Eulogy to Quasi-Stray Dogs
It is said the law of nature is fierce. It shows no mercy. It's said the law of culture is kind. It is full of mercy. However, no one comments on the in-betweenness of the two states. The state where one is neither entirely in the state of nature nor entirely inside the ambit of culture is a battleground of absurd.
Five dogs were birthed in the neighborhood about a month back. The younglings were found in the semi-strayness near the hospital compound where some of us went to serve them milk. Yapping the bowl clean the five cubs were a picture to look at. Silent and shy they sat under hospital vans where their mother visited them every few hours replenished with natural offerings of her own milk. An Uncle took liking to them and brought them home for his youngling to play with. The cubs became the center of attraction, the locus of communising for the initial few days. Residenced at Uncle’s house, with a blanket and rug for bed they slept peacefully under the stellar sky. Everyone dished them with offerings of milk that supplemented with their mum’s affections. And like this, the cubs grew. A month passed and they started getting smelly. A wash they were given by an affectionate Woman in the neighborhood. With soaps and shampoos, the dogs were rinsed clean, and love downpoured from everyone in the compound as they bestowed them in their cultured avatar.
The winters had come and with it the nightly chill. One fine morning we find that a cardboard house has been erected. The Woman who gave them the wash is inquired. She denies taking part in the construction. The Uncle is asked, but everyone knew the answer was going to be non-affirmative. Then after a few days of musing the Robinhood is discovered. It was a generous Nurse who had seen the cubs shivering as she was coming back post her night shift. The tale had set smiling the onlookers and gave the dogs a nice comfortable residency. The culture of love had become stronger.
Everyone looked twice before unparking their cars. Previous caninal births had been subject to accidental deaths. And it was pursued that this time it would be naught. Instead this time a culture of fondness was incrementally being established by one and by all. However the Uncle, one fine noon decides the culture of cleanliness is necessary. Fun and fondling should be but why disclaim the virtue of cleanliness and nice-smelliness?
The cardboard-ville is relocated under a tree right opposite their previous address. The distance is about ten paws away from earlier residency. The cubs adjust to new clime. They play with compound kids as they try to fit them inside their villa chanting that they are naughty. ‘They just don’t stay inside the house,’ the kids chime, quite emulating their own mother’s nagging discord directed towards them. In this play of quarantine-ing the cubs, the house falls.
The winter had lightened. The dogs were left to their devices in this state of ‘lack-homedom’. But the culture of dependence had made a headway. The she-mother-dog no longer came as steadily as she used to. The cubs were fed often but to the capriciousness of their feeders. The affection existed but one could note connotations of decline. The Woman fed them regularly but again these dogs are not pets howsoever much they could be loved. But neither are they stray. When the dogs were brought home by the Uncle, it was argued whether its the right to do. If their strayness and occasional human kindness should not be normativized over getting them home, creating dependency without having to adopt. The argument prevailed in a small circle but giving the fondness for dogs, the argument de-cultured.
A new brick house construction by mason-boys of ages six and seven took place. With brick walls and thatched cardboard ceiling and blanketed floors, the new dwelling was adjacent under the peripheral shadow of the same tree. The cubs slept in it merrily and were frequented with monkey visitors. The young cubs, valorous as they were sparred with monkey tribals regularly and also sometimes interacted with similarly aged monkeylings who curiously sometimes fell onto their ceiling from their branch-dwelling atop the tree.
Of these five cubs, one was a growler. He strode around alone and explored nature on his own unaccompanied. When given food, he was the first to rouse and quite naturally had the largest fill. He was seen as the elder big brother of the bunch. He was found wrestling others and one could perceive as though he was training them. He was the first to have his teeth grown. And he was also the first to issue his soft funny growls. Being the healthiest and the lonewolf he was loved somewhat lesser as he ate more, as he growled more. He was dubbed by the community a little Aurangzeb to be. However, he too was sought everyday for dinner giving. Although the cultured principle of equality required a little coerciveness to prevent him from dwallowing everyone else’s fill.
Fed on laddoos and fishes, the cubs had been semipart family members to many. However not quite immigrated into familial housedom of their lovers. It was a distant relationship. But a good one.
Days passed and on a hazy evening ‘Aurangzeb’ was found crookedly lying on wet mud bathed in debris. The spreadeagle dog caught attention for it was odd to prod him and not hear his growls. The growler was sleeping and that struck oddly with the evening walkers.
