tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59159530022870568012024-02-18T22:23:20.563-08:00Random HarvestGouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.comBlogger241125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-74739722853458128282020-06-24T23:43:00.001-07:002020-06-24T23:43:56.223-07:00Short Story Mrs Blarsingdale - Gouri Dange (first published in Stories Around the Coffee Table, Caferrati<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Mrs
Blarsingdale<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">From seven floors up, all Anandi Joshi could
see was the young woman’s straight black hair, ‘ape cut’ in the style of 1970s
Singapore. Pale shoulders showed from a halter necked t-shirt. Neat ivory
coloured legs emerged from under the shortest of shorts – hot pants, they were
called, then. And with her, always, there were two Pekinese dogs on red and
green leashes - their silky blonde coats groomed in the same ape-cut style. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> It was the dogs that 12-yr-old Anandi,
seven stories up in Taman Sarasi Apartments, wanted to make friends with. She’d
been watching the threesome for over a month now, but her gawky adolescent
Indian looks and frizzy hair - which she hated even more, now that she was in
this land of nifty figures, translucent skin and unreal hair - stopped her. And
then there was her Indian convent school accent that no one seemed to
understand here, except the Mehra kids upstairs on the 11<sup>th</sup> floor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Anandi begged her mother to come downstairs
with her, to help her make friends. “But this is a good opportunity to learn
how to deal with total strangers in a new country,” Aai had said, nudging her
to go and just introduce herself, ask the young woman her name, play with her
dogs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The dogs were named Chok (bamboo flower) and
Bo (precious). And she was Mrs Blarsingdale. A very western name on a very
oriental person. She lived in the other wing on the 9<sup>th</sup> floor. They
talked very little at first, Anandi and Mrs Blarsingdale, mainly about dogs.
But they fell into an easy rhythm, meeting every day around 5 in the evening.
Chok and Bo walked ahead of them,
waddling grandly at an imperial pace even when off their leash. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> In a few weeks, Anandi was calling her by
her Chinese name – Lien, which meant lotus. Aai had suggested she should call
her Lien Didi – but Anandi had vetoed it as odd-sounding - and anyway she’s not
my Didi (older sister) she’s my Friend, she said firmly to her Aai. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> On their walks, Anandi would talk a lot
and Mrs Blarsingdale would listen much, smiling, nodding, asking her briefly
worded questions in her chopped-up Singapore English: “why for say that?” or
the slightly breathless: “andthen?”
Anandi would fill her in about the Singapore American School that she
went to, in which, confusingly, even the Singaporeans spoke like Americans and
she could spend an entire school day without having understood a single thing
that she heard and saw. Not words, not tones, not expressions, not even
gestures. The school counselor had wondered, in a report to her parents, if she
was Slow. Mrs Blarsingdale had doubled over and laughed at that, like a little
girl. Anandi had then asked her age. She was 25. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> She was the prettiest, best dressed person
Anandi had ever met in India or in Singapore. Shorts, leather skirts, belts,
enormous watches, boots, flipflops with big flowers on them, rectangular hoop
earrings, square bangles – funky stuff (but that word didn’t exist then – it
was called ‘go-go’ or ‘psychadelic’, back in ‘seventies Singapore). Anything she wore looked terrific on Lien;
Anandi marveled at this silently. “Did your mother always let you wear these
things? Does your husband like them?” Anandi had asked, and Mrs Blarsingdale
had smiled and asked her what kind of dogs they had back in India. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Anandi’s mother was pleased with this new
big sister friend she’d made. And on the day that Mrs Blarsingdale invited
Anandi to go see her apartment and her clothes, her mother nodded yes from the
balcony, seven stories up, when Anandi had shouted up in delight asking if she
could go. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The apartment smelt of incense and dogs,
with an undertone of cigarette smoke. “Does Mr Blarsingdale smoke?” Anandi
asked. No, she had nodded vaguely. “Do you smoke, then?” – and Mrs Blarsingdale
had said with a solemn face – “I tell you secret - Chok and Bo smoke. Chain smokers they are.”
