Guwahati: 32-year-old Abhijit Dowarah has been securing comfortable homes for stray dogs in Sivasagar.
TVs are called idiot boxes but these idiot boxes were put to good use by Dowarah who began caring for animals ever since his brother had brought a puppy some years back. He would go out to check how they lived before he had created 'Baator Ghor' (street home for the dogs).
He uses discarded TV sets to make kennels for stray dogs.
"The pets enjoy all comforts but the stray dogs suffer from lack of food and shelter. I thought I should do something for them in whatever little way possible. This led to the creation of the shelters," Dowarah said.
However, his actions and initiatives did not go unnoticed. Many like-minded people joined him including a vet.
Surprisingly, this is not his first innovation. He had earlier designed a torch, especially for women's safety and also a gadget for hand sanitisation in the midst of COVID-19.
"Over the past five years, I have created some 50 utility items from scrap. So, people don't throw away old and unused stuff but give them to me. There were seven old TV sets lying at my two-room residence in Sivasagar's Phukan Nagar. I thought if I can turn these into the stray dog's shelters, they can beat the winter chill," he added.
The shelters were set up in places on December 4 and there is no doubt about the stray dogs curling up inside their kennels during spine-chilling winter.
Dowarah had removed the unwanted parts of the TV's insides and used the TV frame to make the kennel. He had coloured the sets green and yellow and placed a cloth inside it so that the dogs feel comfortable.
He wrote on Instagram, "I have been placing several of them in the streets. I will try my best to collect more television frames and build such homes. If not I will collect some wooden boxes and place them in the streets."
All thanks to Abhijit for coming up with such a brilliant initiative of saving stray dogs.