Chapter 7 Yoyo-nama

I found myself too often in bad-cop mode, calling out to Yoyo to come out of wherever he was hiding, many times a day. It was like callingout to a hiding holed-up fugitive who would need to be flushed out after due warnings: “Yoyo, I’m going to count till 5, and if you don’t come out from under the bed…then just you watch…” Sometimes in English, sometimes in Marathi. How much of this he at first understood I don’t know, but the first time, when I hit the number 5, I went in all guns blazing, shouting in three languages, “Come out, baher yay, niklo abhi, puray zala, enough, bass hogaya natak,” and accompanied this with an impressive shower of slippers and newspapers. He got flushed out of wherever he was holed up, and looked impressed; not scared, but impressed at the show of strength and intention. He quickly came to me and went for his walk. The next time I tried it, and all other times in the future, I had to get only to One…Two…Threee…and he would quietly come out and submit to whatever he was hiding from – walk, bath, meds, nail clipping, etc. On occasion, I would have to get to Four, Four-point-five…to give him and me some leeway to keep our dignity…but never right up to Five.

This “I’m going to count till Five” technique remained an important device in the tool-shed needed for Yoyo management. But I used it sparingly, because Yoyo had the personality that would quickly become blasé about it. “Dheet” is the word for this kind of personality. I wanted very much to let him be a Dheet, and that was part of his extreme charm, but I wanted to be able to have him obey, without negotiation, sometimes purely because I-said-so. This came in handy at times when we took him and Snoopy into wide open spaces, and Yoyo would go perilously close to the edge of an unmarked, unwalled well, or decide to suddenly get to a nearby road and walk in the middle of it, justforfun, playing chicken with a roaring-rattling oncoming ST bus, or hide under the car when he did not want to leave the picnic spot, and many other unreasonably crazy stunts he would pull, thinking he knew better and we were just being party-poopers. This was the time the bad-cop stentorian voice that I would conjure up to announce Imcountingtillfive, was very useful. Needless to say, whatever it was he submitted himself to, he would keep up a lowish growl and a flutter of his lips that was well short of a snarl, but served to signal that he was just putting up with my interference with the state of his nails, teeth, ears or skin. I too would keep up a schizoid chatter that ranged from very loving and admiring to warnings to him not to even try to jump off and stalk off. His growls and my warnings were a kind of strategy of mutual containment.

And yet, inspite of all of this jaggedness, Yoyo could be a caring nurse-companion if you were prone in bed. Throughout the six weeks of me nursing a broken angle, he would sit right against my leg, and look at my face with worried concern, every once in a while.

The intimations of our mortality come to us in many little ways, which we choose to ignore, or to soberly accept. The intimations of our dogs’ mortality too are there, loud and clear, but we choose to ignore and deny them, till they are simply inescapable. Snoopy was now 14 years old. In sound health, but we had simply omitted to accept that he was rapidly losing his hearing. When he stopped even looking in Yoyo’s direction when he barked, we thought that Snoopy was busy honing the craft of ignoring Yoyo into a fine art. Every obedient and uncomplicated, he seemed to now ignore our calls or whistles, and one day, when he most uncharacteristically kept simply ignoring us and kept walking determinedly in the wrong direction, away from us, it struck us squarely: Snoopy had gone stone deaf. The vet kindly told us that it was to be expected, at the age of 14. He also pointed out that one of his beautiful kohl-lined eyes seemed to be drooping, slightly askew. Within a few days, Snoopy had a massive seizure – so severe that he fell off the step on which he was standing. There was probably a tumour somewhere in his brain, pushing at his eye, and causing the seizure. There was some medication for it, but the young vet gently told us that if he had more of them, we would have to consider putting him down. A few days later, he had three seizures in one day – leaving him gasping, disoriented, terrified. It was time. The vet gave us a day or two to get our minds around this idea. And one day we called him to come. Ever-trusting and obedient, Snoopy simply came to me when I called him, and sat down. The vet administered the injection, his stout heart beat for several minutes even after, and then he was gone, taking with him a whole part of my life, and the grace and uncomplicatedness of our love for each other. We buried him at the back, and planted an Indian Cork Tree, which to date drops fragrant flowers through the months of September and October. Yoyo had disappeared upstairs when the vet came for Snoopy. Whether he understood what had happened or not, we don’t quite know. But there are pictures of us from that time, all looking tired, sober; continuing our fun activities with Yoyo like grooming, playing ball, but not quite ourselves, neither him, nor us.

