Day sleeper

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

I tried hard but couldn’t reach the itch on my back. Right smack in the middle of my back. Smack.

I growled. A passer-by gave me a strange look and walked away faster. Who cared. Why was he walking the streets that late at night anyway? I growled louder as if to affirm that yes, indeed, I was violent and it was better to walk away from me. I was too bothered by the itch to care.

I tried scratching my back against the wall. Didn’t work. I tried rolling on the pavement. Didn’t work. I gave up, panting, sweating profusely from my pink tongue. Pink. Bubblegum pink. They said it was pink. I don’t know. I can’t tell pink from brown. They said I was brown too. Like Jignesh’s skin. Like everybody’s skin. Not white, not black but deep, dark brown. Not that I knew the difference.

I could smell Jignesh. I waited. And waited. I was going to try scratching myself on the pavement again when I heard his steps. His smell grew stronger. I heard my name. “Murukku!” I broke into a run. I liked running. It made me sweat. And then I could see my tongue hanging from my mouth like an extra appendage. My pink tongue. So-called pink.

I ran and ran and ran. And then ran some more. I began to tire. I couldn’t run too far. He knew that I had only three legs. Where the hell was he? I smelt a million things. Not that it made a difference. Only Jignesh did at that moment, so I kept running in the direction of his smell.

His smell grew stronger as he got closer. I finally found him.

He looked happy to see me. I was overwhelmed with relief. I rubbed myself on his knee, as if I was asking him to scratch my back. He didn’t get the hint. Humans could be so dense sometimes. Ok, so I loved him, ok so he was my so-called master but that wasn’t more important than my persistent itch.

I gave up subtlety. I rolled around madly on the road, whining, growling and making funny noises. He got it. Relief. He scratched my back. More relief. Bliss.

Ah! So now that the emergency is over I suppose I can fill you in on my story. Not that it makes a difference to me but well, I should be polite. After all, a master is known by the dog he keeps.

I say poor because he is poor. Not out of sympathy. He is poor, so I am poor too. We are a pair or poor, brown animals. I say animal because he is one. All humans are animals. They just refuse to acknowledge the fact. Poor brown animals who think they’re smarter than other animals. I’ve heard they vary in colour and that there are many, many more. Not that it made a difference to me.

It was time for some food. I knew the road I was on. Mudaliar Road. I had no idea why these animals bothered naming roads. But then I figured that’s how they identified it. Anyway, I could not read. But I could smell. I could smell which roads had the food, which ones had just trash. This one always smelt good. There was always the strong stench of meat coming from Mudaliar Road. The other dogs knew this too. This wasn’t my turf so I always got their left-overs from the left-overs. If there were any.

There were this time. I silently thanked the people who cooked too much that week. The scratching had made me hungry.

I rummaged around the smelly bin and found what smelled so wonderful. Old dosa and biriyani. Heaven. I loved this street. People would cook too much wonderful food and throw away most of it. What a shame. But it fed us, those who walked the street. The street walkers, the rag pickers, the crows and a whole lot of other animals. It was the essence of our existence.

Even poor Jignesh. He was often reduced to eating out of the same bins that his dog ate from. That would be a blow to most human egos. Most. But it didn’t matter to Jignesh. He was so poor that he couldn’t even afford an ego. It didn’t really make a difference to him. Only one thing did seem to make a difference to him.

Daylight.

He was the only one who stayed at home when it was bright and came out when it was dark. They made fun of him. The other dogs. They mocked poor Jignesh. Not that it made a difference. They were the ones who got beaten up. Not me.

I feasted on the remains of the remnants of the biriyani. It wasn’t enough. I trotted off in search of smellier bins. You see, the smellier a bin is, the nicer the food in it is. It is not the other way around, as the humans think. The stronger the stench from these bins is, the faster they run away from them. They have this strange habit of closing their nose tight with their fingers when they near these bins. I wondered what it would be like to hold your own nose. Anyway, so we survived on food from the bins. So did Jignesh sometimes. I told you he was different.

I couldn’t smell him nearby. I guess he had gone to finish his work. Yes he did ‘work’. He picked up trash. I generally accompanied him and ate what I liked but I was preoccupied today. The itch had disturbed me. I needed some good smelly food in my system before I got back to normal.