The image was so funny that they’d laughed hard enough for the dogs to bark in
alarm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> One wall of the living room was fully
covered, ceiling to floor, with a
blow-up of her Lien’s face in black and white. That was the first thing that you
saw when you entered. The next thing you saw was the TV cabinet, which was in
black and white checks that became small and big, big and small - making your
eyes feel all wheely – Anandi had later told her mother. The transistor radio
could be worn like an enormous pink bangle around your arm. And the telephone –
she’d only ever seen black ones, and maybe a red one and a white one once in
India – was a fluorescent green, with pink flower-power stickers all over it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The bedroom had red and pink satin throw cushions
everywhere. There was a mirror on the ceiling and no furniture except an
enormous bed, on which Mrs Blarsingdale invited her to sit. Anandi politely
declined, but she insisted. When Anandi did sit on it, she was immediately
engulfed by the mattress and gently tossed about. It was the first time she’d
ever seen or even heard of a waterbed. The more she struggled to sit up on it,
the more the bed bounced her around. With a straight face, Mrs Blarsingdale
asked pretend-severely: “Come on, sit up, sit down like a lady, why are you
rolling about like this?” Then, with a grin, she gave Anandi a hand to help her
get out of the clutches of the waterbed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The second bedroom was not a bedroom at
all. It was a walk-in closet of huge proportions. Dresses, suits, pants, hung
pressed up against each other in long queues along the walls on hangers. A
rotating thing, like the one you saw in clothes stores, held belts and watches.
Jewellery hung on a panel of tiny hooks and overflowed from baskets on a
dresser. Rows of footwear sat neatly in the longest sloping shoe-shelf that
Anandi had seen anywhere outside a shoe shop. A big Chinese lacquered vanity
case, the only old thing in the house, stood propped open by its mirror. It
held several paintboxes of make-up. Anandi took it all in with a slow 360
degree turn. Mrs Blarsingdale giggled and held a soft white hand under Anandi’s
chin – “Close your mouth, or fly go in.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Every time that she visited, Lien would
urge Anandi to try on her clothes, her belts, her shoes…but Anandi just
couldn’t. Her mother had told her not to overstep her welcome; and she herself,
once she’d held a few clothes and trinkets against herself, had decided that
they looked yukky on her. Only Mrs Blarsingdale could wear them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The kitchen door was pasted over with a
poster of Snoopy dancing, and the words ‘Feeling Groovy’ above his head. The
lettering glowed in the dark, and Anandi waited for when she would be invited to
see this and all of the other wonders of this apartment at night. They would
drink tea in Mrs Blarsingdale’s little kitchen balcony, taking turns to sit either
in the swing chair that looked like a giant American football, or in the
turquoise blue bean bag. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Chok and Bo, the two potentates, sat on
their own tasseled cushions in this
balcony. With the Beejees or the Eagles
playing on the small cassette player in the kitchen, they’d watch the world go
by below. They would see the fat Malaysian taxi driver with his too-tiny prayer
cap, the Chinese grocer and his wife unloading their little truck, beefy white
people, forever going in or out of the swimming pool, Indians coming home
loaded with shopping bags from Mustafa’s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> On Wednesdays they would turn up the music
loud, to drown out the intermittent, muffled gunshots from the Botanical Gardens
nearby. Wednesday was the day for ‘monkey population control’ as the Singapore
government called it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Sometimes, Anandi wouldn’t see Mrs
Blarsingdale and the dogs downstairs for a few days. She’d fret about the
house, and Aai would say “You know her well enough now, go upstairs and find
out where she is – ask her if she’s unwell.” But when Anandi did ring her
doorbell, sometimes there’d be no answer and sometimes she’d open the door a
crack and say “I’m little busy, Mr Blarsingdale is here.” Maybe she has her
Period, Anandi told her mother, a condition that she had only recently learnt
about. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> A few days later, Anandi would see her and
the dogs in the garden again. They’d walk together and Anandi would fill her in
on the latest crimes of her tormentor in school, one Matt Danielson; she had
begun to understand the American accent well-enough to know when she was being
called names. As for baseball, she’d set a record of sorts, never having
connected her bat with the ball in school even once. At that, Mrs Blarsingdale
had said, with unusual vehemence, “What so great about hitting ball with round
bat. All this Matt Danielson type American boys, baseball hit them in head when
little – so they become mean and stupid.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Whenever they met after one of these gaps,
Mrs Blarsingdale would have something new to show her. She’d invite her up to
see new clothes or a tiny new 9-inch counter-top TV for the kitchen, or abalone
earrings from Australia. And when they settled down with their tea in the
balcony, Anandi would realize how much she missed this when Mrs Blarsingdale
was busy. But she didn’t have the words to tell her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> On one such afternoon on the balcony,
