Now listen up, young feller, and listen well. Tomorrow those kind people who came to see about a puppy are going to take you home. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know … I’ve done it all: I’ve lived on the street and I’ve been part of a human pack. And now, here I am in the Welfare of Stray Dogs Kennel. It’s a decent place – the food is regular, the folk are loving. Some nice people come and take me for walks. They feel good and it’s nice to get out once in a while and see the sights. There’s lots of company, warm snoozes in the sun on a winter day and in the cool shade in the summer.

When you’re an old hound dog, that’s more than enough. Sixteen times I’ve watched the sonchafa carpet the streets with gold. It’s good to sleep for as long as I want.

So you’re joining a new pack tomorrow. You’re going to a “forever home”, as they say. I wish I could give you some advice about humans but from what I’ve discovered, they …

No, perhaps I should just tell you what happened to me and you can make up your mind.

My first real memory isn’t of my mother or my brothers and sisters. I must have had a mother – we all do – and siblings, since we rarely come alone. So, there must have been a mother … but time is short and my story is long, so I’ll cut to the chase.

Two little boys. They seemed friendly. I was happy to play with them and they seemed happy to play with me. We like people. It is our strength. And our weakness. They had a ball and I wanted to play with it. The ball flew down the road, and I ran after it and brought it back. The boys laughed and threw it again. I ran after it again and they ran after me. An hour later, I was hungry and tired and thirsty. And the boys took their ball and left.

I looked around. I had no idea where I was. I had run and run and run and I had not looked where I was going because I was having fun and following the ball.

You will say: Why didn’t you use your nose?

I did. I turned on my own smell and tried to follow it back. I finally came to the place where I had left the others, but they were gone. Perhaps the dog van had come there and picked them up. Perhaps the dog van had come and they had run away. I don’t know what happened but there I was, alone, and it was getting dark.

I wandered around until I came to a row of huts. A little girl was washing the dishes from the evening meal. She saw me and raised her arm. For a moment, I thought she was trying to drive me away but then some food flew through the air. It was not much but I ate it … so fast that she giggled and scraped some more food together and threw it at me. I went and settled down at her feet. Later, she came out with a bowl of water and I drank it and went to sleep outside her hut.

But the next day the municipality came and began to break down the huts. The girl was running around, trying to gather her things, wrap them up and take them away.

An hour later there was nothing left.

This is the thing about people. They need houses to live. We don’t. You are going to live in a house with your forever people. But it may not be your forever house. People move all the time. Sometimes they go to another, bigger house. And sometimes to a smaller house. Sometimes they go to another city. That’s because they have this thing called money. I think it’s like food. Or maybe a promise of food. Or something. If you ever figure out what money is, you must tell me. I still don’t understand it but it’s very important to human beings.

I was sitting there, looking around at the rubble when the television cameras arrived. One of the journalists was a young man who was fond of dogs.

“Poor mutt,” he said when he saw me. “Have they abandoned you?” He picked me up and offered me a biscuit. Now I don’t really like biscuits but I ate it to be polite and so he took me home. But his parents were not happy.

“Will you bring home every waif and stray you meet on the road?” his mother asked.

“I don’t understand you at all,” said his father.

“Only for a few days, until we find a foster home for him,” he said and took me to his room. There was a cat on his bed. She had only one eye; I tried to be friends but she almost scratched my nose. There was a turtle under the bed but every time I went to sniff it, it withdrew into its shell.

I found a quiet spot under his bed and went to sleep. The next morning the journalist forgot about me and left for work. I needed to pee pretty desperately, so I found a suitable tree trunk. It was a bit thin but all the tree trunks there seemed thin.

“Oh! Look what this stupid dog has done!” the old lady shouted.

“Give me that puppy,” said the old man as he advanced on me. I could see he was angry, so I ran for the door. He opened it and I dashed out on to the road. I was free again.

I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed. What would have happened if I had been taken for a walk in the morning and had done my business beside a real tree. I suppose I would have become a house dog. There is nothing wrong with being a house dog. It’s just that they have a different life. They only go out when they are allowed to and when the human being they live with wants to go home, they must go home too.

But I didn’t stay.

I wandered around for a bit and found a park. I thought I might sleep under a bench there. Only, two dogs came up and began to snarl at me. I rolled over and showed them my belly. They sniffed me all over and then left me alone. Later in the day, a nice lady came along and fed the dogs.

“You’re a new one here,” she said. She found a small bowl and put it out for me.

I have always relied on the kindness of strangers and for the next year or so I lived at the park. It was a good place. When the ticks began to worry us, we simply sat down in the red mud. There was cool grass for the hot afternoons. The nights, when the humans all went home, belonged to us. The two older dogs in the park taught me everything I know. One of them didn’t like boys much. He had been hurt by a boy. But the other one said, “You can’t judge all boys by one boy. You can’t judge all human beings by one human being.” I thought this made sense. You can’t judge all dogs by one dog either.

But that is generally what human beings do. A little boy came to the park and began to trouble a dog. He pulled his ears. He pulled his tail. He kicked him. The dog snapped at him. He only meant to warn him: Stop that! But he got too close and his teeth nicked the boy. The boy ran back to his mother, screaming.

