Chapter 13 Yoyo-nama

A dose of Yoyo-forte

Yoyo saved me from snakes three times. He was utterly fearless, and yet instinctively smart about snakes (unlike his stupid nonchalance about cars on a road). One night, I heard a peculiar short loud series of insistent barks from him that I had never heard before. It had the quality of sounding outraged-but-cautioning. Each bark was prefixed with a short low growl. It was a kind of bark that I quickly learnt to take very seriously, when he used it. It was the proverbial 12-midnight witching hour. Suddenly, I heard Yoyo’s nails clicking rapidly as he walked stiffly towards my first floor balcony attached to my bedroom. I heard his short sharp bark, and assuming that it was the civet that sometimes passed through, or the Bulbul that was nesting in the creeper, I shouted out to Yoyo to SHUT UP. Ignoring me, Yoyo kept up that bark, and when I switched on a light, I saw that he was looking up, towards a flowering climber.

Before I realized there was a snake or anything of the sort, I was out in the balcony looking up at where Yoyo had been looking, trying to figure what it was that he was so angry about. What was later identified as a Russel’s Viper, literally uprooted by the frantic construction activity in my area and by the searing heat, had found its way up my Madhumalati creeper and into this first floor bedroom sit-out.

It had first made a light snack out of two new-born bulbul chicks in a nest, and was then planning to possibly lie quietly amongst the freshly watered leaves, ruminating on whatever it is that his species ruminates on, and picking new-born bulbul meat from its teeth, when Yoyo heard its rustlings, and began his bark. I believe they are deaf, but possibly the vibrations from that extremely loud bark caused the snake to get distracted and it lost its balance and fell into my balcony.

Like something out of a bad Ramsay Bros film, it chose the time of 12 midnight to do this. I would have slept right through, and it may have let itself out with a polite excuse me…but that was not to be. Now it could not move easily on the tiled floor, and turned itself into something like a fat tire, and began to spin. Yoyo kept barking his head off and held it at bay, even after it fell a couple of feet away from me and him. For 5-7 minutes, they were both engaged in a mutual détente of sorts – the snake bizarrely buzzing very loudly like a pressure cooker married to a chain saw and spinning in a dervish-like circle, Yoyo keeping a foot away, but holding it at bay, and barking like his life depended on it (it did). By the time I could get my feet and vocal chords wide awake, snake and dog were in this awful dance together. I ran down and yelled for help, which came from 4 watchmen from sundry buildings, who asked no questions, managed to move Yoyo out of the way, delivered 2 whacks and ended the snake’s life.

The second time round, it was another dramatic appearance, of a Cobra, right on Mahashivratri night. This time, there was Jugnu too – both he and Yoyo raised the alarm in the backyard. They kept their distance, but barked insistently, with that overtone of outrage mixed with caution that dogs use and you come to recognize as a tone that you take seriously. This time, a snake-catcher came and took it away.

A few years later, Yoyo and Jugnu cornered and held off an 8 foot long angry rat-snake in my tiny kitchen, in the middle of a mellow afternoon. While Jugnu raised the alarm, Yoyo was almost on top of the snake, who lunged at him several times, in a very confined space. We were assured by the catcher, later, that these are non-poisonous snakes, but he did say that their bite is a horrible painful and jagged one, difficult to stitch up – a dog could easily bleed out with that kind of bite, before you got medical help. Yet again, Yoyo had shown that not for nothing did he have so much attitude…it came with its own advantages.

In retrospect, I could read the pattern. Yoyo had protected me from three snakes as well as a pretty poisonous relationship. That one, he had not had to bark in outrage and draw my attention to. He had simply inserted himself so firmly into my life in such a timely manner, that I was grounded, literally as well as figuratively. By appearing at that juncture in my life, Yoyo had forced me to grow roots again. My misguided notion that I must keep my lifestyle all lean and ‘unencumbered’ so that I would be seen as ‘re-marriage material’ was firmly erased, from my mind and from the realm of possibilities, with the warped person that I was seeing at the time. With the coming of Yoyo, that particular person had simply slithered off, looking for other victims. His one parting question had been: “I see, so now it is love me, love my dogs, is it?” I could answer with an unqualified Yes, and could also wake up into the clarity of a ‘What was I thinking’ state, and recalibrate my concept of love and commitment.

Overnight, Yoyo had turned me and my life from vulnerable into fortified.