At dinner last night we got into a lively discussion about whether the street animals are owned. The consensus was that cows and goats generally have owners, dogs generally do not, and pigs inhabit a proprietary no-man’s land somewhere between private property and public garbage disposal. Cows and goats are good for milk and sometimes meat, but what are pigs good for, in this heavily muslim town? We couldn’t figure it out. Also, how do people keep track of who’s animal is whose? And where do the animals come from? And where do they go at night? And why are they here, in the middle of the city?
Mathu, one of the Hindi students who lives at the Gandhi house with me, mentioned that she witnessed a pig-napping the other day as she was walking home from school. Apparently, two men had taken the back seat out of a rickshaw and when she walked by they were busy stuffing a pig into the rickshaw where the seat used to be. She thought maybe the pig belonged to them, but then why were they taking only one pig when there were many nearby? Which made her wonder…was it a pig-napping? And if it was, It begs the question: WHY?
