The puppy arrived in our house the way all puppies do, with maximum cuteness and minimum bladder awareness. This is a true story. Three months old, a German Shepherd, already convinced that he owned the place. We, the actual owners, had quietly been reduced to staff. His toilet training was still incomplete, and our tiled floors had become the daily testing ground for his urine bladder capacity.
The system was simple. The puppy made a mess. We rushed for old newspapers. The newspaper absorbed the evidence. The floor was wiped. The puppy was given a moral lecture, which he received with great seriousness and no visible improvement. My wife had mastered this operation. She could spot a puddle, locate a newspaper and act with remarkable speed.
Until one day, she stopped.
She had a sheet of newspaper in her hand when she suddenly noticed a Punjab Government advertisement. It had been published probably on a Gurpurab and carried a large image associated with Guru Sahib. It was the usual official style, a full-page public greeting, with a sacred image placed prominently for public display.
She immediately stepped back.“Ooops,” she said softly as she looked frozen.Then she carefully returned that newspaper to the pile and went looking for another one.
When she told me what had happened, I felt a quiet respect for her instinct. It was not a rehearsed reaction. It was a reflex of reverence. In that hurried domestic moment, she had the presence of mind to avoid even an accidental act of disrespect.But then a larger question came to mind.What happens to the lakhs of newspapers printed with such advertisements?
After the greeting is read and the day passes, where do these newspapers go? Most of them become raddi. They are recycled. They wrap vegetables in the market. They line shelves. They are used for packing, cleaning and countless ordinary household purposes. Not out of disrespect. Not out of malice. Simply because that is the life cycle of a newspaper.
If a sacred image is placed on a disposable medium, then the possibility of unintended disrespect is created at the source.This is not an argument against reverence. It is an argument for deeper reverence. Perhaps governments and publicity departments should greet people on sacred occasions with words, messages and values, rather than placing sacred images on material that will inevitably enter the raddi cycle.
Faith is not protected by larger photographs. Respect is not proved by bigger advertisements. Devotion requires thought before printing, not merely emotion after publication.Sometimes, a small incident at home can raise a question much larger than itself.The puppy, of course, understood none of this.But he had unknowingly made us think.