India, Feb. 4 -- Before I am anything else, I am an animal caregiver. I am also a musician. Music gave me a place to stand when I was young. It taught me how silence speaks, how longing becomes sound. I grew up in the Himalayas, moving with my father's government postings, learning early that the world is not owned - it is shared. The mountains raised me gently. Streams whispered beside me. Ants carried entire futures on their backs. Squirrels stitched the sky between trees. Butterflies paused on my hands. Somewhere far away, a leopard called. And always, on those winding roads, there was the dog. It would appear without announcement, walk beside us without demand, disappear without farewell - a quiet guardian of travellers, a companion who asked for nothing, except to belong. In those years, I learned my first lesson in love that expects no reward. Music became my life. Dogs became my teachers. Long before cities and borders, dogs chose us. They stepped away from the wild and stayed. Not for food or profit, not for utility - but for companionship. They stayed because they trusted. And for thousands of years, they have waited for us to deserve that trust. In the mountains, we never called them strays. A dog was a dog. It belonged where we belonged. It slept where we slept. It ate what we ate. Compassion was not an instruction - it was instinct. Our scriptures spoke of it. Our Constitution remembers it. But more importantly, our hearts knew it. When I moved to the city, the dogs came with me. They kept me company among concrete and chaos. They learned my footsteps. I learned their faces. We grew older together. During the pandemic, my circle widened. Hunger did not understand lockdowns. Fear did not respect boundaries. Today, my family and I care for more than 400 dogs across colonies and forested parks. Love grows quietly, but responsibility grows loud. Caregiving is a lonely road. Neighbours shout. Stones are thrown. Cold water is poured on winter mornings. Crackers explode at tails. Hot water burns skin. Vans arrive to erase lives. I argue with laws. I plead with reason. The dogs do not understand laws. They only look at me - with eyes that hold no accusation - when cruelty visits them yet again. "What did I do wrong," their silence asks. I kneel. I touch their heads. I tell them the truth: Nothing. You slept where you felt safe. You barked because you were afraid. You ran because joy still lives in your legs. They believe me. They always do. But hatred comes in new languages and travels through forwarded messages, through fear dressed as concern. From warm rooms, people decide that dogs do not belong - while those same dogs tremble outside in rain and cold, guarding nothing but hope. In parks, they are told they are intruders. In forests, they are pushed deeper into thorns. Their water bowls are broken, their rest places demolished. Their presence is treated as an offence. And yet - when they see us - they run to us, tails wagging, eyes soft, love still strong. This love has a cost. It costs sleep. It costs peace. It costs parts of your heart you didn't know you could give away. And still, there are many of us, people who work all day so they can feed dogs at night, people who choose conducting sterilisation drives over vacations, funding vaccines for animals over luxuries for self, people who search in the rain for a missing dog, calling a name into the dark, people who do not ask to be thanked or receive benefits in return. We are often asked why we don't "let the State handle it." But how do you hand over compassion? How do you outsource conscience? If there are too many dogs today, it is our failure. We took the commons, we narrowed their world, we asked endlessly for more - and then called their presence a problem. You cannot abandon responsibility and then punish its consequences. These dogs remind us how to trust, and how to love without guarantee. They are our healers when no one is listening, our guards when no one is watching, and our companions in a world growing increasingly cruel and lonely. They cannot be hidden away. They cannot be erased. They cannot be punished for choosing us. Dogs walked this earth before we learned to name them. They stayed when they could have left. If they have chosen to live beside us, the least we can do is make space. Let compassion be our policy. Let kindness be our law. Let us be worthy - finally - of the love that has waited for us for centuries....