Anandi looked below to see her mother’s Indian friend and neighbour who lived
on the 11<sup>th</sup> floor, Chandra Aunty, gesturing urgently to her. She was
also shouting something that Anandi couldn’t hear up on the 9<sup>th</sup>
floor. She said a quick bye to Mrs Blarsingdale and hurried down, where Chandra
Aunty was waiting near the lift. Pushing her back into the lift, she asked
rapidly “Why were you in that appartment? How do you know her? Does your mother
know you were there,” as the lift rose 7<sup>
</sup>stories up. When Anandi’s mother opened the door, Chandra Aunty
pushed importantly past, settled into a chair, signaled the Tamil maid to get
her water quickly, and asked Anandi to go to her room, as they wanted to talk
about Something. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> From her room, Anandi caught parts of a
sentence: “God knows how many Mr Blarsingdales…” And then a brittle sounding
word: “Call-girl.” She thought she must
look it up in her dictionary. When Chandra Aunty left, her mother told her what
it meant, trying hard to explain why it also meant that she couldn’t be friends
with Mrs Blarsingdale anymore; but that Mrs Blarsingdale wasn’t an evil person
either. It was a facts-of-life conversation in which nothing made sense. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> From then on, for the next few weeks, she
simply avoided going into the balcony during Chok and Bo’s walk time. She would
now be careful not to go to the lift in the other wing, taking the stairs when
she had to go to a birthday party on the 6<sup>th</sup> floor there. Once she’d seen them from 7 stories up and
waved her book at Mrs Blarsingdale, miming ‘I-have-to-study’, pulling a fake
regretful face…and had felt sick to the stomach. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Months passed, the smell of incense, dogs
and cigarettes almost forgotten. She heard the Wednesday garden gunshots
clearly now, unmuffled by the Beegees. Her stories of Matt Danielsen’s fresh
crimes and, most importantly, how she now had Periods, remained untold. Mrs
Blarsingdale was now just someone Anandi didn’t speak about and had to
avoid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Till the day that she read the notice at
the Chinese grocer’s: <i>Missing: Grey
Pekinese, answering to the name of Chok. Finder will be rewarded. Contact Mrs
Blarsingdale, 9<sup>th</sup> flr, Wing B.
<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Anandi
had run home, cheeks aching with unshed tears, heart pounding as she jumped
into the lift. She could almost hear her mother saying a firm No even before
she asked if she could go see Mrs Blarsingdale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> But Aai had stood very still for a few
seconds after Anandi had sobbed out the news of the missing Chok. She had then
picked up the house keys and gone with Anandi up to the 9<sup>th</sup> floor.
Mrs Blarsingdale opened the door, eyes swollen, a tissue held to her nose, car
keys in one hand. “I look for Chok in Bukit Timah Road today,” she said
briefly, as they headed out. They got into her little green Datsun, the lone
Pekinese Bo getting in quietly besides her in the front, Anandi and Aai getting
in at the back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> She drove slowly down the thickly wooded
road and parked where the road forked into three. Without a word to one
another, they fanned out into the paths. And above the persistent whine of the
Singapore palm-beetle, they raised their voices together, the three women
calling: Chokkkk, Chokky, good boy, Chokk-Chokk, Chokku, come home, come home,
come to Mamma. Anandi’s voice shrill and urgent, Mrs Blarsingdale’s now hoarse
from the crying, and Aai calling out, clear and reassuring, “Don’t worry Lien,
we’ll find him soon…he’ll come home.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Gouri
Dange (Caferatti – Stories at the Coffee Table)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-39756815414896809302018-11-10T05:00:00.002-08:002018-11-10T05:00:31.841-08:00Chapter 20 and Epilogue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">20<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
Man in the Moon<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1usgzL6ujfPvHZNJYbNWh8AQGaskVtwFxyaac3W704oZ-Hh2C4ixst66bh_JzmYxFJT0wVhaAxOsGJnIRQZVx-0JONYc-Lw-LVfkpZPNCWzFrBLR_QNfrM6rdEO-EHfUnNVpZ3WtuQ7k/s1600/Ch20+kimu+yoyo+yard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1usgzL6ujfPvHZNJYbNWh8AQGaskVtwFxyaac3W704oZ-Hh2C4ixst66bh_JzmYxFJT0wVhaAxOsGJnIRQZVx-0JONYc-Lw-LVfkpZPNCWzFrBLR_QNfrM6rdEO-EHfUnNVpZ3WtuQ7k/s320/Ch20+kimu+yoyo+yard.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLN96-aqAy1FQCJ8vm3IXe-qEtqP5AV1Fjwv9614kqgD3Fcw0RkLRyWDhFXfFyCV4DMXv3xi3JG-_U4SDwkkZDEDw_S1UQfdzUGIOU4ioCJsU5_s03ek9Z-0c1DGkZsRvyD40DX6bpIyk/s1600/Ch20yoyo+in+the+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLN96-aqAy1FQCJ8vm3IXe-qEtqP5AV1Fjwv9614kqgD3Fcw0RkLRyWDhFXfFyCV4DMXv3xi3JG-_U4SDwkkZDEDw_S1UQfdzUGIOU4ioCJsU5_s03ek9Z-0c1DGkZsRvyD40DX6bpIyk/s1600/Ch20yoyo+in+the+moon.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">A <i>sarakleli samaadhi</i>
