A LIFE LESSON FOR ME –5 PS TO 5CS

Five Puppies – A Story of Cruelty, Callousness, Carnage, Care, and Compassion

I wanted to write this true story for the last few months. I never gathered the courage to write it. Mixed emotions of grief, guilt, frustration, anger, love, and compassion have engulfed me. Every time I picked up my laptop, instead of words flowing out, my tears rolled out. I felt weak and incapable of sharing emotions.

Brief Background that is important for this story

While growing up, once a street dog in Delhi (India) barked at me. Since then, I have been petrified of the dogs. At one point in time, I even bought a personal security alarm with a hope to scare away the dogs with its light and sound. I would always walk with a large stick in my hand whenever I ventured out on the streets. Every dog walking on those streets looked like a threat to me. I always felt that they were out there to chew my leg off.

Then, I moved to the USA for a few years. I was so relieved that I do not have to worry about street dogs. I was invited to a house party in Phoenix, Arizona. As soon as I parked my car, the big pet dog of the host came running towards me. I dashed for my car at a higher speed. I exited my car only after the host put the dog in the cage. Everyone at the party scorned at me. Because of me, this beautiful dog was sitting in the cage. So I left the part early.

I then realized that in the USA, I would have to face this situation often. I have bailed out of many house parties and meetings, some of them very important if I knew that there was a dog at their home. In one of the cases, I staked outside the house of the host two hours in advance to ensure that they do not have a pet. As soon as I noticed a Pomeranian in the house, I drove off and made some silly excuse for missing the meeting.

My first pleasant experience was when one of my best friends, Mary Ann, offered to help me with my fear. She took me to her home and literally forced me to play her “Snickers.” And lo, behold, I enjoyed it, and I missed Snickers as soon as I left her house. Yet, I never understood why someone would care for dogs or cats so much. I always argued in my head that there are so many needy kids around the world. So instead of feeding and protecting dogs and cats, why pet lovers do not adopt orphans and poor kids.

Start of a beautiful lesson of life

In November 2019, a street dog gave birth to eight puppies close to my house in New Delhi, India. Three puppies were picked up by someone the next morning. And we had five puppies outside my neighbor’s house, which was under construction. One night, when I returned from late night after work, my wife noticed five puppies sitting on the marble floor and shivering in the cold. She immediately picked up a bunch of cardboards from this under-construction site and moved the puppies on the cardboard. The puppies snuggled each other, looked at us with thankful eyes, and slept peacefully.

(Following picture shows how we first found these puppies.)

The next day was colder. We requested the caretaker of the house to give us more cardboards so that we can construct a temporary house for the puppies. But he refused. He wanted to sell those discarded cardboards and make around Rs 10 (USD 20 cents). He had no incentive to help us.

The Love Story Enfolds

My life changed after that. I did things that hitherto were unimaginable to the people who know me well and to me.

And my wife loves all animals. So with five puppies at my door, I was facing an interesting problem. My wife proposed that we move those five puppies from neighbors’ porch to our porch. We would be able to create a better house for them. Her logic was that ‘ethically we cannot create a house for puppies on a neighbors’ porch. If we want to help them, we need to create a space in front of our house.’ And I counter-argued that ‘the house is still under construction for another 15 days. Puppies would walk away after fifteen days, anyway.’

My argument did not hold. I gave my wife a hundred other excuses ranging from “my parents would be outraged,” “neighbors would be angry that we are creating a menace in the street,” “who would clean all the potty,” and “how would we manage with my frequent travel.” I had no incentive to help those puppies. It was not a KPI for my bonus in the company, nor was it essential for my spiritual growth.

However, none of my arguments worked. My wife had an answer for everything. So reluctantly and with great trepidation, I bought a blanket for them and moved the puppies outside our house. Their mom wagged her tail and laid down on a cold floor as her puppies slept on the warm blanket. I had never realized that animal parents also make sacrifices. Their mom kept licking them all night.

My father noticed it the next morning. Thankfully, he chose to ignore it. My mom was not able to see from her window. And I was relieved that this episode is over. My cab driver told me that puppies would forget about their parents and us in a few days and would walk away someday. And I started counting the days. Every week, he would drop me at the airport and pick me up, and I would ask him more questions about the dogs. He started enlightening me about the world that never existed for me earlier. At times, I felt that he was talking about Alice’s Wonderful. I have been so absorbed in my career and corporate goals that I was not aware of the life that exists around me. The life that struggles to survive every day.  The driver had helped a couple of street dogs in his life. For me, he was the management consultant, as far as dogs are concerned.