In these some months, when there was just Yoyo and me, with Snoopy laid to rest, the front passenger seat of my car was now clearly Yoyo’s domain. He would jump in and sit down with a happy grin. We had a routine. I once sang Chuukar, mere mannko, kiya tunay kya ishaara,(Just that one gesture from you, and you touched my heart) to him. Really, the next line of that song applied too: badala yeh mausam, lagay pyara jaggsara (the season has changed (with your coming), now everything feels charmed and joyful); and the third line seemed to fit perfectly too: Mere geeton mein tujhe dhoonde jag saara (People look for you and find you in all the songs that I write).

Yoyo now took the fourth line of this song, Tu jo kahe Jeevan bhar… tere liye maen gaoon (If you like, I will sing for you all my life) very seriously. The minute he settled on the seat and I began to drive, he would push his nose into my hand and force it off the gear shift, so that I had to pat his head. He would go stock still in sheer pleasure, whenever I began to sing ‘our’ song. If I didn’t, he would get restless and give a kind of whine-groan and a few sideways glances, to remind me to sing. Sometimes this could escalate into a little, gentle fake nip of your hand or of the gear stick itself.

Jaya, my then teenaged niece-daughter, reminded me archly that this was in fact ‘her’, song that I sang to her when she was little. She then magnanimously said “Ok, I’m giving it to Yoyo, like you give an old teddy bear to a younger sister or brother.”

We were in a happy bubble then. I had finished with my training in counselling in Mumbai, and settled firmly in Pune, happily and mercifully rid of useless relationships. This bubble changed its contours somewhat, with the coming of Tatsat. When Tatsat first visited my home for the first time, I issued the usual warnings that I did to first-time visitors about Yoyo, who was about 3 years old by then:. “Walk in, but wait for him to sniff you down. Do not extend your arm or hand towards him, do not pet him, move towards the front door from the gate and the garden part only when he moves away and goes in, not before that.”
However, quite magically, Yoyo simply bypassed all those protocols, and ushered Tatsat in, into the house and into his life, with such ease, that me and my long-suffering housekeeper, who had had to earn her stripes with Yoyo, slowly and with great diligence and care, were left gobsmacked.

In retrospect, it was a historical meeting: life was never the same again for both of them, after that moment. Tatsat soon became a self-declared slave to Yoyo. They had found unconditional mutual love. When Tatsat visited (and before he moved in fully), Yoyo would claim proprietorship of him by sitting on his lap – not like any itsy-bitsy lapdog, but like a hunter stands with one foot on a slain tiger. Tatsat would submit willingly to this subjugation.  

And I was now even more firmly the bad cop, while Tatsat became the permanent good cop. This was something I would go on to resent, rave and rant about in later years, but more on that later – right now, it was sheer alchemy, to see Yoyo and Tatsat bonding instantly, without the preamble of the sniff-down, the elaborate US immigration type of pat-down and protocols that other visitors and friends had to go through.

Tatsat would go on to being his chief walker, driver, even massagist.  Yoyo was, or rather, Tatsat turned him into, something of a massage addict. He would bark sharply, one short waarf, eyes flashing, to indicate to Tatsat that he must continue massaging him, if he dared to stop during a grooming session. At one stage, we had an electric massager, which, if I dared to ask Tatsat to use on my back, would instantly bring Yoyo out from wherever he was, and he would insert himself firmly between me and Tatsat, and position himself so that the massager would be diverted from my shoulder to his body. All that Yoyo didn’t actually do is shout ‘Ay chall hatt,” to me, to ask me to make myself scarce and leave him massage time with Tatsat and the machine.