“My name is Kaivalya Kashyap. I was born in Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh. As my father got transferred to Hyderabad, our family moved here while I was 8 years old. I must admit that I am fortunate to have been born in an animal-loving family. My mother always taught me how to mingle with animals. When I started taking care of indies on the streets, that was when I understood that their lives are not as colourful as we imagine, their struggles are hidden just like their voices. I have seen female dogs giving birth to too many litters and when she struggles to find food and water, she goes through a lot of hardship to feed her babies. There are wounded animals, residents beat them, a few poison them and whatnot. Later I started reporting cruelty cases and rescues to Teja and Pruthvi who used to work in Blue cross of Hyderabad and that’s where I got to learn a lot, eventually turning into a volunteer.

From adopting my first pet Raju, we are now a family of 7 Indian dogs and 9 Indian pets and many more community animals we feed. My memorable rescues were many but there was an instance where we found a Mastiff breed who was very aggressive and we used to feed him from a distance. We found a trainer who could help us to approach the dog and after a few months, we finally found an adopter. One could imagine what kind of abuse the dog went through in the past.

I can’t stress much on the torture that animal lovers had to face in a society where animals are treated to be inferior to humans. Starting from feeding indies on the streets to handling cruelty cases everywhere we had to face struggles and to your surprise, not even one situation went smoother to date. Either there would be a personal grudge in the society after that or people divert the case as a sensitive cader issue. Yet we always had good support from the Police due to which we could at least lead the cases to file FIRs and seizing animals. It is important that we stand firm and not fear in such situations.

I believe that animals would definitely be happier on the streets if undisturbed and respected but as this doesn’t happen we are all here. Especially during COVID, animals on the street suffered to the maximum as their source of food was zero and I felt this is the time to expand the services which were practically out of our capacity. We were able to manage to feed a few animals as per our level but COVID proved to us it is not the same always, they need our help more than usual so ended up feeding more and more animals. Placed water bowls in more quantity than we generally provide. But somehow I know my income levels but intending to help animals I and my family approached for help in the form of funds and one of the NGOs were kind enough to donate to us during the entire lockdown.

As a digital marketer, I understood where the people are and how can people hear us and that’s where I understood that online platforms are a boon to society and especially for people like us who wants to instigate compassion among humans towards animals, so I am using the social media platforms to create awareness on veganism, sustainability to see cruelty free world sooner or later. Also as our compassionate journey taught me and my family that the smoother you handle people making them understand your initiatives, the easier you can make them come into your way. Now there are no more enemies for us in our locality which is a great victory and now I am trying to reach more and more schools and colleges as I believe that the next generation is the only hope to make this world a compassionate place to live.”