A Long Journey: Travel Travails of Jujube, Oreo & Marshmallow

Dr Roopali recounts the long journey of a homeless dog family, their trials, tribulations and triumph – exclusively for Different Truths.

Animals and birds travel thousands of miles for better weather, breeding, nesting, food, and water. For decades, India has been a winter home away from home for beautiful cranes and flamingoes from as far away as Siberia.

On land, man’s best friend walks miles to find a birthing place or forage for food. This story is a heartbreaking and heartwarming travelogue of three dogs: a mother, her son, and her daughter. 

Jujube was a pale, fawn-coloured dog who found herself perpetually pregnant and permanently abandoned. 

She was always left behind with her fluffy puppies as her constant companions. She lived in frantic fear, never staying in one place. She was moving her brood and herself from one place to another.

As a single mom with her brood, she was a much-despised miserable creature. She was looked at as an abomination. A creature with no morals. Her puppies not having an identifiable dad was a matter of disgust. 

That she may have looked for love or that she could be a victim of violence was never a matter of concern. A few animal rights activists understood. For others, she was a kutti, a nasty, disparaging word in Hindi for a female dog. 

Children in the neighbourhood were attracted to the soft puppies and played with them. But only for a little while. Their parents forbade them to touch the puppies. They were dirty. They were nasty. They belonged to the kutti.

Some of the puppies were lucky enough to find homes. A small band of animal lovers in the neighbourhood made sure of that. The other puppies just vanished.  

Jujube was always sad. And lonely. She was looking for love. She was deceived and left to fend for herself with another batch of puppies. 

Arguments broke out in the neighbourhood. WhatsApp groups began to take the form of those who fed the hungry animals and those who didn’t, wouldn’t and decided they shouldn’t be provided. They battled all day. The dog haters exceeded the dog feeders.

There is something about high-rise buildings. To me, they look like termite colonies. Nobody knows who lives where — all day, bristling hostility and suspicion travel up and down and down and up the shiny lifts.

Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi, is one such township of posh high-rise living. These are gated communities. They contain all the creature comforts and amenities of daily living inside their hostile wrought iron gates.

They say Gurgaon has existed since the time of the epic Mahabharata. Legend has it that Yudhishthira, the oldest of the five Pandava brothers, gifted this village to their guru Dronacharya. Although now a bustling, glittery city, Gurgaon has been rechristened Gurugram – the guru’s (teacher’s) gram (village).  

The corporate offices of multinational companies make their home here. Glitzy, high-end shopping malls rub shoulders with fancy restaurants, state-of-the-art hospitals, multiplex cinemas, and farmers’ markets.

Proximity to Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport makes this highly urbanised “Gurugram” a sought-after residential and business area for a young, vibrant population, as well as the hoards of migrant workers who support and sustain this population.

Here, dog walkers earn a living by walking fancy dogs from abroad. Great Danes, St. Bernards, Beagles, German Shepherds, Cocker Spaniels, and even Alaskan Huskies. Unhappy in the heat of Indian summers. Travelling from faraway places in the luggage holds of aircraft to apartments in high-rise buildings.  

The dog walkers and their wards are compelled to travel across the sky-scraping buildings to cross the busy Delhi-Jaipur highway. Daily risking being run over by a speeding tourist bus. 

This city can be without compassion for man or bird or beast. Nobody knows how and where Jujube came from. How many difficult miles had she walked to reach this cluster of buildings? 

She could be one of the earliest residents when it was just a vast space dumped with bricks and mortar. She was there long before the others. Hers was a traumatic life fraught with danger. Each day she travelled with her brood from one building to another, looking for a good hiding place. 

Thin with hair falling off in patches, she looked dishevelled and unattractive like most moms. Everybody wanted her out. Soon she was left with only two puppies — a female all black and a male white with a few brown patches and greyish blue eyes. Somebody named them Oreo and Marshmallow.  

Jujube had no name. She was disapprovingly called the mother. She moved stealthily and avoided eye contact. 