It was chorused the dog is dead, but some people tried Compression to resuscitate. The efforts seemed to revitalize the dog for he growled a few times. The walker persisted with his Compression despite the chorus of the proclaimed deathness of the dog that was apparent. But a question dangled why people did not try just as frantically to resuscitate him when he laid there. Why suddenly the law of nature finalized the question of his battle with existence when still he laid there gasping slowly, unconsciously in that liminal zone of in-betweenness?
Nextday a Confederacy of Concerned met and decided to make a Hobbithole for the dogs to shack. The community of young masons jostled and amassed bricks. Raw materials from away places were begot. The deepest recesses of hospital stores were excavated to mine out a sizeable cardboard. When all material was assembled and pep talk dispensed and liveliness for constructive work enthused, the construction commenced. After an hour’s work, a house in sedentary sense was bricked together.
Surrounding the cardboard were brick walls to insulate from the chill. The floors were lined with jute gunny bags and a blanket. It was not a castle the like of ones shown on Disney, but it was a fuzzy hole of semi-strayness where a Hobbit could comfortably inhabit and call it home.
And so it became. The dog residents got so comfortable inside that they chose not to venture outside. Aside their home was a prasaad-bowl into whom was tabled their daily sustenance of chappatis, milk and chicken. The furry heroes had a nice sleep in their new lair. Their mother as a mandir Yakshini kept guard to this temple that enshrined Doglings. Kids provided them with entertainment with their many games organised in their honour. And them- the dogs, as renunciant ascetics entombed in a temple gazed outwardly at the performants with nonchalance.
The Law of Nature materialized in her untamed avatar and summoned her sister Law-du-Culture who arrived in her pomp garb. Former questioned the necessity for this miscellaneous ostentation in which her doglings were kept. Latter replied that ‘her kids’ had given what they perceive as ‘the right thing to do’.
Nature challenged Madame-Culture into questions. She asked can depriving habitat be compensated by providing a shack? Can really training by She-Dog be replaced from charities of accultured folks? Can the temple in which they resided provide mites and cockroaches and ants onto which the dogs could gnaw and snack?’
Madame-Culture shocked and surprised at the askance replied, ‘it is but in the act of kindness onto which this ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ has been brick by brick, little by little created. If not for this support and dispassionate love with which her sons and daughters helped each other, their weakness would have consumed them. And it was from this pond of empathy, her kids had done what they had done’, she concluded monotonically and looked out awaiting her newly refashioned chariot.
Nature was to be satiated not. And the volley of argumentation continued on. Both stood their grounds determined to quash the ‘Other’. The skies roared and the sun sank. The copper hue of dusk made way into the night of stars. For three days and two nights the battle persisted when finally on the dawn of the third day a settlement was brokered. It was decided that a cultured game of dice would be played on nature’s rules.
The rules were simple: if temple dwelling stayed, the dogs would ‘remain’; but if the dogs came out and showed instincts of natural affinity they will be merged into an untrammeled, non-home, natural state of being. And so the two decided to chair and spectate the four dogs.
She-Dog poked into the thatch and grabbed her younglings out. Having missed the licks of her cubs she had missed them most passionately. Wanting some time with them she took them out on an expedition. Reluctantly out of their home-comfort, the four cubs accompanied their mother. But after an early spate of hesitance, the charm of training grew. And they spent an entire day under the sun learning the dog-ly arts.
That night they returned not to their lairs and the Confederacy of Concerned along with the Woman wondered where the dogs had gone. The Woman expressed her joy in hearing from neighbors about the ‘mother-child communion’.
Madame du Culture shook her head, Nature gave an uproarious laugh. Former had been ‘diced’ into disfavor. She tried to express the possibility of Concorde but Nature reminded the rules. Culture tried an abridgment in rules but to no avail. The rules were to be of Nature’s inclination. And nature has no rules, ‘it’s caprice materialised,’ roared Nature. And so witnessed Madame Culture in horror her defeat…
The cubs moved seven paws away from their home and under the clear azure sky embraced each other in an animalistic embrace of dearness. With soft purs issuing and soundless growls animating, they laid under the soft winter sun absorbing the light. Watching the world from their belladonna black eyes they scanned from their place of rest their many homes and many banishments. And finally, when no one looked, they closed their eyes and moved no more.
‘What happened to them,’ people ask. Alas, one wonders what might be the answer.
