Dog-matic

I am not sure if I love dogs, but I can’t stop noticing them. I live in a city that is full of dogs. My locality has a plenty of them. Each one of them carries its unique identity. As a kid I always used to wonder why all dogs look the same. But as I started to “mature” I could easily differentiate them. If you perform a DNA analysis on them you will solicit my views – just kidding, it’s not that difficult. Having said that, this one is not about how to identify or distinguish dogs, but it’s about my brushes with them. To make things more interesting I will break this one into episodes – however, unlike Love, Sex aur Dhoka, the stories do not intersect each other. The inspiration of breaking it into chapters didn’t come from Inglorious Bastards, and definitely not from Radio.

Chapter 1 – The dog bite
Imagine a 3 years young kid, playing in the verandah with the main gate open, and a local friendly dog called Sheru coming straight towards him. Sheru just wanted to be friends with that kid because the kid used to offer him leftovers. No prizes for guessing that kid was me. I was terrified, and started screaming. Khurshid bhaiya came to my “rescue”. Given my reputation I later realized that he came to rescue Sheru.

Chapter 2 – Smiles all around
Next time you see a dog, notice him (it) closely. You will always find it smiling. It will keep its mouth open, tongue out and will welcome you with a huge 18 inches smile. I always do. Whenever I am down, and nobody’s around me, and if I get chance to witness this phenomena I feel relaxed. Try that, it’s not so bad, you feel good anyways. I have had the opportunity to visit European countries a couple of times. What a place to be, full of natural beauty. You’ll notice that everybody smiles at you, and they will keep saying sorry without rhyme or reason. Strangely enough, it reminds me of dogs. I am bad I know.

Chapter 3 – This one needs pampering
Munirka, New Delhi
December 2004
It’s the very well known Dilli ki sardi afternoon, and I am enjoying carom with Pankaj, my landlady’s scheming son, and his nephew. The landlady’s dog is circling around trying to bite his tail. The scheming son often comes to me with new and amazing ideas to make money – he was once just short of suggesting to kidnap somebody – never mind, I gel around well with all types. Pankaj as usual, is fiddling around with the dog, trying to talk to him. Yes, he said bow-wow a couple of times too. The nephew hasn’t shown me enough traits to find a mention here, but the dog was a very curious one. It came to me, pretty close, and was about to lay his jaw on my lap. As usual I screamed, not as much as in the first chapter, but I did.

Pankaj then made me realize that the dog liked me, and that it “loved” me too. I was listening; he said you should have pampered him. I said wow-bow.

Chapter 4 – The superhero of DDA flats
I love Delhi, that’s why I keep going back there. The last time, when I was there I decided to stay in DDA flats, Dwarka. It was a nice little gated community where kids used to play freely in the parks, and sometimes in my flat too. I love kids, so I was pleased. My neighbor had a dog, a rare breed I would say because I never saw such a dog. It looked like as if it drunk Complan a little bit too much when it was a kid. The reason is that its face was like the famous “Hutch” dog, but his height was like of German shepherd. Quite weird, yes it is. Either it didn’t like me, or it smiled that way! This guy used to run within the campus all the time- just like that. He used to sit as if it was not only guarding the community but the planet Earth too. It was like a superhero with a cape at the back. Just imagine – two front legs upright on ground and sitting on back legs, head held high and moving on all directions. I once went behind it to check if it wore a cape too!

Chapter 5 – Humans are crazy
This morning when I was driving to office, I was disturbed to see a huge road rolling and pasting machine blocking my way. I was about to get frustrated when I saw this dog, it was gazing in amaze, with those big and beautiful eyes at the man made beast from top to bottom. I am sure, he must have thought, these humans are crazy!

Chapter 6 – I don’t want a ride
This lot is special, they will lie on the street and they don’t care a damn. You can’t just honk them out; you will have to take a diversion. It happens a lot of times when you are driving and particularly in narrow lanes. They are representatives of the driving license department. They speak out loud with their silence that if you think you deserve the license that you carry just play this curve ball. I used to wonder why my driving has improved!