One night, around 1 AM, I came back from my trips, and the weakest puppy was sick. He was not eating anything. He was in some kind of pain and was moaning. My wife fed him milk-soaked bread with her hands and petted him for a while. I felt pity for this puppy. I wanted to alleviate his pain. For the first time, I was acknowledging the pain of a street dog. The next day, I called my consultant driver for help. He moved around his leg and body, and the fifth puppy felt better and started walking. I gave my driver friend Rs. 500 for his consulting service of 10 minutes!

My wife felt that severe cold in Delhi might be the cause of the puppy’s pain. So I was instructed to get big cardboard so that she can construct a house for them. My blood pressure shot up. My management brain was racing to find excuses to explain why this KPI cannot be achieved.

I had the same fears in my head – What would my parents think, what would neighbors think? My parents might throw me out of the house. My neighbors might start knocking our doors in anger. Usually, in my neighborhood, most people keep complaining about street dogs. I have been one of them, so I cannot blame them.

I know my wife would not relent. So I went and brought a large cardboard. She constructed the first house of the puppies, set up the blanket inside, and put serving bowls in front of their home. Their house was in front of our house. I stood there with my wife, trying to evade the questioning eyes of my neighbors. If anyone tried to talk to me, I pretended that I am on a phone call, and I do not know who this lady is outside my house setting up a dog house.

(The first dog house is below!)

I again started counting days. My consultant driver said that puppies would be gone in another fifteen days. I convinced myself that I could manage another fifteen days of social and family pressure. My wife had no clue about the growth rate of puppies. So she believed my dog consultant Dinesh. I booked a vacation with my wife for January 1st for one week. My wife was happy about the vacations. Somewhere in her heart, she was more sad than happy. She was anxious that by December 31st, puppies would forget about her and would walk away.

Cruelty enfolds on the streets

During one of those nights, we realized that one of the neighbor’s son comes out at midnight to play with the puppies. He would pull out the puppies from their dog house. If they did not come out, he would pull out their blanket as well. His sense of play was throwing up puppies in the air and then catching them as they shrieked in fear. Puppies’ mom danced around this kid, begging him not to do that. Yet this kid would do it. Whenever he was able to catch them successfully, he would shout, “I am Bahubali(an Indian movie character).” Should I pick up a fight with this neighbor? Again, the same questions ran in my mind- what would my parents say, and what would my neighbors say? I did not stop him. I watched him helplessly from the third floor of my house with a vain hope that he would walk away when he would see in me the balcony.

One of the nights, he did that again. He tortured the puppies at midnight and went back to his house, satisfied with his weird sense of manliness. Puppies started roaming around the streets. They were wide awake after their torture. My wife requested me if she can go outside the house and put those puppies back to sleep. Every time we open the main door, there is a big siren noise. So I was afraid that my parents would wake up and would be very angry. It was at 2 AM. So I put my foot down and said no to my wife.

More Cruelty Enfolds

After five minutes, a blue car came running on the street and crushed the fifth puppy, the one who was in pain a few days ago. This was our neighbor’s car. Their daughter started shouting in sadness. But these adults looked at the dead puppy and went inside their house and slept. I almost vomited in shock. Someone took away a piece of my heart. My wife started crying hysterically. Mother of the puppy picked up him and brought him outside the dog house and started licking him. Every few seconds, she would look at us, as if begging us to save her kid. We stood there, stupefied. The other four puppies came out of their dog house and started to play this dead puppy. When he did not respond, they went back inside and slept. The mother kept licking him and kept wailing.

I started calling every pet hospital, pet ambulance, pet shelters that I could find on Google. For the first time, I realized that most of the pet non-profit organizations are fake. So-called 24/7 pet ambulance never picked up my phone. My wife and I were crying continuously. My wife tried to tell me that no one would come to save a puppy. In Delhi, people do not save human beings. Delhiites are crushed by speeding cars daily, and nobody cares. Not even 10-second sympathy is shown to the dead people on Delhi streets. Instead, some drivers are angry that this accident victim is obstructing the traffic.