to a <i>saraklela</i> Yoyo. Appropriately disorderly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">***<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">EPILOGUE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Objects in the Mirror<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim7m9i4Ldk5hvDd6MvchhBgj_5mzRCUn4uRu9eaMK2b-kv3wt8RhDXwNIVJoy7KsV-g66opQAagACrb96yXeIaMR3FrzIYl2juS5IX9W9gtROeBggWM0etPuU9YeDUl5RKwqkKyo5DyXg/s1600/LastEpilogue+rear+view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="719" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim7m9i4Ldk5hvDd6MvchhBgj_5mzRCUn4uRu9eaMK2b-kv3wt8RhDXwNIVJoy7KsV-g66opQAagACrb96yXeIaMR3FrzIYl2juS5IX9W9gtROeBggWM0etPuU9YeDUl5RKwqkKyo5DyXg/s320/LastEpilogue+rear+view.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-no-proof: yes;">This picture </span></i><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"> 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.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .9pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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: </span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE MUCH CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR TO BE.<i> <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: .9pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-78406476044468065112018-10-31T05:43:00.001-07:002018-10-31T06:03:04.738-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 19 Two Long Breaths<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">19<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Two Long Breaths<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">In<i> The Tibetan Book of
Living and Dying</i>, there are some descriptions about the outer signs of the
inner journey that has begun, when a person is dying. I had not read the book
then, but later I could see how Yoyo began to display so many of those signs…he
became inward, detached from us, apparently staring vacantly, looking at you,
and through you. Sometimes he wanted to simply disappear, by trying to find a
place where we would not see him – this was not one of his old tricks of
vanishing justforfun and waiting for us to find him. This was a quiet,
determined, exit strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">One day he managed to scramble and scrape himself slowly into
the small space between the back of the fridge and the wall, pulling wires,
sitting frighteningly close to the exposed parts of the electric arrangements
of the back of the fridge. I found myself much less patient than Tatsat, with
this. In a bid to tell myself that this was the usual crazy-Yoyo behaviour, I
would uselessly shout (he was totally deaf by now) at him to stop it, and try
to pull him out, because it seemed like a dangerous place to go, what with
possible sparking, wires, heat from the fridge. Tatsat would also be worried
about this, but would move the entire fridge and give him space, rather than
pull him out of there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Yoyo now began to eat less and less, living on virtually
nothing for some weeks. We had decided firmly not to involve saline and other
such feeds. We would just put water in his mouth with a dropper, which he would
simply not swallow – it would trickle out of the other side of his mouth. But
he would sit up and take himself down the three steps to the yard when he
needed to pee. Then he took to remaining in the yard in a patch of sun. We had
always loved his ‘basmati chawal’ fur smell when he was young and healthy. Now
his mouth and body began to let off what anyone would call a bad smell, but
which to us became precious in itself, his smell, he-is-still-alive smell. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Almost all of Yoyo’s fans and victims dropped by, through
this time, to say hi to him and to silently say goodbye in their minds. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Mathangi’s
last moment with him, days before he passed away and she was visiting Pune, is
etched in my mind. She had said her goodbyes to him, but as she wheeled her bag
away down the walkway outside my gate, she turned around and came back in, to
sit by him, prone in the sun in the yard. He registered it all, with his eyes
and all of his now frail self. He had stopped wagging his tail or doing that
imperious bark and sharp eyed look to make his slaves and staff like Tatsat and
Mathangi keep petting him; his body was now over sensitive to touch, and
Mathangi’s hand hovered lightly over him for what would be their last communion
with each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Then suddenly one day, miraculously, he began to eat, walk
about, the smell receded, he came upstairs to the bedrooms and sprang on to the
highish bed, and even gave us a little display of his yappy-happy days. He had
not pooped for over ten days, as he had eaten nothing. Now he marched out and
took a nice dump. Tatsat, the staunch atheist, had apparently told himself that
he would believe there is a god if Yoyo got better. For a month after that, it
did seem like Yoyo was simply back, almost in full form, albeit a slightly
ratty-tatty version of himself. He even produced some new vocalizations,
surprising us with some kind of caw-caw and cluck-cluck that we had never heard
before, when he rolled on the bed in sheer mischief like in the old days. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Friends who enquired after him, were surprised at this turn
of events. As Yashoda put it, “Ok! So he is really that kind of <i>‘ghatta ajoba’</i> who has plenty of life
left in him even when everyone thinks he is on his way out.” ‘Ghatta ajoba’! It
means a tightly-knit grandfather! One that does not unravel easily, who ticks
on to a ripe old age. We loved the idea, and saw it as a sign that we were
going to have more time with Yoyo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">But his brief revival and revitalization that we were witnessing,
was the proverbial last brightening of the flame before it went out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">During this time, I went to Goa to visit a friend and explore
some possible work. It was September and raining. I was sitting with my friends
David and Charmayne in a small porch of the unassuming press club of Aldona.
