a year and a half ago.
This year, some canine lovers have mobilised themselves under a banner called The Festival of Kindness to “help pet owners help their pets” and urge Mumbaikars to celebrate Diwali responsibly by refraining from bursting noisy crackers. Apart from creating awareness in schools, they have also launched a social media campaign. So far, 1,809 people have pledged their support. The campaign encourages pet owners to prepare their dogs for Diwali by offering a free three-week programme by canine behaviorists to desensitise dogs to loud noise.
Madhavi Tangella, a film-maker and canine behaviorist, says the campaign came about after observing uncharacteristic responses from Sarah, a nine-year-old guide dog who helps disturbed people overcome their trauma through animal-assisted therapy. “Sarah would be terrified during Diwali and would go into a cocoon. A dog that helps distressed people reach a state of tranquility goes into immense trauma herself. That’s when we felt that something needed to be done,” she says.
Shirin Merchant, canine behaviorist and editor of a pet magazine who has been working with dogs for over 16 years, says that reactions to loud noise vary from trembling and not eating to extreme withdrawal and recommends the free three-week desensitisation programme to help dogs cope. With three phases— habituation, desensitising and counter-conditioning—Merchant says dogs can develop resilience to the cacophony of crackers. “The idea is to first get the dog used to noise by slowly increasing the decibel level and then pairing the loud noise to happy things in the dog’s life like eating food or going for a walk,” she says. “This way, when the dog hears loud sounds during Diwali, it will not think that the world is falling apart but instead will expect something good,” she says.
Merchant says that pet owners should not try to comfort the dog because they could perceive it as a reward for scared behavior. “Keep the pet indoors, schedule its meals early and use white noise—a loud fan or television—to drown out the noise,” she says. “The most foolish thing to do is to get the dog to confront his fears by taking it outdoors to see the firecrackers. After they see the crackers, it almost becomes a life-threatening noise to them.”
If mitigation is not done, repeated exposure to noise could impact the dog’s health. “Signs of suffering will become evident with increased salivation, pupils being dilated or indigestion. This could lead to fatal conditions,” adds Merchant.
Abodh Aras, chief executive officer at the Welfare of Stray Dogs, says that while one can’t take all the strays in because of the sheer number, sustained sensitisation to the effects of noise on animals is the way forward. “Animal lovers should keep an eye out and provide shelter in compounds or garages if possible. In Oval Maidan, there is one particular stray who gets especially affected, and animal lovers in the area take it in during Diwali,” he says. Aras adds that while pets usually have a better deal than strays, last Diwali a frazzled pet ran away from a home in Pedder Road. “Luckily around the same time, we got a call about an abandoned dog at Lamington Road. We put two and two together but we can’t be lucky every time,” he says.
According to Merchant, the Festival of Kindness is not about being a killjoy but to highlight the importance of celebrating responsibly. “We know that we can’t radically change the way people celebrate Diwali,” adds Tangella. “It’s only a small step towards ensuring that the Festival of Lights doesn’t become the Festival of Noise.”
To pledge your support to the programme, log onto www.woofmag.in/diwali/pledge.