Life in a city is always so busy and happening. People seem to be on the run from dawn to dusk. In this rush and push in our concrete jungle most people tend to overlook the plight of animals who are struggling to survive on the streets. But yet there are a few animal lovers who do care, each in their own way. Feeding, cleaning and even treating them when needed are different ways adopted by these people who empathize with animals.
While these are doing their bit, we have our team of two young and dashing veterinarians, who are selflessly working round the clock for our less noticed furry inhabitants. They are Dr Jinesh Shah and Dr Zenobia Chinoy working as a team, having the same goal of lessening the pain and increasing the life span of any animal that comes their way. It’s indeed a wonder, for friends who have known them for donkey’s years, how these two temperamentally different people came together and work in perfect co-ordination and utmost efficiency when it concerns saving the life of an animal. But perhaps, their different personalities help them to connect better and work as a unit for their joint cause.
Dr Jinesh had first been shown the path by Doctor Kurush Mistry (reputed and a senior vet) whom he met when he was a teenager, who actually inspired him to become a doctor for animals. Dr Jinesh says “I did a lot as a teen, helping NGOs like IDA(In defence of animals) and later PALs (Plants and animals lovers society) but only getting formally educated in this field gave me that extra edge over others. As a certified veterinarian, I could do much more than I would, if I wasn’t”. He met Dr Zenobia at a very famous doc Siloo Bhagwager’s clinic in 2003. Both of them worked as volunteers in the events held by PALs (started by Doctor Siloo). They did learn a lot through this experience and also got together since then.
Doctor Zenobia is a gold medalist veterinarian from Mumbai University. She is excellent at her job and communicates very well with her patients so that they feel those positive vibrations that she gives them, through her healing touch. Both of them consider, their service to animals as their true love and their calling.
Dr Jinesh feels that female dogs and cats left by themselves get pregnant many times and each time the litter that comes into this world is unloved by most humans. These puppies or kittens have to go through a lot in their journey to adulthood and many don’t make it. The female who gives birth most of the time is under nourished herself and also undergoes the trauma of losing some of them by acccidents or human cruelty. So he has trained himself in the art of darting, such animals to make them unconscious and spay them for their own benefit and give them an improved life span. He doesn’t just do this instinctively, but after careful thought and the dose is put in the syringe to only put the dog to sleep for an hour or so till she is carefully taken by his ambulance to the hospital and is spayed. He then releases the dog back to the place from where he picked her up. As he is skilled and educated to do such a task, he is called by animal activists and NGOs to help them from almost all over India. Giving one’s whole and soul for domestic as well as wild animal kind is no easy task. This cannot be taken up by a commoner. This only can come from a person who has totally understood the pain and feels capable of relieving it. Both Drs fit the bill of excelling at their job. A lady who feeds dogs, once admitted one of her ailing dogs to the hospital where Dr Zenobia works. The dog was paralyzed below his waist. But to her amazement, the dog got miraculously got cured by the loving care that it got from Dr Zenobia, who nursed it back to health. Now the same dog walks freely on the streets healthier than before.
Such is the loyalty to their profession, which both the doctors share, which has held them firmly together for years and surely will continue to do so forever. In addition to organizing and volunteering at vaccination and sterilizing camps, working at animal hospitals and at their clinic, this duo has opened a shelter, for sick and healthy animals, in the area of South Mumbai. It is for providing a roof to those that need to be nursed and those whose mothers have been separated from them. Such good work, many a time gets overlooked. Yet a noble cause along with noble actions deserves adulation. Certainly these upright people have got the blessings of the good Spirits and at the destined moment their good work will come in the public eye. So ‘carry on your commendable work doctors’, you will achieve your objective of a much more animal sensitised balanced world shortly.
