Yudhishtira's Dog

Many of us grew up with stories from the Ramayan and Mahabharat. Some got them straight from the horse’s mouth – told by a well-read grandparent or elder. Some of us got them mainly from Amar Chitra Katha – the action etched in our minds in only four colours. Drawn by just one or two artists, all the good guys looked like each other and the bad boys looked exactly like one another too, straight out of a mould – Ravan melded into Duryodhan, merged into Dushyasan, fused into Shakuni…all baddies sporting the mandatory heavy mustache, red tongue, thick knitted brow and staring eyes.

As you grew up, you saw other renditions of scenes from the epics – in paintings, etchings, scrolls, embroidery, weaves, batik, rangoli, mosaic, neon lighting… the visual works. Some scenes have always been on top of the popularity charts with professionals and amateurs alike. Arjuna riding his chariot; Indra resplendent with the sun’s rays; baby Krishna caught butter-handed; Ram stopping by Shabri’s humble hut; Laxman revering his brother…But there is one scene that I have long been looking for, I have never found illustrated anywhere except long back in Amar Chitra Katha, and I would like to see it in another style beyond that.

It’s my favourite part of the whole Mahabharat (we dog lovers at times tend to ignore the much larger canvas of human drama and concentrate on the canine detail) is that of Yudhishtira firmly and politely declining the invitation into heaven, if his accompanying black dog was not allowed in too. I love that story. There he is, at the end of a whole yug, an age. Much, much has happened, literally of epic proportions, in his life. And yet the choice is just so simple for him: Take me and this faithful friend, or I’ll give heaven a miss. Thanks but no thanks, he seems to be saying, at the much-touted heaven’s gates.

Whether the dog is real, or symbolic, a projection of Yudhishtira’s own psyche, a test, an apparition…I don’t know. I love the episode. Kya scene hai! But I haven’t found it illustrated anywhere. I’ve often toyed with the idea of trying my hand at drawing it. I have imagined up how various artists would take a stab at it – the Badris, the Maqbools, the B Prabhas, even the Wyeths, or the Hockneys, even Picasso! Or even in a folk art from – Madhubani, Kalamkari, Warli…I sometimes even grandly think of ‘commissioning’ someone to do such a painting for me. But I want to see it in many styles, just like you can see cross-stitch Karnas, batik Bhimas, needle-point Nal-Damayantis. I would love to see Yudhishtira and his black dog celebrated every which way.

That may or may not happen for me, but, in the meanwhile, I’ve had a couple of interesting black dog interactions of my own. When I mentioned it to a friend, she marveled at my story and then told me mysteriously – go Google it and see what you get. I wrote ‘black dog’ on the net, and hundreds of thousands of websites popped up. People across cultures and continents and classes have had a black dog apparition of their own. Sometimes it’s been seen as evil and threatening and sometimes as an auspicious and joyous sign.

My ‘sightings’ of a black dog, in keeping with my fascination for the Yudhishtira story, have been wonderfully rewarding occasions.
The first was a few months ago in Africa – in a town called Arusha, Tanzania. I was back from a semi-climb up Kilimanjaro (the daunting summit section, I had given a miss to), walking in the ink-black night to the dining shack of a lodge cut into the foothills. The mountain looming behind me was the much-ignored-because-of-Kilimanjaro Mt Meru (get this: the Yudhishtira episode happened on a Meru parvat). The friend I was travelling with was summiting Kili that night, and here I was, out of contact with anyone I knew, and I thought: “My god I am so alone here…and so alone everywhere”.

Close on the heels of this thought, I heard a clicking of nails behind me, and quickened my pace, not sure if my slightly wobbly mental state was pursuing me or some equally dangerous animal was. The clicking kept pace with my increased speed, quite like something out of an amateur horror film.

Finally, I stopped and turned around, and out of the darkness stepped an even darker dog, only the benign gleam in its eyes visible. I actually asked it out loud in surprise, that too in Marathi: Array, kon tu? Who are you? It gave a small friendly whine, did a cat-like circle of my legs and vanished, literally into the rock surface of the mountain wall besides me. In that kind of darkness, anything that moves a foot away from you, does seem to simply vanish as suddenly as it appeared. I smiled to myself – really how fitting that any sign I should get about not ‘being alone’, would come to me via some canine messenger!

Just the other day, I stood in the compound of a city hospital. A dear friend (another dog lover) was scheduled for major surgery the next day. As we stood together, sobered at the thought of what she was going through, a shy-but-frisky black dog came out of nowhere, ran around us, fixed us with a trusting, confiding gaze, wagged its tail, stood companionably with us, and then followed me jauntily to my car. That was no apparition, just a cheery soul telling us it was all going to be okay.

So now if I start my own publishing company, I’ve decided I won’t call it Dog-eared Books, as planned, but maybe Black Dog Books. And don’t anyone pinch these names please – the black dog will get you.