I kept calling. Finally, one ambulance responded at 3 AM. They came and told us what we already knew. The puppy was dead. I gave them Rs. 1000 to do the last rites of the puppy. The whole colony resonated with the wail of the crying mother. Other dogs joined her in her mourning. Dog murderers slept comfortably in their homes, oblivious to the sufferings they had caused.

No one in the neighborhood missed this cute puppy, except his mother, my wife, and I. No one had an incentive to miss his life. Our education does not teach us to mourn this kind of loss. The mother dog did not eat anything for two days. She kept lying outside the dog house and kept licking her remaining four puppies. Puppies did not know what exactly happened, but they were scared. They all tried to climb into my house the next morning. They were too small to climb the stairs. So my wife sat on the road and kept caressing them for hours. Who would have thought that fifteen days old puppies would be so sensitive? They were shivering. They all would run towards the entrance gate of our house, as if they knew that they would be safer inside the house.

 

Confession of Weakness, Guilt, and Shame

And I did nothing. I did nothing that night. I did nothing the next morning. I did not shout at the kid who had pulled these puppies outside their house last night. I did not fight with the murderer. I did not educate them. For the first time, I realized how incapable I am.

As a kid, I had a fantasy of becoming Prime Minister of India and changing the world. When I joined Tata Consulting Services, I was impressed by Ratan Tata and wanted to devote my life to social welfare. When I established shared service centers across the globe, I felt that I had proven myself as a corporate leader. Here I was facing the stark reality that I am a weak human, incapable of doing anything that I fantasize about. If I cannot change my neighbors, how can I change the world? If I cannot save one life, how can I save the world?

It is hard to accept this weakness. And it is harder to accept it publicly. I am still accepting it openly to seek guidance and mentorship. My desire to make an impact has not died because of this weakness. Instead, my resolve has become stronger than before.

For the first time, I started to realize all the surrounding carnage. How do people deal with it? I have been doing meditation for a few years. And secretly, I have been proud of it. I felt that I am better than others since I am doing a sincere meditation. However, none of that meditation helped me save a life. It did not help me grapple with the loss. It did not help me console my wife. My wife and I just stopped talking to each other. Whenever we would open our mouth, we would just cry. My education and my corporate success did not prepare me to deal with this. It never taught me to do anything outside what economist term as “Incentives mechanism of capitalism.”

I could not face my wife anymore. She had begged me that night to go out and put those puppies back in the dog house. I did not do that.I could not face my team. I did not feel eligible to be their leader.

I went back to Hyderabad, hoping that office work would heal me. It did not. I cried a few times in front of my team. My wife was left alone in Delhi to deal with the loss. I came back after three days hoping that reunion would heal it. But nothing healed it. I have continued to think about the things that I could have done differently to save the puppy that night.

Love Kindles

I realized how attached I had become with these puppies. Puppies were not growing up at a rate promised by our driver consultant. So we canceled our vacation. We were worried about puppies’ food and safety. If a few years ago, someone had predicted that I would happily take a loss of Rs. 15,000 for street puppies, I would have laughed at the suggestion. Here I was canceling my air tickets happily for these puppies. We then planned for a mini-vacation within Delhi, but canceled that as well. Our focus was on these puppies only.

One day, it rained heavily, and cardboard boxed crumbled. The blanket was all wet. So my wife sent me to the next mission of finding sturdy cardboard. Once I got the cardboard, she again sent me out to find something that would prevent the cardboard house from crumbling down. I could not find anything. I could have put steel rods. But those may hurt the kids. I may put bricks, but they can fall on the kids as well. Who would have thought that I would spend my weekend finding solutions for such problems? I was roaming on the streets, trying to see something innovative. I noticed that someone had thrown out pieces of hard cardboard. So I picked them up, cut them to the right size, and put it inside the new dog house. I was doing things that I had thought that I would do. I was doing something that I would have laughed at if others did. Life changed for me. Here I was, a proud Harvard grad, stealing other people’s garbage to build a dog house. House was not yet complete. The blanket was wet. So I sent out again to buy a new blanket. I was given explicit orders to buy a more fluffy blanket.

As we moved puppies from crumbled house to new house, those puppies kept going to the crumbled house. They were so attached to it. They felt safe in it. My wife sat on the road, caressed the puppies, fed them food with her hand, and slowly moved them to a new house on a new fluffy blanket.

(The yellow color cardboard in the following picture is what I stole from a garbage. It was very useful in giving stability to the dog house. Also in the picture, new blanket).

