Shankar is an odd jobber who barely has enough in his pockets to buy himself a meal a day.

At the start of the first Movement Control Order, he had lost his job at an Indian restaurant at Medan Istana in Ipoh. Even though Shankar, 40, has no family and stays with a friend, he has to share whatever little he has with many others.

For more than 5 years Shankar has been feeding stray dogs with food that he collected from friends and restaurants or that he bought with his own money. He would eat his one meal provided by the restaurant and bought food to feed the strays in Silibin and Lim Garden in Ipoh.

When he had no more means to get food for the dogs, he would ask his friends for money to buy the food so that he could continue to feed his canine friends. He is careful not to abuse their trust and would always produce a receipt for the food that he buys. During this crisis, his one meal a day has been reduced to just rice with vegetables and some biscuits.

Recently, a woman who knew about his devotion to stray dogs helped to buy a bag of dog food for him. On Tuesday (April 28) Shankar found a litter of sick puppies at the temple. He took one of them to a vet, as he couldn’t carry all of them, with the hope of getting the same prescription of medicine for the rest of the puppy.

Shankar plans to look for a job soon as the lockdown is lifted but he is not too worried about this circumstance as he feels the “future is always uncertain”.

– Contributed by Ong Tit Suen