A Tale of Two Tails

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

There is a peculiar arrangement in my neighbour’s home that everyone there calls dog ownership. They believe they own a dog. The dog, a portly fellow named Bruno, believes something quite different and on the evidence, I would say the dog is the better judge.

Bruno arrived as a small bundle and within a fortnight had completed his survey of the household. He identified the softest member, the firmest member and the one who could be moved with a single tilt of the head. He learned that a sigh at the dinner table produced biscuits, that a mournful look at the door produced a walk and that lying down in the exact centre of the drawing room produced a family that tiptoed around him as though he were a sleeping minister whose nap must not be disturbed.

The family is convinced they are training him. They use words like sit and stay and come and they pronounce these words with great authority. Bruno listens to them the way a senior bureaucrat listens to a junior officer’s suggestion, with patience and a faint air of indulgence. He sits when sitting suits him. He comes when something edible is involved. The rest of the time he conducts his own affairs and lets them believe the credit is theirs.

His meals are discussed at length. There are debates about grain and protein and whether the new brand agrees with him. A diet is fixed and a bowl is filled with scientific precision. Bruno examines it, decides it lacks the dignity he is accustomed to and stages a hunger strike of roughly four minutes, after which someone panics and produces a piece of chicken from the family’s own plate. He has trained them to mistake his fussiness for delicate health and they reward it faithfully.

When guests arrive, he performs. He offers a paw, he rolls over, he looks adorable on command and the family beams with the pride of people whose investment has finally paid off. What they do not notice is that each trick has earned Bruno a treat and that he has quietly converted their guests into a second line of supply. He is not their pet. He is a small furry institution that they fund, house and serve, all the while believing themselves to be in charge.

A few streets away lives a dog who would find this whole arrangement difficult to comprehend. He has no name that anyone uses, though the tea shop man calls him Kaalu and the children call him whatever suits their mood. He owns nothing and for precisely this reason he understands ownership far better than Bruno ever will.

His day begins before the city wakes, because the early hours are the only ones that truly belong to him. He must first work out which corners are his and which still belong to the older dog with the torn ear and these boundaries are renegotiated every morning with a diplomacy that no foreign ministry could match. He must read the humans as they pass. The woman with the steel tiffin will sometimes leave a little rice near the wall and he has learned to wait without crowding her. The man with the loud scooter has a habit of swerving for sport and Kaalu has learned that survival is a matter of timing rather than trust.

The road itself is his greatest adversary. He has seen friends misjudge it and he has developed the careful sideways trot of a creature who knows that one moment of distraction is the difference between today and no tomorrow. The seasons add their own cruelty. The monsoon turns his sleeping spot into a puddle and sends him shivering under a parked lorry. The summer bakes the tar until he must keep to the thin ribbon of shade like a practised thief. The winter is at least honest, asking only that he curl tighter and wait for the sun to do its work.

What strikes me, watching both these dogs, is how differently the same world treats them and how little either of them actually asks for. Bruno wants attention and is handed a kingdom. Kaalu wants a dry corner and a meal and is given the long uncertain road. Neither of them chose his station. One was lifted into comfort and the other was left to negotiate the street and between them they hold up a small mirror to our own arrangements.

The mirror is worth a glance. We too live in households and on pavements, some of us pampered into believing we are indispensable and others negotiating each day with quiet courage. The kindness of the woman with the tiffin costs her almost nothing and means almost everything. If we could carry a little of that ordinary kindness into our dealings with one another, we might find that the distance between Bruno’s drawing room and Kaalu’s pavement is not as wide as it looks. A society is measured not by how warmly it pampers its favourites but by how gently it treats the one with no name, still waiting near the wall for a handful of rice.

[Dr. R. Balasubramaniam is the Founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM). ‘The Lighter Side’ is a series of satirical articles meant to bring a smile by highlighting the funny side of everyday life.]