One day a rescue mission began to take place. Coaxing a cab driver to carry dog passengers across the NCR (National Capital Region) was difficult. Dogs meant he would lose a customer because of the smell. “How much extra (money) is required to get your car washed clean?” I asked.

Half an hour or negotiation later, a tidy sum of money was fixed, and the cab took off from Gurgaon. The destination was to be their home in Meerut.

Before they arrived, their new home was organised with a welcome befitting any new family member. Our new family awaited warm, comfortable beds, new bowls for food, and chicken and rice in a warm broth.  

Jujube knew nothing about the plans afoot. So, when the adventure began, she was taken aback. Her kids, now fully grown, were picked up and put inside the cab. There was much flaying of legs, scratching and snapping and crying. Jujube took to her heels.  

Finally, the cab with only two canines and two humans drove slowly towards its planned destination. 

Meerut lies nearly 110 kilometres from Gurgaon /Gurugram. A historical city, Meerut, existed from the times of the epic Ramayana. It was once known as Mayarashtra. Meerut is also where India’s first war of independence against British rule started in 1857. 

The cab hurtled through townships like Ghaziabad, Moradabad, and Modi Nagar. Vast tracts of land house private universities and ornate wedding banquet halls. Oreo and Marshmallow were too frightened and anxious to notice or acknowledge the progress in education around them. 

They were offered some dog food. Pedigree. They ignored it. Ironically, their lack of pedigree was the bane of their lives.

Their nameless mother, Jujube, was not with them. We were all worried and sad. Both adolescent puppies kept standing up, waiting to leap out. We passed sugarcane fields and small tea shops.

Meerut city, with its jam-packed bazaars, dazzling lights, and the aroma of fried kachori, wafted through the window. The siblings got restless. They had only lived in dark corners behind unused building materials. This was a new experience. For some moments, they forgot the pain of separation and any stranger anxiety. 

We stopped and, through a half-open window, bought some kachoris and jalebis. We, humans, were hungry. Oreo and Marshmallow swallowed them in one ravenous gulp. Their introduction to Meerut was complete. They wagged their tails and settled down into their seats.

Soon we arrived at the tree-filled acres of land where the colonial bungalow stood. Called The Hermitage, it was now their new home. A welcome party awaited them. They drank water thirstily. They had travelled a long way. It was a one-way ticket. Very soon, they curled up and went to sleep. Oreo whimpered all night. She missed her mom.  

Another journey was awaited. It was easy to drive away the lone fawn-coloured scrawny dog with no name. The gated community residents were over the moon. 

Now their kids were safe from this abomination. “Let her starve to death. These “junglee” (wild) street dogs must be kept out. Anybody feeding them should be punished”. They expressed their feelings openly. God had made us in his image. We were His finest product.

A few days later, a surprise awaited us. A Good Samaritan, an army veteran, drove from Gurgaon to Meerut to see us. He brought Jujube with him. It was a sad Jujube who travelled with the veteran. Her only comfort being she knew him. She trusted him. She had no hopes of ever meeting her two children.

He had searched and found her alone, cowering outside the colony gates. The guards had sneakily shared some food.

Her chauffeur friend was a trusted person. He was one of those who had regularly fed her and her kids. He looked so compassionate. She always looked at human eyes. She read everything into them. Where was he taking her? Where did her children go? They drove past large billboards. She couldn’t read them, and she had no way to ask. 

The forbidding big red iron gate couldn’t stop the joyful reunion. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Her children were waiting for her!

She had no name. So, we named her Jujube – the sweet one. She is at peace these days. Oreo, Marshmallow and Jujube roam at will among trees and flowers. They are cuddled and looked after. They snooze in the winter sun and enjoy the cool environs of the colonial bungalow. 

Their long journey was over. Among peacocks, robins, squirrels, parrots, woody woodpeckers, Kingfishers, kites, porcupines and hordes of local creatures, Jujube, Oreo, and Marshmallow have found their forever home. They, too, have learnt to live harmoniously among God’s creatures. 

Photos by the author