Then I saw him. Or rather, he saw me. And he was not alone. No, I’m not talking about Jignesh. I was not supposed to be there. But I hadn’t expected him to be there either. I decided to be friendly. If I ran he would catch up with me and tear me apart. He came towards me, his paws not making the slightest noise even at this time of the night when everything was silent. Or should I say morning. The others followed, obviously following his lead. I knew he recognized me. They all did. I didn’t belong to any pack, I was a nobody. I was the loner, the wounded soldier, the perfect catch for any of them.

He sniffed at me. I sniffed and wagged my tail. He looked at me. I made sure I did not blink. Then he lifted up his head and barked. It was a half bark, half howl. At least that is what I thought it was. Maybe only leaders of packs did that so their bark-howls were different. The rest followed suit. I did too. I liked howling. I did it very rarely. It was fun.
He stopped. He walked away. Relief, for the second time that night. He walked towards the pavement. I knew what was coming. Up went his hind leg.

Marking territory is an art. Some dogs did it with flair. Some just looked like mediocre dogs trying to be the leader of a pack. This one appeared to be in the former category. He seemed dangerous. He let me go this time. I didn’t know if he would allow it to happen again though. I did not know if he was a friend or an enemy. Hence I placed him in the dangerous ‘neither friend nor enemy’ category.

I knew that I only had one friend. Jignesh. I went looking for him. I thought of when he had first found me. On the pavement, very late at night, many hours after I was left for dead. After the dogs had ravaged my body, at least a hundred pairs of legs walked past me. The crows were waiting on nearby trees, waiting for me to stop breathing. But only Jignesh picked me up. He took care of me and gave me everything he could. I was nearly dead, yet he took me home and helped me heal completely. Well, almost completely. My right hind-leg never healed properly.

The city was a cold one. I did not like it. It didn’t seem to care. For anybody. Whether it had two legs, four legs or even three. I wanted to go away with Jignesh. But he wouldn’t leave. He always hid when the sun came out. So I remained there. I didn’t know if people really managed to live in the city. We all just existed there. If some dog chewed your leg off you would die of pain or die trying to drag yourself off to safety. There was only one Jignesh after all and he had done his good deed already. He had already saved one life.

There was also a strong possibility of getting squashed by a vehicle. Squashed like a bug. I’d seen it happen. The animal’s insides would be outside. And nobody but the scavengers gave it any respect. They respected it. They cleaned up the mess.

That was one stench even I did not like. The ‘squashed bug’ stench.

I nearly got run over once; I didn’t want to die like that. Squashed like a bug. I did not want to die at all. I had nearly died once earlier as well, that was enough for me. I was saved by Jignesh the first time. A three-legged stray dog made no difference to the truck that mowed it down. Or the person behind the wheel. But I made a difference to Jignesh. And so I accompanied him in the dark hut during the day from then on.

Being in the city during the day was great sometimes. I missed it. I missed the light. But I realised after a while that I liked it better at night. Silence. I could hear things that weren’t heard otherwise. I saw things that weren’t seen otherwise. And so during the day I was inside the little dark hut. I spent it with Jignesh.

The hut was by the side of the city river. People washed clothes in the river, urinated in it, threw their garbage in it, bathed in it, played in it... They seemed to do everything they could in that greenish-brown muck. We isolated ourselves. Our hut was as far away from the other huts as possible. Of course that didn’t stop others from coming and poking their noses around. In a slum you can never be completely alone. It was obvious that Jignesh wanted to be alone, yet they would not leave him alone. Children would come and barge through the door, hurl insults and even stones at him and leave without closing the door. They would just open the door and leave, with Jignesh trembling and shielding himself from the light in the darkest, coldest corner of the small enclosed area.

I was a smart dog. But in the beginning I was stumped. I figured something must have happened a long time ago. Something which led to Jignesh avoiding the sunlight. But he never spoke about it. I had resigned myself to remaining in the dark when it came to Jignesh’s fear of daylight. At least I knew he would never go anywhere. He was too scared. I had seen him cower when the door burst open. I would try nudging it shut. At first he seemed surprised that I tried to understand his reaction to the light. I wondered why. How stupid did people think we animals were? Maybe he was surprised because nobody else understood it or tried to help him but a so-called ‘animal’ could.

In the beginning, I could not understand what made him act so crazy when it came to something as simple and essential as daylight. But then I sensed his fear, I could smell it. I saw his extreme reactions to the light – the shivering, the fits he would have, the sweating. I heard his cries when the door would burst open. Then I just tried to help in every way that I could. After a point of time I could sense his hunger, some of his essential needs. I would forage for food and bring back something for him if I sensed he was hungry. And I kept the door shut always. Always.

