Geetha calls the dogs on the streets, the ones she feeds and looks after, her kids. She is worried about how she would have fed them if she did not have her job of being a domestic help.
Geetha, who is from Thiruvananthapuram, feeds at least 60 stray dogs every day. She feeds them intermittently, starting from five or six in the evening and until 12.30 or 1 am in the night. She cooks their food using the rice that is available through ration shops and mixes it with chicken or fish. Geetha would eat from the same portion of cooked rice with some pickle, or on some days, with fish curry.
These strays are in addition to her own 10 pet dogs at her one-room shed on rent at Peroorkkada in Thiruvananthapuram.
The 42-year-old began feeding dogs when she was 18. “I was a dog lover from a young age and befriended them when I was eight. A friend gifted me a dog when I was 12 and the number of dogs increased with its puppies,” she recalls.
In a day, she goes to various places in the city where strays will be waiting for her and some food. “When I initially starting feeding them, the number was much less. It gradually increased and now there are around 70,” she tells TNM.
As domestic help, Geetha was paid Rs 1,000 monthly when she began feeding the dogs. “My monthly pay eventually became Rs 7,500. But I was not able to feed the dogs with this amount,” she says.
She then took on more cleaning work in other houses to earn some extra to cook food for all the dogs.
However, a couple of months ago, she lost her job as her employers allegedly did not like her “proximity to dogs”. She then began working at more than one house a day for a daily wage.
“Before I leave my house for work around 7 am, I keep the food for dogs ready. Once I finish my work by 5 pm, I come back and start feeding them,” she says.
In between, she comes back home to feed and wash her pet dogs. “I have to take care of them, too, right?” she says.
She has to pay Rs 3,000 as rent for the shed, which, she says, does not even have a bathroom or a toilet. She depends on a neighbour for both. The shed is on a one-cent land and there she finds it tough to get a place for herself to sleep.
Geetha’s parents passed away and her siblings live with their families in different houses. She has been living in rented houses alone for the past 10 years.
She lost work as a house help ever since the lockdown began. Geetha now cooks for animals for NGO People For Animals (PFA), which feeds stray dogs during the lockdown.
“As of now, I manage with the daily wage I get from PFA. I am worried about how I will feed my kids if I lose this work too. No one will be hiring domestic help soon, will they?” she asks.
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