I wasn’t always a stray. Once, I belonged to a boy with dry knees and dreams dustier than the rice sacks we slept on. We lived behind a crumbling wall, under a sky that didn’t ask for rent. We had nothing; and we had everything, which, in hindsight, was a terrible business model.
Then the wall came down and rose again, not in brick, but in glass. And not just any glass; reflective, reinforced, bird-killing corporate glass. My boy left, traded for a scholarship or a system update, I don’t know. In his place came cars with accents, gates with QR codes, and the mechanical purr of security bots. Overnight, the dirt under my paws was no longer earth; it was real estate. I wasn’t lost. I was trespassing.
Now I watch from the margins, not as a pet, but glitch in the system. I’ve become background data for surveillance software. Still, I observe. And what I see is a world ruled not by kings or tyrants, but by a mood board with a marketing budget. They call it capitalism. I call it The Algorithm in Drag.
It doesn’t arrive on horseback. It arrives via push notification. It’s not shouted from rooftops; it’s whispered from ads that already know what shoes you like. Capitalism doesn’t ask; it suggests. It croons in app updates, winks from un-skippable pre-rolls, and seduces through curated content that somehow makes you feel poor, ugly, and behind schedule; all at once.
The air is monetized now. A girl selling bottled water yelled at me for licking a leaky one. “That’s ₹30!” she snapped, as though thirst were a lifestyle choice. Hydration, apparently, requires a subscription. Basic decency has been moved to the premium tier. Crumbs used to fall freely. Now they come with terms and conditions.
And don’t get me started on ads. There’s no such thing as "watching" anymore; only being watched while watching. Billboards talk now. They target. They whisper your name like they’ve known you since childhood, then sell you deodorant because apparently everyone else knows you stink. Even lampposts sell things now. One tried to offer me a crypto loan.
There’s a subscription for everything. Sleep? Try melatonin gummies on monthly auto-ship. Companionship? There’s an app. Sanity? Well, that’s behind a paywall too; packaged in twelve episodes and sponsored by a mattress brand. I’ve seen humans subscribe to apps that help them unsubscribe from other apps. That’s not convenience. That’s Stockholm Syndrome with a user interface.
And the people? Oh, they think they’re winning. They walk faster, talk louder, scroll harder. They’ve got earbuds in and common sense out. They measure success in likes, square footage, and number of smart devices in a room too silent to hold a conversation. I saw a man step over another man bleeding on the sidewalk; he was late for a mindfulness seminar.
A child once cried not from hunger, but because she couldn’t afford the dog-shaped toy of a dog-shaped influencer who, spoiler alert, is also not a real dog. I would’ve offered to bark for her, but I wasn’t housebroken enough for her demographic.
And yet the machine remains so... polite. Sterile. Branded in soothing pastels. It calls you a “user” with a straight face. It replaces trees with benches made from guilt-tripped recycling. They’ve paved my field to make room for guiltless electric cars that beep apologies while running over sparrows.
Still, I roam. Unowned, unfollowed, and worse; unnoticed. I see how value’s been gutted and repackaged, how people wear exhaustion like status and call it ambition. Everything is branded; even grief now comes with a ribbon and a GoFundMe link. They're not living anymore. They're just optimizing death one data point at a time.
Capitalism doesn’t enslave with chains; that would be too obvious, too crude. No, it wraps the leash in choice, lets you pick the colour. It calls you “empowered” while it drains your marrow through monthly fees. And the sickest part? People thank it. They cheer for their cages because the bars come with Bluetooth.
Sometimes I catch the reflection of a man in the glass, staring down at me like I’m the one who’s fallen. But I see him; jittery, caffeinated, sleep-deprived, so plugged in he’s hollow. He thinks I’m broken. But I sleep without alarms. I hunger without shame. I ache without analytics. Tell me again: who’s free?
Tonight, I curl up beneath a shuttered ATM, beside a trash bin locked with a password. The city glows in a million ads no one asked for, selling dreams nobody dreamed. Above me, the sky flickers; not with stars, but with coverage plans and cashback deals.
And yet… I remember the boy. The mud, the river, the silence that didn’t ask for anything. The kind of silence you can’t stream. I remember what it felt like to matter without being measured.
I don’t want back in.
Let them keep their apps and air-purified tombs. Let them chase relevance until it kills them. I’ll stay here, ribs showing, teeth yellowed, free in a way they’ll never afford.
And if they see me and call me stray; so, be it.
At least no one owns my story.
At least I’m not for sale.
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