I remember the only time he ever fell ill. I did not know what was happening, but he smelt different. His smell got weaker and he smelt sour. He would shiver and then sweat, even though there was no light in the hut. I brought him newspaper to cover himself when he shivered. I stole bottles of anything I could find. Water mostly. And then I found a shop where those sour smelling people went. They always left with bottles or paper packets. I stole some of those bottles. ‘Medicine’ they called it. I had no idea what it was; I only hoped it would help Jignesh. I dug up the mud around the hut and stuffed it into cracks I found peeping out from under the door and walls. It prevented light from creeping through. I was scared then. But he got better. And then so did I.

How long would it take for Jignesh to get over his fear? How long would it be before he tried to live instead of merely existing? I didn’t even know if he had any family. I didn’t know if that would make much of a difference though

I continued walking through the streets, aimlessly. That’s when I found Mirchi. Quite by accident.

Mirchi was black with a white patch on her long, pointed tail. I didn’t know what friends were but perhaps you could call her my friend. We got along well. I was the only male dog who seemed uninterested in her and she was the only dog I liked. Perfect. She never liked any of the dogs who were interested in her. She just had their puppies.

She pretended to be cold and detached when in fact she had a heart of gold. She had saved me many a time from the jaws of death. Literally. Being an outsider, most dogs thought they had reason enough to kill me. Many had tried. Many had nearly succeeded. Mirchi had rescued me most of those times. Of course she was detached too. She would disappear suddenly for long stretches and reappear as suddenly. She always left her puppies to survive on their own and she never stuck to any particular male.

One would think that most female street dogs were like that. Not true. Leaders of packs did not like sharing. Mirchi was a different case altogether. I suppose she was an outsider too in a way. Like me. But she was hardly ever alone. She was often with her ‘men’ or puppies. This time she was alone, though.

I never asked where she went. I didn’t want answers and she didn’t like questions either. Perfect.

We ran in circles around each other. Detached and alienated we were, but I was happy to see her. I had fun with her…Running across different nieghbourhoods, eating to our hearts’ content. Then I saw that the sun would come up soon. I knew Jignesh would want to get back before... Well, before the sun rose.

I heard Jignesh’s whistle and a distant yell. ‘Murukku!’ I ran. With a limp of course. But I still ran. Mirchi knew about my strange life as a night creature. She never asked questions either.

I used to get bored. I never needed much sleep. Sometimes I would think to myself, why can’t I go out, and I used to slip out while Jignesh slept. I don’t know why I felt guilty about it. It was not as though he had imposed his schedules upon me. He never minded if I left during the day. That day I was bored. I decided to go hunt for Mirchi.

I found her. She was being harassed by some dog I didn’t know. I watched from a distance. It wasn’t long before she got rid of him. We did our usual crazy things after that. Stopping traffic, stealing food from vendors, that sort of thing.

I lost track of time. It was around noon before I realised I should be back in the hut with Jignesh. So I raced back as fast as I could to my ‘master’. I stopped running only when I could see the hut clearly. My tail stopped wagging. The door was open. I went inside careful not to open the door more. But Jignesh was not there.

I looked for him. For days. I went everywhere I could, went to every place I had ever been with him. I asked for help from other dogs. Some laughed, some helped. I couldn’t understand what had happened. Did he finally get better? Why didn’t he take me with him? Did he die? Did he get hurt because I left him alone? But he managed to survive before I was around. I left him only for a little while. The questions and the guilt slowly ate me up from inside. I had let him down.

I never saw him again.

Later I heard from Mirchi that he had died. She had found out from one of the other slum dogs. They were laughing about it; about how it should have happened earlier and how the crows ate him up. I never knew for sure. I checked at the bridge where they said he might be. The Indira Nagar Bridge. But he was not there. I found part of his slipper. Nothing else remained. No sign of him. The smell of him had nearly been wiped entirely from what was left of his slipper too.

I took it home and kept it where he used to sit during the day. The house was soon taken over by other people. I was thrown out and whatever few belongings Jignesh had were left on the side of the road. I did not take anything. I didn’t need to.

Some part of me still thinks that he is alive, but I’ll never know for sure. So I’ll just keep looking.