'Paws' Is Shourya Malhotra’s Ode To The Canine Companions That Change Our Lives

Last year, less than a week after I joined Homegrown as a writer, I buried my dog, Taco, in a quiet corner of my mother’s garden in the house where I grew up. For almost ten years, this house had been Taco’s territory, and he guarded it with all his might. He was a small dog with a massive personality; he was a pug. An overlong tongue and a prominent underbite had made his bark rather unusual: unlike the usual "woof" of most dogs, his barks sounded like "hubba-hubba”. From 2015, when I brought him home as an adult, until 2024, when he died in my arms on a Friday morning, this was the sound that echoed through my home and apartment for almost a decade. During this time, this small dog stood by me — and sometimes sat on me — through thick and thin. He never wore a collar and responded to a myriad of names: 'Taco', 'Hubba-Hubba', 'The Little Shit', and my favourite, 'Pug-la', which sounds like ‘pagla’, the Bengali word for ‘mad’. This mad little dog loved me, and I loved him. I love him still.

Last week, as I listened to lawyer-turned-singer-songwriter Shourya Malhotra’s new single, ‘Paws’, I was reminded of all the reasons dogs hold such a special place in our lives. They have a more-than-human way of transforming our lives through unconditional love, loyalty, and the strange, steady work of companionship. Shot at a dog shelter in New Delhi in collaboration with Fur Ball Story, the music video is a tender, moving portrait of dogs who come into our lives unexpectedly and change them forever. Shourya sings: Two hearts, two tails / Two round parades / My peace resides / In life spent with you.

It’s also a reminder of how we are all connected, even though we may not always realise it. It’s like James Baldwin said: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” Like books, films, and music — the arts — are reminders of how profoundly universal our experiences of love and loss are. Like Shourya and his dogs, my life, too, was transformed by Taco’s presence.

In another life, in another time, actor Pedro Pascal went through a similar experience. In an interview with Karen Valby for the July/August 2025 Issue of Vanity Fair, he spoke about his pit-bull-mix rescue, Gretta. Pascal found Gretta six months after his mother’s death, when he agreed to foster a puppy as a favour to a friend. On the very first night, the dog scrambled into bed beside him and made it her own. Through the thin apartment walls, Pascal could hear his neighbours watching the 1998 indie film ‘High Art’ — a scene where Ally Sheedy’s character unravels over her lover’s drug overdose. As grief echoed through the room and the dog’s warmth pressed against his side, Pascal realised he was going to keep her. He named her after the German heroin addict played by Patricia Clarkson.

In the Vanity Fair interview, Pascal referred to this period of his life as his “give up” years, when he was a struggling actor in New York, devastated by his mother’s death and the absence of meaningful work. At night, he’d return from whatever restaurant or bar job he hadn’t yet been fired from to the apartment in Brooklyn he could barely afford. However depressing his life, Gretta would always meet him excitedly at the door. “She saved my life, that dog, because she gave me someone to go home to,” Pascal told Valby.

Gretta was with Pascal right up until his big break in Game of Thrones, when she died of old age. “I think about how poor I was when I had Gretta,” Pascal reminisced. “I think about when I had double shifts, and I couldn’t find anybody to let her out, and we were living in this shithole apartment in Red Hook, and I think about the bougie life she would be leading with me now as opposed to then, and I grieve, I really do.”

Listening to ‘Paws’ reminded me of Pascal, Gretta, Taco, and all the ways we are all connected. In 2015, I was reeling from the fallout of my parents’ separation when I found Taco. I was utterly disillusioned with the education system and decided to drop out. I lived in a ratty 2BHK in one of the oldest parts of greater Kolkata, and spent my days reading beat poetry and Japanese literature. I lived off bread, eggs, and bananas — food that took bare minimum effort to prepare — and isolated myself from friends and extended family who could not or would not understand why I was doing what I was doing. Having Taco at that time gave my life structure. I felt responsible for him in a way I hadn’t felt for anyone else ever before. I fed him, gave him baths, and took him out for walks. At night, he slept by my side and often woke me up by licking my face at 2 a.m. to make sure I was still alive. He watched me grow; from a lost, aimless teenager to a working writer and photographer; through the lockdown, and my first international award nomination to my first full-time job at Homegrown. Five days later, he passed away.

Why am I talking about this when I should be talking about a music video?

If you have ever had the privilege of loving and being loved by a dog, you already know. There is little that is promised in life, but the unconditional love and loyalty of a dog you give love to is one of them. And yet, India’s streets and shelters are crowded with reminders of the human capacity for apathy and animosity towards these beautiful creatures. As Indian authorities increasingly crack down on street dogs, ‘Paws’ is an appeal that adoption has become a necessity — and a reminder that your life will be better for it.

Watch the ‘Paws’ music video here:

Follow Shourya Malhotra here.

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