( Below: Outside their new dog house)

Cruelty and carnage continues

To celebrate this new house, we went out to watch a movie. Our first outing in many weeks. My wife fed the puppies. She filled their lunch boxes to the brim so that they can eat while we were gone for three hours. After two hours, we got a call that one of our puppies has been killed by another car. I remember that I was buying coffee at Starbucks. I left the coffee there and rushed out to find Uber. My wife and I kept crying throughout the journey. This journey seems so long. We again thought that if we had not gone for a movie, maybe the puppy would not have gone to the park. He was murdered near the park.

More details emerged later. The culprit was another speeding car of a neighbor. The puppy was crushed so badly that his internal organs had come out. A lot of neighbors came to our house to express their condolences. Did we make a change indirectly and unknowingly?

Few neighbors started to come in the night to feed the remaining three puppies. One of these neighbors was the one who had killed the first puppy. Maybe we did make a dent in the hearts of our neighbors.

The Truth of Life Kindles

These puppies were changing me. When I patted them for the first time, my wife was so sweetly surprised. I started to realize that so much life lives around me – hungry squirrel, who eats the carrots left by puppies, a starved mouse who hides inside a pipe and eats remnants of bread, hungry monkeys, thirsty birds, and so on. We started feeding more animals.

We now had a name for the three remaining puppies. Chintu, Pintu, and Mintu. Mintu is the weakest and the most naughty. He and Pintu keep practicing wrestling all day, as if preparing for the Olympics. Chintu is more serious and watches them like an elder brother. Life was good. Was it?

Reckless Cruelty All Around Us

One day, all of us woke up with a sound of firecrackers at 4 AM. Was it a fire in our house or car? The whole neighborhood was out on the street. Few drunkards had lit ten minutes firecrackers in the morning. Everyone was worried about their cars and sleep. My wife was concerned about the puppies. They were not in the dog house.

What happened to them? Did they get hurt by firecrackers? Did they get so scared that they ran away and were not able to find their way back? Our hearts sank. We lost energy in our legs. We started whistling around as all the neighbors went back to their beds. Chintu and Pintu were hiding below a car. After listening to familiar whistles for a few minutes, they slid out from the cars. Yet they were scared to walk towards their house. My wife picked them and tucked them in their blanket. They were shivering. Mintu was still untraceable. My wife went to the end of the street. Mintu is the weakest, so she was more worried about him. She whistled. Other street dogs surrounded her and started barking at her. Undeterred, she kept whistling. Finally, Mintu squealed behind a car at the end of the street. He is the weakest, so he ran the fastest and ended up in an enemy dogs’ territory. So he was more scared now. My wife picked him up and brought him back to his house.

I am against firecrackers. Even then, I had never realized how firecrackers could create havoc in the lives of animals around us. Dogs, cats, monkeys, squirrels, birds. All of them.

I loved air shows, where fighter planes showed their might in the air. After learning from puppies, this January 26th, for the first time, I realized how painful and disruptive these air shows are for birds and animals. We, humans, have become careless criminals, and we don’t even know it. I was one as well till these cute little puppies taught me lessons of life.

God, please stop it. I cannot handle it anymore.

After a few days, we heard a noise outside our house and saw that Pintu was dead. He was lying in the middle of the road. We don’t know what happened. Chintu was jumping on him as if to declare his victory in the wrestling Olympics. He soon realized that something is wrong. I again called my consultant, who declared Pintu dead and took him away for the last rites.

Chintu, Mintu, and mother did not eat for two days. Mintu fell sick. We brought in a mobile Vet doctor to give Mintu glucose for three days. We got their medicines as well. I felt the pain of the needle when Chintu and Mintu got their injections. My wife cried in empathy.  Again, something I had never imagined that I would ever do.

Losing three puppies within two months weakened us emotionally. We had also bought night glow collars for them to save them. Yet we could not. My whole ego of being a good leader turned into shame and guilt. It turned into a teething realization that all my education and wealth is pointless if I cannot save people and animals who rely on me for their safety. I abhor murderers and tormentors who live around me. I have failed for sure. We have failed as a society too. Shame on me. Shame on us.

New Stronger Dog House

My wife has been worried that this cardboard box may crumble in the rains, so we got them a wooden box now. Someone stole the first box. Who steals from puppies? Only humans. We got another wooden box.  It is more spacious and robust. Chintu and Mintu sleep inside it. Their mother sleeps on it. Father sleeps close to it.