With three other friends of theirs who I had never met before. There was a call
from Tatsat. I stepped out into the shabby yet comforting porch of the
structure. Yoyo had passed away right in Tatsat’s lap. He had been quiet and
feeble during the day, and had just taken two large breaths and let go of his
life at night fall. Tatsat was having him buried in our backyard – ‘deep deep
down in the earth so I can just forget him, never think of him again, never
miss him,’ he said in utter and abject grief. Sitting among friends and new
acquaintances, far away, it was comforting to not feel the searing pain that
Tatsat was experiencing. Just the empty feeling of a door clanging shut
somewhere between Yoyo and this world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">It is surely a measure of Yoyo’s place in many lives, that
our neighbours sent food for Tatsat on the day that Yoyo passed away and for
the next day, just like we do when a human family member dies, and it is
expected and understood that you will be too distraught to cook and feed
yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYTF8PyF4LGAV6El72XJ333siMWZatEkNijNx2aNJyWhukEb6GobfifxEYzVug0NBTNy7268ZDdaSFfyqZOc-awncoRRrHSILbhk_eG0iMNC3LiB8zQPJDhl7tz_wipeSApN-3SHorG8/s1600/yoyo+tatsat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYTF8PyF4LGAV6El72XJ333siMWZatEkNijNx2aNJyWhukEb6GobfifxEYzVug0NBTNy7268ZDdaSFfyqZOc-awncoRRrHSILbhk_eG0iMNC3LiB8zQPJDhl7tz_wipeSApN-3SHorG8/s320/yoyo+tatsat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-61933590202229837362018-10-18T17:33:00.001-07:002018-10-18T17:33:27.623-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 18<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">18<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">That yelp when you rough-housed with his fore-legs - it was a
sure sign that Yoyo was now heading towards that place called ageing. He also
now refused to be carried, even for fun. Something hurt – either his ribcage,
or shoulder. There was nothing wrong as such...he was just displaying some
early signs. Another sign was that he began to take medications calmly. Some
vitamins and sometimes some tummy meds, or calcium, or his deworming. Elaborate
ruses like pedhas, and hollow kababs filled with the meds, or crushed tablets
mixed in honey and quickly smeared on to his gums...all those constantly
reinvented stratagems that we had come up with over the years, were not needed
anymore. It was a mellowing that had the ring of slowing-down. While this made
life a whole lot easier, it was one more
of those early intimations of his getting old and of course of his mortality,
that you had allowed to enter your mind only for a few seconds and then
dismissed as preposterous – Yoyo, old? Ha! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">He would now enjoy much less boisterous massages, objecting
if you pressed too hard, and would be happiest when Tatsat would softly massage
his paws. If I tried it, he would grab his hand away with a ‘You don’t know
how’ expression. Or it was also out of my old habit of checking his paws for
ticks, which he didn’t like me doing. (Our joke was that the ticks were pets
that he kept, and probably had pet-names for them too. He would be that
reluctant to let you take them out. However, once in a while, he would
mysteriously leave a bloated tick in the middle of a room, with his spit and teeth
marks on it. You could have felt him all over for ticks and never felt this
large one; and yet there it was, clearly pulled out by him when he felt he
wanted to rid himself of it.) Overall, I was always the bad cop, so he had less
faith in my intentions than he had in Tatsat’s intentions. When Tatsat picked up a paw to massage, he
would flatten out with a sigh, and let him press the pads of his feet. Somehow,
Tatsat knew that this is what he needed, and how best to do it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Another sign that he was ageing, and we were getting tuned to
this, was that we kept a tiny envelope in a small drawer of a little cabinet,
on which my motley collection of icons gifted to me by various friends, was
kept - Ganesh, Datta (him with the four dogs and a cow), Laxmi, Haji Malang,
and Our Lady of Lourdes and St Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of animals).
