I love these pictures of street dogs waiting for handouts at a tea stall. They were taken by Gautam Das in the town Kalyani in southern West Bengal.
The first words that came to mind when I saw these were aap kataar mein hain - "you are in queue" - that's Hindi and the wrong language for Bengal, but most Indians will know what I mean!
This is such a familiar sight all over India. The intelligence of these animals, who know exactly how to interact with and "work" humans, never ceases to amaze me. Well, they've had thousands of years of experience and know our species pretty well by now. A whole lot better than we know them in fact.
If you'd like to see more pictures of free-ranging dogs and how they live side-by-side with people, have a look at Eloise Leyden's beautiful photography book "Slum Dogs of India." Here's a post about her in this blog.
Photos: Gautam Das,
Kalyani,
West Bengal