(Below: Strong wooden dog house)

Yet there are days when one of the neighbors would kick Chintu and Mintu unnecessarily. My wife and I are up till late at night, trying to tuck them in bed. One of the favorite past times of Chintu and Mintu is to come inside of our house and sleep there in the afternoon.

When we whistle at lunch or dinner time, and Chintu and Mintu are far off, their parents push them and bring them to our house. Amazing parents. Parents wait and watch for their kids to eat food first. However, there are days when their mother gets furious and pulls out the blanket from the dog house and sits on it and does not let her kids sit on it. Then my wife goes and intervenes. We have not figured out why.

Love in the middle of Callousness and Cruelty

Another mother had given birth to seven puppies. Six have been murdered by criminals in my colony. Only one is alive. Let us call her Mini. Around Valentine’s day, Mintu got attracted towards her, the lonely puppy, Mini. Mini is protected by her clan of five fierce dogs at the end of the street. Chintu is protected by his parents. Yet both of Mintu and Mini meet at night, surrounded by howling from competing clans. Recently, Mintu invited Mini in his dog house. Mintu showed her their dining bowls and our house door. Poor Chintu was kicked out of the dog house, as Mintu kissed Mini. Parents of the couple stood guard at some distance. Chintu looked at us for help as we watched from our balcony. We were laughing. My wife had the urge to scold Mintu for ditching his brother. Still, she did not intervene. We stood there in the balcony till 2 AM watching the beautiful life that is struggling to live a life amongst cruel murderers called humans.

Hypocrisy

I am so shocked to see this callous attitude, specifically in India, who prays monkey god in a temple. Then we come out of the temple and throw stones at living monkeys on the streets. The monkeys sitting on the top of Hanuman temple are ambassadors of Lord Hanuman, but hungry and wounded monkeys sitting on the top of our house are evil.  We believe that Lord Dattatreya often comes to help us in the form of dogs. But we want to beat up dogs on the streets. We love the squirrel who helped Lord Ram. But we hate squirrels around us. Yet,  we love the squirrels in the meditation camps.

Please do not take me wrong. There are times when we need monkeys. For that matter, we love beggars on some days. Tuesdays. Tuesdays are the days when we go to the temple. We want beggars and monkeys around our temples only on Tuesdays. We need them so that we can do charity. We need them so that we can distribute 100-gram dessert to the beggars and feed two bananas to the monkeys. Once we are done doing our charity, we want to complain about beggar and monkey menace in India. But please bring them back next Tuesday because we want to negotiate with God to give us a BMW in return for our Tuesday charity.  Between this Tuesday and next Tuesday, we would beat the hell out of beggars and monkeys, if they come near us.

In India, spiritual channels continuously blast out the message that God is there in every animate and inanimate life. We Indians spent hours listening to those preachings. As soon as we shut off the TV, our passion for cruelty engulfs us. We want to kill animals around us. We want to kill the person who accidentally created a dent in the car. We want to kill who thinks differently or who has a different belief than us. And worse is that we firmly believe that all of these animals and humans deserve to die. No one does an introspection, who are you to decide that?

I am speechless at pet lovers who would take their pet dogs for an evening walk but kick street puppies during those evening walks. I am sad to see how kids of my neighborhood, who go to the top schools of Delhi, believe that the best entertainment is to attract puppies with a stale piece of bread and when naïve puppies come closer wagging their tail, then beat them with a stick. Nothing can be more sickening than this.  I am sickened by parents who teach their kids to beat monkeys and dogs around us.

There is no point in meditation, prayers, meditation camps, gifts to religious places if you cannot have empathy and love for a beautiful life around you.

Big Question

I am grappling with the reasons behind this behavior. May be our education has focused more and more on maximizing our wealth. Paradoxically, more and more people realize that maximizing profits is not the key to happiness. Wealth has not proved as a deterrent for depression-related suicides. Every day we strive for perpetual happiness, which continues to elude us. Still, society at large is not ready to do introspection.

Capitalism teaches us the harsh realities of incentives from an early age. In this model, there is no incentive for good ethical social behavior. There is no respect for nature. On the contrary, cruelty towards animals like dogs and monkeys means less menace for people. Hungry dogs and monkey bite. So they get beatings from humans instead of food. So street animals bite more in self-defense. Humans push them towards aggression through their own aggressive behavior and then turn around to blame these animals, who are supposedly less mature than us.

