Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Yoyo? Old? Comeon!

Tatsat had met Yoyo when he was full-grown. Yoyo was still quite territorial about the gate, and when Tatsat first visited, I cautioned him not to initiate anything, not to call out to Yoyo or put his hand out towards him. Yoyo had to, simply had to be the one to make the first move. But they took to each other instantly and formed a mutual-admiration society that admitted no other member, and would force me into bad-cop mode forevermore. Yoyo learnt to wrap him around his little finger, and would sit proprietorially on his lap, on his newspaper, on his bed. He would look archly at him and not eat his food, sending Tatsat into a flurry of offering Yoyo all kinds of options as add-on side-serves to his food. This was a dog who ate solidly and without fuss up until then. Now the food began to take on cheffy plated food overtones, till one day I warned Tatsat that this was getting all too much, and beyond a joke and an indulgence. And ultimately just bad for us and bad for Yoyo.

I had to train Yoyo back into ‘Eat what there is, or as Caesar Milan shows us on TV, your plate will be removed from there till the next meal time.’ We came back to a no-fuss menu after some weeks of untraining and retraining both Yoyo and Tatsat. Throughout his life with Tatsat, however, Yoyo knew that here was a soft touch, someone who would never lose his patience and shout and cuff and yank. Towards the end of his days, as he grew deaf and feeble, disoriented and of course peculiar and difficult in a way that only Yoyo could think of, Tatsat offered him steady, untired, unquestioned devotion.

While I, over the years of being the bad cop, would sometimes forget that Yoyo was now in a space where none of his odd behaviour was to do with his messing with you…he was just exiting this earth, and the manifestations of that long goodbye were, of course, unique to Yoyo. Little things – he took to sleeping bang across the fridge door, barricading it from use. My reaction, in the midst of wanting to get on with cooking, working and other chores for the day, would be extreme exasperation. This is a cussed dog, and his cussedness is getting exponentially worse, was my feeling. I would shout at him and then feel tired and sorry for myself and sorry too, all mixed up in one.  Perhaps, and this I have thought about many times, as a kinder explanation of my behaviour: like my father used to, I tend to couch and express my fear and sadness at the impending inevitable first by getting angry and overpractical, to keep the panic of the approaching loss at bay.

Or perhaps I was just being plain old mean and disconnected from my old Yoyo, who knows. Perhaps having Tatsat now firmly in his life, I felt almost like I had outsourced the kindness and goodness and kept for myself the fatigue and peevishness. I am still trying to compute and process what happened in those last few months between him and me. If you were told the end-date of a relationship that begins to be very hard work for you, with an old animal, a dying parent or other loved one, with whom the fear of loss and the fatigue of their illness has made you impatient and only dutiful…you would perhaps, knowing the end-date, behave in ways that you did not later regret.

Tatsat had the love and grace in him to simply be there for Yoyo in his declining months, in devotee mode. If he found him sleeping right across the fridge door, he would move him gently away from the area, or would simply do without opening the fridge at all, if Yoyo was fast asleep there. Ok, no eggs, no milk, no veggies, he would let it all go and make do without. Or access them only when Yoyo was not barricading the door! Tatsat was also, less worn down by not having to be the bad cop for 14 years, having come into the equation later. Even after he had come into Yoyo’s life, he steadfastly refused or couldn’t engage with the tasks of chastising or straightening out Yoyo ever!

When Yoyo lost his hearing fully is not clear. For the longest time, whenever I did suspect he couldn’t hear, I would apply the cheese test. You would call out to him, tell him to come, and he would simply not bother. I first put it to his choosing not to listen, but if you said in the softest near-inaudible voice, “Cheese khaanarka?” Want some cheese? he would look sharply at you and come. For some years the cheese test always proved that he could hear perfectly well, but was choosing not to respond.

In his last year, after a persistent haematoma for which his ear flap was operated, he suddenly lost hearing completely, in both ears. The operation does not involve the hearing mechanism, as far as I know, and so we were surprised and shocked when it dawned on us that he actually couldn’t hear and was not treating us to a larger than usual serving of Yoyo-attitude, when he would simply not look at you or come when called. He managed quite well and did not look disoriented at all, which was really something. But then again, being cool was very important to him, so he took this deafness too with some kind of outer show of nonchalance, maybe.

With his going deaf, my using a big voice, counting to five, and other such arrows in my quiver were rendered useless. But, incredibly, I once crouched where he could see me from under the bed, and mouthed Imcountingfive and stuck out my fingers one by one as I counted. He actually came out at 3, and this worked each time now. Was he lip-reading or sign-language recognizing, who knows!

Dogs grow old so imperceptibly, and you think of them as kids for a largish part of their lives, so their ageing doesn’t so much hit you, as it slowly creeps up on you. Dark coloured dogs begin to show some white around their otherwise dark areas – more whitening of snouts, or around the eyes, or in the coat. With a white dog, it is less obvious. Also, a smallish dog doesn’t begin to go stiff and slow in any particularly noticeable way...or perhaps this is all a form of denial on our part, to accept that the painfully finite 13 or 15 or so years that you have with each other, are being simply used up, inexorably.

When he was little, and later too, one of my and Yoyo’s games, a joke of sorts, was I would hold him by just one forepaw, and he would walk along on two legs with the other forepaw dangling as if he was carrying a bag. Like a toddler being led by one stretched-up hand, by the parent. He would walk along solemnly for a few yards, walking on his hind legs, looking a bit like a performing bear. And this was our ‘Yoyo is off to school’ walk. ‘Chall shaalayla jaychana?’ I would ask, and he would allow this silly, silly, little routine, while the neighbours looked on and laughed appreciatively.

One fine day, he let out a yelp, and simply did not allow that go-to-school walk or that wheely-bag joke anymore. Just like that, the game was over; he was clearly not up for it. Suddenly, it seemed. But it had been some years now, since we had started this game, and we had simply not noticed, or refused to register, the passing of time.