On the morning of our third day in Kolkata, my wife and I woke to the pitiful cries of a dog and her puppies in the alley adjacent to my Aunt’s apartment. While animals are everywhere in the city, the sheer alienness of seeing cows dozing on sidewalks and goats bleating alongside beeping cars on the street made their plight seem distant, removed. But the cracked and keening sound these dogs were making was familiar; we’d heard it coming from animals in the States and instantly felt the same kind of culpability.

“What should we do?” Erin asks.

We are sitting cross-legged on the bed in the guest room. The door leading to the rest of the apartment is mercifully closed, offering a few moments to gather our wits prior to being swallowed up by a tidal wave of family get-togethers, excess food, and jet-lagged wandering. The air conditioner is chugging away but I’m already sweating.

“What can we do?” I ask.

Another cry sounds outside. I can hear frying noises coming from the kitchen, where Lokhon, my Aunt’s servant, is preparing breakfast. The heavy stench of mustard oil creeps in beneath the door and stings my eyes. I rub them and try to ignore the low-grade panic in the pit of my stomach.

Erin pulls a backpack onto the bed, unzips it and takes out a few items we’d brought from the States: a granola bar, a fruit bar. “How about these?”

We exit the guest room and inch down the hallway. I’m holding the snacks and Erin is holding a small metal bowl filled with tap water. We draw in close approaching the living room, where Auntie is dipping a biscuit into a cup of tea. Circumventing the tight, predetermined order of events, even with something as simple as feeding street dogs, wouldn’t be easy. Though in her 70’s, my Auntie has strong opinions, boundless energy, and the mildly disapproving air of a former teacher. Will is respected: courtesy is steamrolled over.

She spots the offerings: “What’s that for?” Face open and smiling, eyes sharp. A powerhouse in a faded white housedress.

“We’re just going downstairs for a second, Mashi” I say.

She frowns. “What do you need?”

“Nothing, we just want to…”

“Lokhon!” she calls out. “Oh Lokhon!”

“It’s fine, he doesn’t have to…” Erin begins but it’s too late: Lokhon’s lined face peeks out of the kitchen. He’s been with my Aunt for years, silently carrying out every possible request, but that only makes the situation harder. The last thing we wanted was to add to the burden of a white-haired man who slept in a shed on the roof.

“We’re going to feed the dogs,” I said. “Ourselves.”

“Which ones?” Auntie asks, and, as though on cue, another cry rises up from the alley. “Those?”

“You didn’t hear it this morning?” I ask.

She nods slowly, but it’s clear this is for my sake. Few Indians keep dogs indoors as pets. Instead they’re left to fend for themselves along with other animals and the vast multitudes of the city’s poor. I realized that to her, the mewling was just another sound you learned to ignore, like car horns and loudspeakers and the endless hubbub of conversation. Picking out a few particular dogs to feed was a little like polishing silverware on the Titanic.

Erin unlocks the front door and steps into the stairwell, committing us. She mouths the words, “Come on” and waves me towards her.

Auntie opens her mouth to say something, then thinks better of it. A sly look comes into her eyes. “Try,” she says. “No knowledge without experimentation.”

The dog was leaning up against the crumbling facade of the building next door. Black fur with white spots. Her nipples were swollen an ugly shade of crimson yet her mewling puppies fought amongst themselves for whatever drops they could get. Around them swirled frantic negotiating at rattletrap stalls, a lorry belching gas fumes, men in dirty dhotis smoking cigarettes and watching two foreigners attempt a good deed.

I unwrapped the granola bar and came up close to the dogs. The mother turned her face towards me. Large, liquid black eyes and a lolling tongue. She looked near death but weirdly cheerful about the whole situation. I dropped it a few inches away.

She leaned down with difficulty, took a sniff, then looked back at me curiously.

“Try the fruit bar,” Erin says.

I do the same with the fruit bar. Again, she sniffs but doesn’t eat. A few of the puppies nuzzle the water when it’s offered but no one touches the food.

The dhoti-clad smokers crack up. One of them says something to me, advice maybe, but I can’t make it out. The dogs continue to starve, ignoring the food mere inches away. The sun is glaring overhead and I can feel the heaviness in the air: it’s going to be a rough day in India.

“They didn’t eat, did they?” Auntie asks upon our return. When we tell her what happened, she bursts out laughing, even calling Lokhon in from the kitchen to share in the hilarity.

“They might later,” Erin says.

“Never,” Auntie says. “They won’t eat American food. They don’t even know what it is. Give them rice, a little sauce with meat and they’ll eat it right up.”

“They’re snobs?” I ask, incredulously.

Auntie smiles and sips her tea. “They’re Indian.”