Keeping pet dogs was not uncommon, but there were very few at Trishul Park dormitories, kept safely harboured in their owners’ indoor environments, chained outside by the foyer, or taken out for a stroll. Even, there were hardly any scavenging pariah strays that roamed around the parkland.
One or two ferals were free-roaming, but that’s about the size of their population in the huge, wide-open, windy cantonment area. The strays were almost always shooed away, not mistreated, from afar in mock aggression, before they ever got a chance to bite! Or, feeling sorry with one's heart sinking or something, someone would toss some food and walk away. Cats were hardly seen around.
Labrador Retrievers to German Shepherds, and Pomeranians to fox-like, small-breed Pekingese Shih Tzus—these were the favoured breeds the Trishul Park denizens liked to own. Especially the last one, the so-called toy-dog species, which Mr. and Mrs. Saha started calling Roxy and got stowed away on the open veranda at the back, where it had its own boxy den, which it used only at night. Arin didn’t ask where it actually came from, what breed it was, except noticing that the hairy little thing seemed inscrutably put out by something or other that no one had quite understood its purportedly clangourous behaviour, including the somewhat breed-conscious Sahas.
Nothing seemed right or ‘working’ for this whining ogre. Food, the place, the atmosphere, and the daily evening strolls out in the bushes apparently did not meet the expectations of this hairy, new, showy piece of Canis familiaris in the Saha home, which was kind of close to being kiddingly called a small zoological household.
Roxy continually complained, tending not to get along well with people, as if it always smelled a rat. Outsiders or guests who dropped by fared worst. Yapping away night and day, it seemed to us, was its best manner of communication, noisy and very persistent; no matter how much dog food it was given, it would yap, and yap, and yap, as if everything depended on its contestable yapping and nothing else mattered. Else it's doggy world, as it knew it in its one-feet height, might cease to exist. Yapping shrilly was its innate specialty; the Sahas had no choice other than to live by it, literally. Perhaps more and more yapping helps it understand the world through its beady eyes, which were permanently hidden by copious pelt of hair falling from above his smallish, hairy head and all over its face, and unhelpfully, poor thing, it can’t dodge the falling hair away to the side by aiming strong puffs of air to its face — “like these humans around here, oh so towering these people are, have a habit of doing so easily for themselves, I’ve noticed many times.” (Soon, Mrs. Saha would give it the haircut it needs.) Arin and, to some extent, Piku Mama, resolved that there’s something constitutionally wrong with this sassy pooch and left it to its own devices out in the backyard garden where it roamed about untethered. And as usual, it continued its yapping while it roamed.
That may be true, but these domesticated hounds, in their tail-wagging happiness, seemed to make exceptional watchdogs for families who preferred them not so much for security reasons but merely as lifestyle-oriented animal companions, as these friendly bowwows or powwows enjoyed human care in the roomy dormitories and open backyards. With a lot to go on with the humans, such as loyal companionship, etc., they would squeal in lively delight. Nothing, no place, could be better than the ones they found themselves in, in the open, wind-swept green acres of Trishul Park, where the domesticated singles happily thrived.
They thrived, of course, with no bone to pick with those who owned them. Sometimes, hell did, however, break loose like a runaway thunderstorm if they happened to spot any neighbouring dog loitering around in the vicinity, or, perish the thought, if they caught sight of a plump, delicious-looking bunny rabbit living next door, down the lane, not too far away, just a hop, skip and jump and it’ll be there before anyone knows it, the animal chemical smell being too strong for them to resist having a go at it. Such contingencies occurred nowhere, at least not that the pet lovers were cognizant of.
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Mercifully, no house dog ever could, just like that, have a go at a neighbouring bunny Rabbit or any other dog of its own species as food. But stray dogs from outside the Park may have had other ideas!
For instance, Mr. and Mrs. Roy’s local lanky dingo named Goldie, who may or may not have harboured any such ill intentions. Or, for that matter, Mr. and Mrs. Saha’s spiky little Pomeranian yap-yap doggie named Roxy. In the grand scheme of things, every creature behaved well within its limits, except that they barked often—out of their primal instinct, of course—and that was fairly frequently.
However, only once did Arin, Rajveer (Raju), Rinku (Raj Kumar), Ganeshilal, Tinda, and possibly even Rajesh, who were playing a friendly cricket match, accidentally witness an act of cannibalistic behaviour by a roaming feral dog that, while loitering around the cricket ground, happened upon a carcass of a dead stray dog lying on its flank. Flies buzzed furiously around the carcass as the dead dog’s entrails spread all over the grassy pasture, which was by the Trishul Park’s one of many inner roads: this was the route that went straight ahead via the Jhula Park on the left, leading up all the way to the old railway bridge to the east across which lay the great pastoral range of the gorgeous Sub-Arean county, as they played cricket on the open, windy meadows.
