These days, the canine population in Kerala being almost worshipped and glorified, it seems as though it is more ‘honourable’ to be born as Canis lupus familiaris (dog). This impression is conveyed to us, less-privileged Homo sapiens, going by the free run dogs seem to have in God’s Own Country. With incidents of dog attacks on humans taking on gargantuan proportions, the proverbial ‘man’s all-weather friend’ is now feared as the big cats of the wild. The situation came to a head when a 65-year-old woman was recently mauled to death by stray dogs at Thiruvananthapuram. As the standoff continues, an incident involving my youngest sister-in-law and her pet dog comes to mind.
Years back, as a newlywed, during my many ‘must-do visits’ to my wife’s house, I had to, apart from my in-laws, contend with a kenneled, lean and hungry-looking black dog (I wonder if I’m allowed to address the animal by that noun), affectionately called Blacky by the household. A diehard ‘dog hater’ that I am, I did not attempt to establish a healthy ‘working relationship’ with the animal, as I did with the rest of the household.
The loyal dog followed the members of the family to their destination, whenever they ventured out. It escorted my wife and me to the bus stop, which was located far away. I always armed myself with a stick to keep Blacky away at a safe distance, should it decide to effusively demonstrate its love for its mistress and her recently acquired (and nervous) husband. It used to leave us only after we boarded the bus.
One evening, my wife’s youngest sister, now an enterprising businesswoman in Kochi, returned from college distraught and teary-eyed, giving anxious moments to the entire household; could she have been a victim of one of those ‘love bites’ in college? It turned out that Blacky had, habitually, followed her right into her classroom that closely resembled a ‘Mary had a little lamb’-like situation resulting in quite a furore. My sister-in-law soon was at the wrong end of jeers and leg-pulling from her classmates. From that day onwards, the victim of the dog’s loyalty chose to scale the compound wall, than use the gate, to escape its loyalty, whenever she ventured out.
Noticing his sister’s unique predicament, and the adventurism she had to adopt to escape a ‘mere’ dog’s loyalty, my brother-in-law bundled up the canine in the boot of his car (something that would have resulted in him counting the bars of some remote prison were it these days), to let it loose in far away Kochi. My sister-in-law still gives a start whenever she happens to see a black dog on the streets.
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