Chapter 20 and Epilogue

20

The Man in the Moon

Yoyo’s dominions had spread across four generations – my father, me, my siblings, my daughter and nieces, nephews, and then he rapidly became a favourite with my granddaughters – they intersected with him over about 5 years, from their babyhood to when they were about 4 and 6. Yoyo was now slower and very gentle with them, never snapping or being unpredictable around them. They too had watched and understood the pattern of Yoyo’s imperious demands – for massages, petting, brushing, walking, feeding exclusively from Tatsat, and Tatsat’s ready willingness to comply. Between the two girls, there was a game. One would say to the other, “You be Tatsat-kaka and I will be Yoyo.” At this point, the child who played Tatsat, would pet the child who played Yoyo. When the petting stopped, the Yoyo-character would turn around with a sharp look and bark a short commanding-demanding Wafff at the Tatsat-character. And the petting had to continue. The Tatsat-Yoyo relationship was going into the realm of legend and song!

Even today, they look at a full moon and point to the furry fuzzy outlined patch on it, and firmly believe that it isn’t a man or a rabbit, but a picture of Yoyo in profile up there. A rather fitting belief, about a confirmed loony. 

When I returned to a home without Yoyo, for a while nothing seemed very different – we had got used to his being asleep in some corner for long hours, and not being in our midst. But then slowly, the previous 14 years, from the time that I set eyes on him in the neighbour’s home, to the moment that I said goodbye to him while leaving for my Goa trip, began to decant themselves back into our lives in bits and pieces, vignettes of the beauty, the love, the absurdities, the unique forms of madness, his eyes, the feel of him sitting proprietorially against you… and that horrible recognition that it was now out of reach.

Where we buried him, I placed an old cane chair, which listed sideways slightly, reminding us of his side-winder walk and his all-askew, ‘saraklela’, personality. On it I placed pots with mixed plants, like the varied textures of his body; two orangeish dried palm fronds, one upright and one folded, like his ears had become in later years; four coloured glass jars with candles hung from above…and all of this grew slowly into a lopsided memorial to a dog who was anything but straight or symmetrical in demeanour or disposition.

A sarakleli samaadhi to a saraklela Yoyo. Appropriately disorderly.

Part of this memorial, is a square metal basket in which I used to put in fur from the dogs’ brushes and combs and fur-trimming sessions over the years. Small birds of all kinds, tailors, sunbirds, prinias, sparrows, white-eyes, would come and take this fur to line their nests. Just a week before he passed away, I trimmed Yoyo’s fur as it was looking matted, dull. Some of that fur, so many months later, still sits in the box, and white-eyes, prinias, sparrows, tailorbirds and sunbirds come and pick at it. To think of his fur providing warmth and nurture to baby birds, is at once a very touching thought as well as a really hilarious one, given Yoyo’s general curmudgeonliness.

My writing desk faces this tableau – of the higgledy-piggledy chair memorial, the birds darting in and out with mouthfuls of fur, the four coloured glass candle holders hanging at different lengths throwing colourful light on the highly colourful creature who lies there, below the earth.

Next to this is a tall Indian Cork tree, under which Snoopy lies, gone some years before Yoyo. The fragrant ivory flowers drop gently on Yoyo’s spot. Much as Snoopy ignored him through his life, and gave him just about a frosty nod, once in a while, in death, they seem to have made friends. We have not dared to plant anything over Yoyo’s grave – unlike the stately Snoopy tree that softly drops fragrant flowers, we might just get a tree that sprouts a hundred Yoyos. And then what will happen to us all?

***

The little envelopes with the words ‘Yoyo SOS meds’ that I had in my wallet and in quickly-accessible places in the house and car, I simply did not have the heart to throw away. How we hang on to little points of continuity with a departed person. There is no Yoyo and there is going to be no SOS situation, I told myself, only the other day, and threw the packet away. More than a year after his passing.

As the gentle giant Jugnu now shows signs of ageing, with a weakened hind leg, that unmistakable slowing down of movements, the reluctance to run too much, that worrisome panting on a little exertion, we tell ourselves firmly, no more dogs. We are ageing too, and it’s time to be practical. And yet, as we speak, some dog somewhere, no doubt, has other plans for us.  However much you decide that your dog days are over and that that door has to be now firmly shut…someone’s got a paw in the door, holding it firmly ajar. 

EPILOGUE

Objects in the Mirror

This picture now hangs on my wall, taken off my FB page a few days after his passing, and enlarged and framed for me by Pallavi, a neighbour and one of Yoyo’s drop-in pals. The picture was taken on one of those beautiful rainy picnic driving days, now made poignant by the fact that we did not have many more of these left, we didn’t know then.

 I had uploaded it the next day after the picnic, on my Facebook page and captioned it: “To paradise and back. Under 100 km and Rs 500 tops. Swirling clouds, suddenly revealing mountains and gorges, suddenly hiding them, hundreds of waterfalls huge and far away, or close and gurgling with clean-clean water. Soft green grass and ferns everywhere, and three godsend men out-of-nowhere, who stopped their car and got us out of a slush-rut on the side of the road and then vanished in the mist. Dogs gamboling in lush meadows and up cliff surfaces, down into streams, plonking in puddles. Everywhere, the sound of water trickling or gurgling or gushing or the sight of wind rippling water over the lake...electric green rice fields.”

Pallavi took this picture off my FB page, got it printed and mounted and brought it to us a few weeks after Yoyo was gone. I was in that stage of inward grief in which it hits you anew - how far he had gone from us, to some unreachable place. And then I looked closely at the bottom of the mirror in the picture at the just-discernible writing. It said: OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE MUCH CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR TO BE.

I stepped back in shock at the significance of that lightly etched message. I could almost see Yoyo’s eyes, somewhere in the ether, shining with mad affection and amusement at the electric flip-flop thrum that went through my heart as I read and re-read the words.