I wanted to tell everyone: He started it. But if you bark, human beings think you’re trying to frighten them. Later, the dog van came. The woman must have gone to the police station. We hate the van. It smells of fear. It smells of death.

We ran, the three of us, all in different directions.

I ran and ran and ran until I was near the sea. The dog catchers had given up by then. I spent the night by the sea. In the morning, I thought about going back, but I decided I couldn’t. It was time to leave the park. It was time to move on.

I ran for a while and then walked for a while until I came to a spot that looked nice. It was near a market. But there was already a dog there who thought that was his area. He came up and barked. I considered rolling over but suddenly I didn’t want to. It’s different when you’re a puppy; it’s different when you’re a fully grown dog.

We fought. It was quick and at the end of it, I was bleeding a little but I was the winner. I found a good patch near the market. I should have driven the other fellow away but I couldn’t.

“We’ll share,” I said.

He was surprised but quite happy not to have to find another place. He rolled over on to his back to show he trusted me and I gave him a good sniffing so I should know him later. He might have been here with me if a stupid human in a car had not decided to feed the dogs in the middle of the road. I was tempted to go and eat but I’d had a good meal that evening so I didn’t bother to run into the street. The other dog did and got run over by another car. Don’t look sad. Life isn’t life if death isn’t death. No, I’m not going to explain what I mean. One day, if you remember these words, you’ll figure out what I mean. And if you forget the words, their meaning won’t bother you, right?

Okay, so where was I? Yes … human beings are like that. Some of them are stupid. You see a human mother with her child. The child is hurting a dog. You’d think she would stop the child, but she doesn’t. Yet, when the dog tries to stop it, she gets angry. That is stupid.

Some are cruel. There are two kinds of cruel. There’s the cruel that gives pain to find pleasure. Humans know so much about dogs that they have invented a dog whistle which only we can hear because our hearing is so much better than theirs. Now, when they know that our hearing is so good, why would they let off loud crackers during their festivals? Even many people who love dogs will do this, without thinking about it.

Then there’s the cruel that is unthinking. You be very careful about what you eat. Stay away from the chicken bones humans throw out so casually. I have lost a good friend to a chicken bone. It broke on the way down and got stuck in his throat. There was nothing we could do for him. A group of Jain nuns was passing by. They stopped and sat down by his side and began to chant to him. Slowly his pain seemed to pass and he died quietly there, in the middle of all of them. Then the nuns got up and went on their way, quiet, gentle women who would stop for a dog. So you see, there are good people, and there are bad people.

Most of the people who hate dogs –

You’re looking surprised. Yes, there are people who hate dogs. You’re a puppy now, so you haven’t met too many people. But they are out there.

Most of the people who hate dogs actually fear them.

Human beings think they have many different emotions. They think hate and fear are separate things but they are one and the same. Humans want us to frighten them, to evoke fear in them. You’re looking like this doesn’t make sense. You see, many, many thousands of years ago when men and dogs first became friends, we used to guard their flocks. The wolf and the fox were our brothers, our wild brothers, but we showed our loyalty to our human friends. We would bark in the night to warn them when the wolf and the fox came to steal their sheep and goats, or when other humans came to steal their possessions. We still think it is our duty to warn them but now they shout at us for barking in the night.

We bark this way because our masters wanted us to bark. They wanted us to frighten others away. Human thieves. We bark to strike fear into their hearts. That fear is still in them somewhere. They fear us for our fearlessness. They fear our teeth.

You have only to look into the mouth of a human to see what fire did to their teeth. When they learnt how to cook, they made their food soft. Now thousands of years later, they cook almost everything they eat. They do not need their teeth to rip and tear. They still have teeth that they call canines. But it would make you laugh to think of these as anything close to what we have.

When a human looks into a dog’s mouth, there is a moment of fear. Many explain it away, but for some, fear and hate are the twin fruits of the sour soul tree. Or you could say, fear is the bud and the flower; hate is the fruit.

They fear us but they cannot admit it to themselves. And so they hate instead.

A street dog is never going to bite a human “just because”. There is always a reason. Only, humans never look for reasons. They only look for revenge.

This is what humans are. Most of them. But there are others too. Like the one who picked me up when I broke my leg and carried me here to the kennel and came to visit me after I was healed. He still comes to take me for walks. He can’t take me home because his wife is allergic to dog hair. And so I learnt that just as all dogs are not one dog, nor are all humans one human. But the dog’s way is the way of the sun. It is the way of light. A dog looks for the best in another, in another dog, in another human being, even in a cat. They’ve come for you, your new people. Go with them.

Be a friend. They don’t ask for much more than that and for us, friendship and loyalty are easy. Keep your tail up, your ears pricked, and make sure your nose is wet. Good luck.

An excerpt from ‘The Way of Sunlight’ by Jerry Pinto in The Book of Dog, edited by Hemali Sodhi, HarperCollins India.

📰 Crime Today News is proudly sponsored by DRYFRUIT & CO – A Brand by eFabby Global LLC

Design & Developed by Yes Mom Hosting