How the feral dog seized and tore away the skin of the dead dog to consume its flesh! Wild with fury, as if it were! A dog-eat-dog grotesqueness that all of them unconsciously placed their hands in their armpits while they stood still to watch the National Geographic in real-life action, dumbfounded and struck equally by the animalistic ferocity of the flagrant scene unfolding right in front of them. The feral dog was not really chewing much; it swallowed the decaying flesh in great dripping chunks, in large gory lumps, crushing bones and slurping maggot-infested dark blackish-reddish blood spread out like cold molten lava, as quickly as possible—just in case an aggressive rogue dog might suddenly run in and scavenge it all away—even as the thick, whitish, slimy saliva clung unobtrusively, forming intricate patterns to the sides of its ravenously hungry mouth tearing and ripping apart, sinking its teeth into the shanks of the dead dog, and which kept having a go, in repeated fierceness of primal hunger, at the smelly, putrid dog meat.
Civic workers arrived soon after and shooed the cannibalistic scavenger away. It went off running across the open ground, positively disgruntled. Two of the three sanitation workers stood aside and talked among themselves for several minutes as they wore rubber gloves and cloth masks, probably weighing options on how best to remove the dead animal's body: whether to drag it or haul it. Or torch it by pouring kerosene over it. Dragging is out of the question. Hauling is best, they decided. By carefully hauling the large carcass, which had probably died due to some extreme infection, one of them held its hind legs. The other propped the dog’s head up using a metal rope sling tied to it and carried it off. The innards and offal slid down heavily as they expertly stepped towards their waiting dump truck and hurled it steadily over onto the truck bed. One of the men took care to spread white bleaching and lime powder over the place where the dead dog had perished. Like a broad expanse of white snow, that section of ground had appeared, intended to disinfect the spot and eliminate foul odours.
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A Parrot That Talked:
Others kept an Indian parakeet—rarely, though—as a pet in a cage.
Little wonder the green parrot started mimicking basic human speech and tone, beginning with grunts and advancing into full-blown outpourings of a discourse that amazed everyone. It spoke a smattering of Hindi, Bengali, and English.
None could tell what had become of the 19/4, Trishul Park’s famous golden-speech parrot that Mr. and Mrs. Saha kept as not so much as merely a house pet but as a useful minder of the Saha household. Arin and Raju personally knew the caged bird. Mithu Pakhi, it was called. It lived with the Sahas for years before they were posted to Gwalior. Talking to it often and getting amazed by its abilities: one of which is repeatedly mimicking human voices, whistling melodies, and even dancing—all from within the cage. Its whistles and squawks were a wonderful fun. Mithu was a medium-sized Indian Ringneck with a large red beak, and it was an incredible marvel in its own birdy way. When the Saha family moved out of Trishul Park, probably around mid-1988, the high-profile parrot had to be taken away to Gwalior, where Mr. Saha had to report for duty. And that was all Arin and Raju knew about what happened to that incredibly funny green talking parakeet belonging to the lovely Saha family.
As has been seen, the Saha household had a family dog, too. A fluffy, untrimmed Pomeranian (or was it Shih Tzu?) doggie named Roxy; her face was never visible, wholly concealed by furry hair cascading down like Niagara Falls all over its diminutive body. She was a super sassy, temperamental canine that Arin always gave a wide berth.
Piku Mama was Mr. Saha's brother-in-law and his spouse’s brother. He arrived as a guest to sojourn for a year in the Saha home. To Arin, he did not particularly seem to be much interested in that attitudinal fur-ball called Roxy that yapped from its wooden trunk all day, for what seemed to be a completely woman-owned dog that hated being around men and other members of its own species. Maybe a-pat-a-day care, that’s how far Piku Mama would go to acknowledge its ever-shifting, undersized existence in the dormitory, where the Sahas had, apart from other flowering plants, a huge Drumstick tree (Moringa oleifera) in the backyard garden. Not to mention, this potty-trained, damn so noisy little nothing to speak of smidgen was shampooed every Sunday! Hoof hoof!
As regards the word Drumstick quoted above, more on the delightful vegetable pods that were easily plucked from the tree, enduring all these years in their garden patch, to make a culinary masterpiece of a dish, simmering in a rich golden brown mustard gravy the Saha household loved to cook almost daily, which Arin would teasingly call The Saga of the Drumsticks of the Sahas (too many S’s there!), is coming up shortly in the next autofictional instalment of yours truly memoir posturing as a short (or long) story, entitled as Piku Mama, in whichever way you look at it.
The pet lovers, the Sahas, also had another house pet called Binky: a white bunny (Rabbit, Khargosh) with reddish eyes, that only liked munching on vegetable peels, lettuce, and carrots. Most often, it nibbled on carrots and cucumbers nonstop, never being satiated. Once Arin held a carrot in front of its archetypal bunny face, it took it with its front paws and began gnawing at it, still not looking satiated. It wanted another. He offered. Clenching it, Binky went off to the side of its small wooden hutch box in the big veranda to nibble on some grass hay while also enjoying eating the carrot Arin handed it. The furry white bunny often hopped around the house when Piku Mama, Arin, and Raja played card games, probably to say hi.
Raja, Mr. and Mrs. Saha’s one and only son, wouldn’t mind taking care of both their ‘Aesop’s Fables’ creatures, a dog and a rabbit, equally.
An era had come to an end with the Sahas’ departure from Alwal: a place of Arin’s childhood time, while Piku Mama had been gone for less than a year before, which in itself was even more heart-breaking for Arin to realize, having lost all contact with them since 1986-87. A quiet heartache that stayed all along. Destiny seemed to have conveyed its Sayonara once again.
(To be continued…)
(End of part IV)
By Arindam Moulick