WHEN A DOG DIES !
The other day we heard the sad news
that 'Action ' was no more . He was
a Labrador and belonged to my
younger brother's family and we too shared a strong bond with him. There was
natural gloom in his Home; no one had expected 'Action' to pass away so soon ;
he was only ten , was active and died of a probable kidney failure.
My brother had named him 'Action' to always remind him of
the profession that he was in ; always 'calling the shots' that of a film
Director! It were difficult times for him when he had acquired the Dog; he had
no projects in hand , his last film had not done well, however 'Action '
kept him and the family happy, my niece
would tie 'Rakhi' to him. Slowly things improved for him and he became
an established and an Award winning Director. Well !'Action' joined 'Cloudy' at
home; the she dog; a mix of Lab and our Indian variety. Both clicked; and were
soul mates; I am told that for many days 'Cloudy' kept searching for him in the
house unable to comprehend the tragedy. 'Action ' grew into a handsome dog; but
'Cloudy ' was the mistress of the house being senior and more sensible, even
though ordinary looking .'Action' was a voracious eater and invariably ate
'Cloudy's' food too as she was frugal in her eating habits. He was 'unruly' and
often chewed shoes and sometimes 'mobile' phones too !
Once he munched away my 'Rudraksha'
mala which I had kept on the side table at night, out of the standard
108 beads only 26 remained, the rest he had swallowed ! In order to civilize 'Action' one day my 'Sister –In- Law'
called for the dog trainer, but soon after watching his 'corporal' methods politely told him to cease his training programme ; she was
happy to have 'Action' as he was ,rather than make him go through the torturous routine. Ironically 'Action' belonged to an
'intelligent' family; his Father could count numbers.
My brother , his
wife and daughter are genuine dog lovers and in his initial struggling days he
had brought home a 'Spitz' who had a
lease tied to him and was abandoned at night on the street , he had problem in
one aft leg and would walk with a limp. He was named 'Santana' by my brother,
after the famous lead guitarist Carlo Santana ( my brother is also a good
guitarist! ). As boys we had gone gaga over his famous song' Black magic woman'
. 'Santana' was small but courageous and would leap at the sight of big dogs,
he was of indifferent temperament too , may be because of being ill treated as
a puppy ! he had bitten at least once all my brother's friends, it was believed among his struggling friends that 'Santana' brought
luck with his 'bite'! These days he has in his office another smart street she dog 'Saiba' who remains glued near to his
chair most of the time and does not allow any stranger near him. An
acknowledgement to the 'emotional happiness' provided by these dogs appears at
the start of his films.
My take on Dogs is that
they leave behind abundance of
emotion in the form of memories, unlike humans; in their death the family
unites for they leave no disputes, no land , no material wealth which
cracks the families apart. The lesson
they impart by their 'all giving'
conduct may refine our grossness and may
make us more human. Another view and what once another dog lover told me is
that " only those who keep dogs
realize what others were being deprived of"'. Keeping dogs is a 'creative' experience a 'Catharsis' ; akin
to writing a 'poem' or a 'song' or 'weaving a story'.
As
a tribute to 'Action' here I reproduce a poem
written by Pablo Neruda on the death of his dog titled – ' A Dog
has Died ':
A Dog Has Died
My dog
has died.
I
buried him in the garden
next to
a rusted old machine.
Some
day I'll join him right there,
but now
he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad
manners and his cold nose,
and I,
the materialist, who never believed
in any
promised heaven in the sky
for any
human being,
I
believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I
believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where
my dog waits for my arrival
waving
his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai,
I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of
having lost a companion
who was
never servile.
His
friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding
its authority,
was the
friendship of a star, aloof,
with no
more intimacy than was called for,
with no
exaggerations:
he
never climbed all over my clothes
filling
me full of his hair or his mange,
he
never rubbed up against my knee
like
other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my
dog used to gaze at me,
paying
me the attention I need,
the
attention required
to make
a vain person like me understand
that,
being a dog, he was wasting time,
but,
with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd
keep on gazing at me
with a
look that reserved for me alone
all his
sweet and shaggy life,
always
near me, never troubling me,
and
asking nothing.
Ai, how
many times have I envied his tail
as we
walked together on the shores of the sea
in the
lonely winter of Isla Negra
where
the wintering birds filled the sky
and my
hairy dog was jumping about
full of
the voltage of the sea's movement:
my
wandering dog, sniffing away
with
his golden tail held high,
face to
face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful,
joyful, joyful,
as only
dogs know how to be happy
with
only the autonomy
of
their shameless spirit.
There
are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we
don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now
he's gone and I buried him,
and
that's all there is to it.
Source: Poetry (February
1999).
