Behind all my music is the silent support of my beloved dogs

Music maker Gopi Sunder gets irked whenever someone makes fun of his love for his dogs.

“Probably they are people who have never owned a dog. Their love has to be experienced to be believed. My dogs are family for me, who understand my sorrows and emotions perfectly,” he says.

The musician currently has four furry friends at his home, one of them three-legged, each of whom found its way there in its own way. “I got my first pet, a pug Hiyago, around six years back,” he says. “Hiyago gave birth to puppies, and we kept one and named him ‘Kadiyan Bhooga’ because he couldn’t bite anyone to save his life! Bhooga went missing a few months back and hasn’t come back. I miss him terribly.”

For Gopi Sunder, a dog is a dog; the breed doesn’t matter. “To be honest, pugs are a lot of work, you have to feed them a particular diet, have to take them to the vet regularly and then there is their spa! But Indian dogs are healthy and low maintenance. They never get lost too.”

And so a year or so back, he adopted an Indian dog and named her Veera, for her strength and courage. “She was found on the street, badly injured, by an animal welfare group. I decided to take her after hearing her story. Someone had cut off her leg, just for fun. Can you imagine the cruelty? I can understand a hatred for street dogs, but to cut off the leg of a tiny, gentle pup like Veera…”

Veera is the most intelligent and loving of the lot, he says. “Every time I come down from my studio, Veera welcomes me with licks and jumps on me. My dogs are my stress busters when it comes to work. All the music that I have made has their silent support behind it.”

On Gopi Sunder’s birthday in May, a friend presented him with a dachshund puppy, who has joined the gang now. And his name? ‘Purushu’!! Ask him about the unusual names and he says, “I hate the usual dog names, and give them my kind of names.”

And when you genuinely love dogs, there is always room for more. Just as Hiyago and Veera were getting used to Purushu, they got another addition, ‘Shankunni’. “I wake up early, and was walking around the house one day when I heard squeaking sounds. We traced it to a ditch nearby, where someone had abandoned a new-born puppy. He was scared and shivering, and I decided to take him in. Shankunni is now very mischievous, having teamed up with Purushu.”

There is a melee when a guest enters the house but he wouldn’t have it any other way, says the composer. “They are a noisy bunch, and are our personal security guards. And it’s believed animals have no relationships between each other but they do. Hiyago was visibly upset when her son Bhooga got lost.” Gopi Sunder says he will never give up hope about finding Bhooga but prays that wherever he is, he is safe and well cared for.

“At times I hear people saying, ‘He didn’t give me the value of a dog even’. I disagree with that. Dogs are in no way lesser than us, they have as much of a right to this earth as us,” he signs off.