Fazl Mohammad Qari
Before dawn settles into day and markets rattle open, the dogs of our streets rise first. They shake off the night’s frost, nose through trash, curl beside discarded plastic and cardboard, their eyes alert, bodies lean, existing in a rhythm we rarely notice. Their presence is so constant that it has become invisible and it is precisely this invisibility that Nayeema Ahmad’s recent newspaper write-up demands we confront. She does not moralize, nor does she sensationalize, she simply observes. And in observing, she holds a mirror to the conscience of the city, one we instinctively wish to turn away from. Her essay opens at the threshold of homecoming, that familiar tug felt by those returning after years abroad. Nostalgia blooms, yet it is soon tempered by the sharper recognition of what has changed. The streets, the open spaces, the very heart of the city, seem narrower, colder, less accommodating to the vulnerable. It is here that the street dog becomes witness, intermediary, and measure. It is neither villain nor hero; it is a silent chronicle of human neglect, a living gauge of civic empathy.
Ahmad’s reflections call to mind Syed Ahmad Shah “Pitras” Bukhari, whose celebrated essay (Kutay)” remains unmatched in wit and insight. There, he admired dogs for a quality increasingly rare in humans: unwavering resolve. His words resonate across decades, “Dogs are never dependent on anyone’s approval; they carve their own path and persist upon it even if the world blocks their way or mocks them.”). In Bukhari’s portrait, the dog is autonomous, steadfast, almost heroic. In Ahmad’s vision, the Kashmiri dog has lost that autonomy; it endures paths imposed upon it. They survive on our discarded waste, sleep in cold street corners, and haunt alleys where fear, hunger, and neglect govern their lives. Where Bukhari’s dogs inspired admiration for their independence, Ahmad’s wanderers are overlooked shadows. The contrast sharpens when held against European streets, where dogs are collared, vaccinated, insured, and integrated into civic life with as much attention as public transport or sanitation. Belonging is codified, care is structured, compassion is organized. In Srinagar, care is intermittent, compassion is private, responsibility has no address. Nayeema does not romanticize this contrast; she uses it to expose our ease in averting attention, our comfort in looking away. The streets Ahmad describes make them literal. These dogs are more than animals; they are our conscience on four legs, wandering unclaimed through a society that has outsourced empathy to institutions and sentiment to memory. Nayeema Ahmad’s work touches a deeper cultural chord. In Islamic tradition, the dog of Ashaab-e-Kahf—Qitmir earned remembrance for his loyalty, sitting faithfully at the cave’s entrance while the Companions slept through centuries. If Qitmir merited honor alongside the righteous, what does it say about us that we deny even basic safety to the dogs of our own streets? The distance between Qitmir and Srinagar’s strays is measured not only in time but in tenderness, in attention, in the recognition of life’s worth. Nayeema observes without melodrama, without sentimental flourish, without sermon. She presents the facts, allows the streets to speak, and in doing so exposes an erosion we intuitively sense but rarely articulate: when compassion becomes selective, everything else begins to thin. Her line, “Dogs bark we stay silent” is not accusation but diagnosis. It reveals a civic ethos where management replaces mercy, planning overshadows feeling, and public care often stops at human borders. The essay notes with quiet power the contradictions at the heart of our civic life. Children and women feed strays with leftover bread even as streets overflow with unmanaged waste. Love exists, yes, but without systems it is fragile. Fear, neglect, and disorder fill the gaps left by inconsistent governance. The dogs do not bite out of cruelty they bite because order has been fractured. Nayeema also reminds us, implicitly, that these conditions are predictable. Waste breeds strays, neglect breeds suffering, apathy breeds fear.
Sterilization, vaccination, structured waste management, and community awareness are not inventions, they are absent duties. She trusts readers to make the connection: disorder is our creation, and dogs are its most visible consequence. The essay avoids easy sentiment or spectacle, yet it remains profoundly affecting. There are brief glimpses of tenderness: children scattering crumbs in alleys, women pausing to touch a dog’s fur, small acts of instinctive compassion. Yet these moments are dwarfed by systemic neglect. The contrast between human care and structural failure is the essay’s quiet indictment. In its final reckoning, Canines of My Hometown is not about dogs. The animals are witnesses, mirrors, embodiments of our selective attention. They reflect our habits, our failures, our civic inertia. And in observing them, we are left to confront a deeper truth: a society that ceases to make space for the voiceless, the unattended, will eventually find no room left for tenderness at all. Nayeema Ahmad’s quiet thesis is unmistakable: compassion is not instinct; it is practice. Lose the practice, and the heart forgets its work. The dogs of Srinagar, like those immortalized by Bukhari, Faiz, and even Qitmir, persist not for glory, not for reward but because the world we have built has left them little choice. And in observing them, we are forced to confront ourselves. The streets will not forgive our inattention. The dogs will continue to bark. And perhaps, as long as they do, there remains time for us to learn to listen.
