‘Why I’m Tempted to Believe in Rebirth’

March 2005, home, Jalandhar Cantt.

Flies are crowding around him. They are in his eyes and everywhere. Why doesn’t he go snap-snap at them playfully, trying to catch them in his mouth? The mean looking cat is staring at him while it cools off in the shade, why doesn’t he get up and chase it away, feeling the taste of the cat’s paw in the bargain?

I can see him clearly now. There he is lying in the freshly made clearing, a perfectly circular cleaned up area of radius 1.5 meter amidst this dense shrubbery. I am thinking, while my heart is flooding with pity and my mind is nervously imposing courage, ‘My God how is it possible?’

I walk toward him, wishing him unwell for the first time. I am thinking, ‘I hope he is feeling unwell, and having felt so has munched some juicy grass, of the one particular kind he likes, and is drowsing off in the killer sun, waiting for the puke to come, because his body is feeling cold and he gets so confused when not well, just like me. He is just like me, only more respectable.’

My mind is tossing up past memories, ‘Why doesn’t he get up and lie in the shade for a while? He is feeling confused after all isn’t he? He doesn’t know whether to lie in the shade or the sun when unwell, then how come he has made up his mind to lie in the sun today? His body is feeling colder than usual isn’t it?’ But God his body, please not this cold.

The clearing around him is a miracle. It is as much a miracle as his just lying there for all these hours when he is the very icon of ‘life’ for me.

I close in on him and catch the glimpse of that chain, the thick one bought after the wisdom gained from countless weaker ones broken by him previously, ‘God please not that chain around his neck. God please, not that choke-chain around his neck.’, My mind is refusing to make sense of it all, ‘I mean, what are the odds of his chain getting stuck in the shrubs and on top of it no one ever hearing him barking during his struggle with death, a struggle so fierce that the clearing looks like a royal gardener’s job.’

His body is lying there lifeless like a warrior’s who has just lost a bout with death. I have never seen him give up. I have never seen him let go. Tell me God, what do I make of his body that is lying so dead-still in front of me?


May 18, 2006, an alley near Ship, VT

I am walking toward the VT bus stop. I am walking through the ally. And suddenly my mind is flooding with memories of Dodge, so extraordinary a dog that he simply couldn’t do with an ordinary death. The son-of-a-bitch just had to grab the headlines even while dying. He just had to grab all the attention even while leaving despite of the fact that he never fell short of it in his reasonably blissful life. The point being that the playful bugger just couldn’t have enough of love.

As I am standing there, the trigger of this deluge of memories is sitting on his hind legs right in front of me with his tongue hanging out. He is hardly 4-6 months. He has the same sandy body with white markings on his forehead which continue to his muzzle, the same white on all four paws, and a bit of it on the tip on his tail. He has that confused expression on his face which says, ‘I am going to be a fool for the rest of my life. And I am going to love you like a maniac. I don’t care if you ever love me. I will always love you.’ I find myself say in surprise, ‘Dodge’. He doesn’t look my way. I cry out again, ‘Dodgu…’ He still doesn’t look. I try for the last time, ‘Dogde…’ He looks my way, rotating his ears like he has just heard something familiar. As I look on, a little girl emerges from one of the huts lining the road, picks him up and starts petting him. Having been tempted to reconsider a belief which has always been a source of curiosity for spiritualists, philosophers and a the reason for the immortality of a magnificent line on Pharos which inspired a whole civilization to value life more than any other wealth, I move on toward the VT bus stop, my heart carrying on stronger, now that it is infused with a sense of a distant joy.

A confession: This was one of the most difficult posts to write because I had to constantly struggle with my mind to gain access to the memories which are soaked with sorrow, the memories whose very recollection is regarded by the mind as hazardous.

Miss you Dodge