Here I was, desperate. Just back from a stint abroad, I just discovered that the bottom had fallen off my life and feet. An incredible twist in the script of life suddenly found me rootless and roofless. I was ensconced in a hotel, with just enough to board and lodge for a few days. My house gate, I found locked. My bank deposits, I realized were wiped out. My books, clothes, savings, vehicle, home, the works, everything was gone. I needed to start all over again, rebuilding life, alone. The hows and whys of the calamity, despite my best efforts to comprehend, stayed as mysterious as the timing and urgency of the desertion and short notice eviction (mine) and evacuation (theirs). 

From a being much loved husband and father to being labeled ‘persona non grata’ was too much to bear. Broke financially, broken mentally, I was now confronted with this inhuman diktat. Move your dogs off or the vet has been asked to put them to sleep.

Move my dogs where? I myself was on dole, in doldrums and unable to come to terms with my new isolated and marooned situation. I frantically rang up a few friends. No, no one wanted two grown up dogs: both grand but both vicious. Trained to attack, on command. One, a dachshund, was featured in a Animal Planet Cable TV episode, and the other, well, he was class. Just a year old, a Rajapalayam, he was already a star, with his pics appearing in more than one newspaper. In the two days since I had returned, I hadn’t even seen them. All I heard was their mournful howls, as I stood at the gate pleading for justice and time. 

Tears smarted my eyelids, and I silently sobbed. It was one in the afternoon already. I knew the folks meant what they said. There was a chilling sinister tone to the message. The dogs would die. If they could inter me, one of their own, alive, they could do anything to the own dogs.

I finally managed to contact a friend of mine based in Coorg, around 125 kms off. Yes, he would drive down. Right away. And yes, he’d heard. He was as mystified as anyone else on the tragic events in my life in the past forty-eight hours. His mother came on the line, and astounded me with her plea: you can move in here too, along with your dogs. We have enough place to care for all. Why stay in that hotel? Come here right away doc.

A few local calls and messages goose-berried back and forth and someone drove to a pre-arranged venue, dropping the two dogs unceremoniously on the pavement I stood waiting The dogs leapt with joy, and for a full ten minutes, I just stood and waited for their adrenaline to simmer. It was quite awhile since they’d seen me, and they went berserk with joy.

Now the inhuman part. Parting. I gently slipped two steel choke collars to control them: no one in their senses could drive two bubbly and ferocious dogs for three hours without restraint being put on their mobility. The dogs look at me, hey? What’s up? Why are we being fettered? They had never been restrained or restricted. They never had reason to be. Absolutely obedient: obeying every whim or order without the slightest gesture of dissent. I’ve had visitors drop in, strangers sometimes, just to watch the dogs and their wide repertoire of ‘tricks’. You never chain them? Not even that Rajapalayam? It is quite a sight to see that hound loping and leaping, free of reins. Yes indeed, you should see y2k bounding over walls, potted plants and furniture in sheer joy, like a white star, his whip like long tail streaming like a comet behind him as he galloped round and round, tirelessly in euphoria – sheer poetry.

The dachs leapt into the car, wagging his tail furiously. He sat there waiting for me to sidle in, but I shut the door. He looked perplexed. The hound, was on hi alert. His windmill like tail froze and stood like an antenna. He knew something was wrong. The driver yanked the chain from within the car, but the dog stood firm. The tug strength increased and I could see the choke chain biting into the dog’s tender neck, a neck which to date had been bare and collarless. It took three of us to bundle the dog in, as it writhed and wrestled. His forelegs and hind-legs were trussed to prevent him from leaping out. The dog looked terror stricken. The eyes turned bloodshot as it struggled against the hands that pinned him down to the back seat. The car door was quickly shut. I saw y2k through the tinted glass. Defeated. Dejected. Done. 

How pitiless man is? 

The dog just gave up, turned its head away from me. The car moved off. They were given away, for adoption to new homes. I wept loud and long in the open. Why must the trusting animals pay the price for trusting us? Man’s best friend? Not anyone who saw that heart wrenching sight that evening, as the dog pleaded no, no, please – will ever say man is a dog’s best friend. I hated the world. Human we are, yes, but humane? Are we? Am I?

In three months, Grumpy, the dachs who was my alter ego for fourteen years died in Coorg. Y2K, is still around, I hear. Running free and fast through the coffee shrubs chasing black napped hares. I saw his pic in the press last year. Best Dog in a show. But deep inside him, I know, he harbors a question. Why? Why? Why? Someday, he hopes, he will find the answers: someday, I hope I will find the answers.

The sight of a proud Rajapalayam, trussed and bundled, like a lamb to slaughter, still wakes me up as nightmare. I read somewhere that when God divided the earth and its creations into plant and other kingdoms, he created a deep gorge, one side which he placed man and on the other, all the animals on the earth. Just before he dug the trench to a wide chasm he asked all the animals if anyone of them had regrets. Were they happy to be cut off from man? All the animals nodded, yes, we are happy and will be so, with our kind. Except the dog. It looked on tense as God continued deepening and widening the gorge – then, all of a sudden, the dog decides – no, I want to be on the other side, with man - and leaps across the divide to throw in his lot and fate with man and his ilk.

Since then, the tale says, the fate and lot of man and dog have been inseparably intertwined. 

I wonder sometimes whether the animal would have been better off on the other side of the divide. With his kind. Where there is no place for tears or emotions.

As I write this eulogy, an epitaph for my family friends – I want them to know I am sorry, I had no choice. It was them alive and sent away, or them dead and buried here. There is much difference between a dog standing alive on its four feet, than a dog lying dead under four feet.

Besides, there is a special significance to this write-up. Four years ago, around this time – I saw the car pull away with Grumpy and y2k, leaving me all alone on a pavement. Desolate. Desperate. Deserted.

I am recovered now. Better positioned, mentally and financially. I could get y2k back. But I will not. No, I can’t face that dog again. I hear he is doted on, and he is deliriously happy in his new home. Let him remain so. Only, one day, I hope to see where the dachs, Grumps lies buried. Far away from his home, a place we both loved. Till then, I will have to live with my personal nightmares. 

(The article originally appeared on www.sulekha.com).

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