Yoyo-nama Chapter 9

At this time, my home was sharply bilingual. Most urban Indian homes are – bi, tri, and sometimes quadric-lingual. But I don’t mean just the human inhabitants and visitors speak two languages. Snoopy and Yoyo understood Marathi and English respectively and exclusively. And they simply did not understand a word in the other language.

Whatever people may say about dogs understanding only tones, and not actual words, they’re not fully right. Of course, I have a friend who once demonstrated brilliantly how tones worked with dogs, rather than words. He called out “maanjar, maanjar” (cat, cat) in a hissing, go-get-her tone, and his dogs hurled themselves at the garden wall, anticipating a nice mouthful of cat. A few minutes later, when they’d settled down, he said “Sridevi, Sridevi” in the same hissy tone, and the dogs chased after imaginary or potential cats again. So granted, your tone works a lot, with dogs. But still, dogs do understand words, and in different languages – in their mother tongue, if you will. I had a Tamilian neighbour who would say “Fan inge?” to her German Shepherd, and the fellow would look at the switch and then at the fan. If you tried “Srideviinge?” in the same tone, he would probably say go find her yourself.

To come back to my sharply divided bilingual home. The older Snoopy grew up in Mumbai when he was with me in a predominantly English speaking household, so he understood only English. Not just single word commands like come, go, sit, walk, eat, shut up, but also more elaborate sentences. Stop staring at guests, I would say, and he would guiltily and instantly stop eyeing people’s kabab platters and sulkily go away. Yoyo, on the other hand, acquired in Pune, became a Marathi-speaking dog, as he grew up surrounded by Marathi. With him, if I wanted him to stop staring at people’s food, I would use the Marathi rhetorical idiom: Kon tonda kaday baghtay? I would ask, dripping Maharashtrian sarcasm, and Yoyo would look guiltily away and push off with a very distinctly Marathi hmmph.

And neither of them could understand a single word of the other language. If, for instance, I would say to Snoopy, “Chall, phiraylajauya,” or “bhooklaglika,” he just stared back at me like those South Bombay people who steadfastly refuse to understand anything but English. But whenever I said “Let’s go for a walk,” or asked him, “Hungry?” that question would instantly elicit a standing ovation, and hectic Yes! Signals from him. Just the word leash would set him rushing in and out of the door to the gate and back in a let’s go loop.

Yoyo, on the other hand, was all Marathi. That ‘kaali chappal’ threat worked like a charm. Were I to say elegantly, “black slipper”, he would just continue with whatever crime or misdemeanour he was committing at the moment. Mutter darkly “kaalichappal”, and that got him to instantly stop nipping at people’s ankles, or trying to dig a passage in the garden all the way to China.  

Snoopy would always grow a halo around himself when I said to him, “Excellent animal” for some particularly good piece of obedience or patience or intelligence that he displayed. Yoyo needed to be rewarded with the words “shahana kurta”. Only then did he know I had approved thoroughly of whatever he had done. Even their barks were distinctly language-laced. Snoopy’s bark came out “Woof, woof”, straight out of some Bedtime Tales kind of book. Whereas Yoyo’s bark was always “Bhu-bhu,” like the dog from my first book of Marathi nursery rhymes.

When I would go out on a walk with this jodi, things got complicated. Kadeynichaal, move to the side, I would be saying, almost at the same time, to the two of them (since Pune traffic roars dangerously close past you in only one language, the language of the road rowdy). Paanihava? Water? I would rap out, to check if either of them were thirsty. Over the years that I had them together, several such instructions and questions issued forth from me like a simultaneous translator. 

Another twist to the tell-tale-tail was the fact that Snoopy, English-speaking, is by birth and breed, a mongrel (more felicitously labelled Indie dog, these days), better known as sadak-chaap, or gauthi. INSERT PIC OF SNOOPY)He was born in suburban Mumbai, at the Versova, Seven Bungalows Kachra Peti (public garbage spot) and ate his first non-mummy meals standing atop piles of leftover food garbage, before we found each other and he came to stay with me. And yet he responded only to flowing English. Yoyo, strictly Marathi-speaking, was a West Highland Terrier, better known in these parts as angrezi-kutta(English dog) or phorener (foreigner), but responded only to brusque Marathi.

And so, there were several innocents in and around my area – children, courier boys, the postman, the housekeeper, the watchman, the carpenter, the milkman, the paperwallah, the dhobi, and several such – who never failed to exclaim in great wonderment: array, this sadak-chaap(roadie) understands English, and that Angrez understands Marathi? I tried often to explain to them, that it isn’t some hierarchical skill, this language learning, with English reserved for the upper echelons and regional languages for the hoi-polloi and the rabble. But somehow I just could not get this point across. Too complicated. (It’s like the old Marathi Ajji who was taken to Paris, and on her first day out, in the park, she exclaimed in amazed admiration to her son: “Array, even the children here speak French! What a sophisticated place!”)

The ‘opposite’ or ‘inverse’ language skills of my two dogs became quite the talk of the town. At times, poor Snoopy was openly jeered at by some of these people: Array gauthi kutra asoon English kay boltos? Marathi yet nahika?(Hey, you’re a local breed and what’s all this English-speaking? How come you don’t know any Marathi?)

I kid you not. A policeman once came to my home to inspect a break-in. This was when there was just Snoopy, the English-speaking gauthi. He asked me what the dog was doing while the house was being broken into. “Sleeping soundly like me,” I sheepishly answered, trying to offer some lame explanation about the dog being old. Having observed me instructing old Snoopy in English, to come, sit, stop barking, etc, the policeman sniffed and said chastizingly to me in Marathi: “Let me tell you one thing, madam. All this ‘come, come, go, go’ talk with these gauthi dogs – no use. It only makes them lazy and think that they are some English lords who have to just sit around and eat chicken. Start feeding him just dry bhakri, and talk to him in Marathi, and watch how he will take his guarding duties more seriously.”