We then display the same behavior in our offices and homes. Instead of understanding the needs of employees, we think that our leadership is manifested by how nasty we can be towards our team members. We push them, and when they retort, we blame them for “not having a thick skin,” for “not displaying a professional behavior,” and we pat ourselves as “a demanding leader who pushes their team to perform.” In the current corporate world, there is no incentive for being human. I know that most of my readers would be baffled by this naked truth. But it is true. Do you have an incentive in telling restructuring crazy senior management that you do not want to fire your team because one of them has an ailing husband who would lose health benefits? Or because one team member urgently needs to pay tuition fees for the final semester of her daughter?  No, we do not have an incentive to be human because we all are working to increase the so-called shareholder value. And if someone questions the ethics behind this inhumanity, they are termed as socialists, anti-growth, anti-corporate. Why can there not be a middle way out of this? Because there is no incentive to be human in the corporate world. There is no incentive to be worried about hungry kids around us or sick animals on the streets.

Yet we all want to be spiritual, seek God’s blessings, want a fortune to smile on us. We are happy to spend lavishly on seeking spirituality in luxurious ashrams and resorts. Why? Because there is an incentive. It is a mini-vacation in the name of spirituality. Though the truth is that every day, every moment we fail to acknowledge that our colleagues, our team members, poor people on the streets, sick and hungry animals around us are a manifestation of God. Caring for them without any damn incentive is probably also a path towards spirituality or God. We are scared to believe that because there seems to be no instant gratification. We have been not told by management gurus or spiritual gurus to do so. Have we thought that even they do not have an incentive to show us what may be the right path towards spirituality? If they guide us to spend our time, money, and compassion on life forms around us, they would be left alone, and their businesses would not grow. So they do not have an incentive to show us the right path either.

So the question in my mind is if capitalism is the right answer to the problems of socialism. May be “Universalism” focused on maximizing the gifts of the universe, is the correct answer for perpetual happiness.

My transformation

I have changed my business meetings and my travels so many times for these puppies. I have incurred costs, yet I don’t even think about it. At one point, I was ready to give up my traveling job for them. Who would have thought that someone like me would be prepared to sacrifice his job? As soon as I wake up, I check upon Chintu and Mintu in their dog house and squirrels on our tree. When I come back from long travels, Chintu and Mintu run around me. That is selfless love. Pure love.

Yet, there is a vacuum in our lives—a vacuum of Rintu, Tintu, and Pintu. We try to fill that vacuum from this pure love that we get from Chintu, Mintu, and Mini.

Now I acknowledge even ants around me. One day, I moved ants out in the secluded area of the house where they would not get crushed under our feet. There would be Rintu, Tintu Pintu, Chintu, Mintu, and many more amongst ants as well. They would miss their brother, sister, mother, father, and kids who get crushed under our feet.

The more time I spend with puppies, the more I realize the value of maximizing the gifts of the universe.  The more I share my minuscule wealth, more happiness engulfs me. The more I forgive the people around me, the more peaceful I am. More time I spend making others successful at work or around my house, more excited, I feel. And more I think I about it, more I thank these puppies who have opened my eyes more than any education or experience had so far.

During the last few weeks, I heard about people who have done fantastic work for street dogs. I would write in detail about them in my upcoming blogs. Worth mentioning is a kid named V, who lives close to my house. He is a true leader. Even at such a young age, he has transformed his friends and has taught them to be friendly with animals. Since he is a minor, I am not going to reveal his identity.

I am kick-starting an initiative to bring like-minded people together. We do not have to be Bill Gates to create a foundation. We can start by impacting positively one life at a time. I will begin building www.puneetgaur.com to create a place for like-minded people to come together.

The immediate question for me

My wife and I would have out to move out of the neighborhood for a few months. We had contemplated taking Chintu and Mintu with us. But when we see them enjoying life with their parents and Mini, we know that we should not take them away from their environment. We are worried about their food and safety. Both of them eat paneer three times a day. If my wife gives them anything else, they get angry and walk away. We are worried that when they would realize that we are gone, they might go into a big shock. We just don’t know what the right thing to do is. If anyone has faced a similar situation, please guide us. Go to my website, send us feedback through the “Contact Us” section.