The envelope said ‘Yoyo SOS med’. An identical envelope sat in my wallet, and
one in the glove compartment of the car. This was because the vet one day
(after managing to muzzle him and do an x-ray and examine him) declared that he
had a slightly enlarged heart, now. Part of the ageing process, he said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">That word again...that tended to bounce away from us, as it
didn’t seem to apply to Yoyo at all. What made us take him in to the vet to be
looked at, is that we had been on one of our picnics - where too, he had waded
around in the water of a lake, scrambled atop and sat on a large rock like a
mermaid (albeit a hairy one), and as usual, marched off on to the main road
well above us, one fine moment when he decided it was time to go home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">However, he had suddenly laid down, on the edge of the road,
and his tongue looked bluish. A few other picnickers who had come to say hello
to him, asked us if he was a very old dog, and us, in full denial mode, had
laughed and said nooo, he must be just about....eight...To which they said,
hmm, ageing dog. We realised we were taking Yoyo’s robust health too much for
granted, and had gone to the vet the next day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now the SOS meds (sorbitrate) were shown to all the
stakeholders in the Yoyo Enterprise: maids, walkers, sitters, relatives,
neighbours, drop-in friends, for when we may be away and he may display the
same symptoms. However, we never had to use them, his tongue never appeared
blue again, and he lived on for a good 5 years after this. And did not die of
an enlarged heart. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh56tDRrRLdB0QVbmtwOXQLT3xUaIzxVSkzUGeFV-W-2WDVu1oLmcH9fG4UoNOLkAqav0HTz_ZMNpvwhjUrt1kArl9IH7RpDhHsVnC0QpvW2nXCXjaMovlV6Co6WlFzdOaoUSUEjbA5awA/s1600/Yoyo+SOS+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="1032" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh56tDRrRLdB0QVbmtwOXQLT3xUaIzxVSkzUGeFV-W-2WDVu1oLmcH9fG4UoNOLkAqav0HTz_ZMNpvwhjUrt1kArl9IH7RpDhHsVnC0QpvW2nXCXjaMovlV6Co6WlFzdOaoUSUEjbA5awA/s320/Yoyo+SOS+pic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo began to fade so imperceptibly. First we noticed how his
coat, always a thick double or triple layered thing, which needed trimming and
thinning in the summers, began to thin out. His pink skin began to show from
the thick, short, soft first coat, nearest the skin. The second layer of longer
hair became more scattered. The outer longer coat of waves and curls was now
thinning out too. His super-long eyelashes, which were intriguingly like the
end of a silk sari – with the first part thick, then thin connecting strands
and a whole other long set of lashes, was now down to only the usual short
ones. The thick silky fringe from his forehead (meant to keep out the snow, in
his native West Highland) hardly grew out anymore. His paw and leg fur, which
gave his legs the thick rectangular non-tapering look, much like a polar bear
cub, was now scantier. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Always a grooming enthusiast, he now didn’t enjoy it so much;
perhaps the combs and brushes felt too harsh on his skin. We used the
rubber-glove with the short little bumps on it, which worked to groom and
massage him a little. It was easier to comb him with a very broad toothed
rounded off wooden comb now. However, he would stalk off soon, when he had had
enough. He had stopped climbing on to the bed or even the low divan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">For years I had cussed and cribbed about how I could NEVER
have pretty divan, bolster and cushion covers because my dogs would simply
colonize them. Once in a while, I would get hassled enough with this to keep a
separate brand new beautiful set that I would put on when expecting guests. For
a few turns I would remember to take them off as soon as people left, but all
this efficiency and house-proudness would fall by the wayside soon, and that
set too would get Yoyofied. Woven sheets from Sikkim, Indigo from Kutch, Jaipur
prints…all of them went that way. During the last few months of his life, I had
got myself a vibrant thick cotton sheet with giant Dahlias on it, from a place
called Sundari Silks, in Chennai. I loved that sheet and would not let the dogs
anywhere near it. And yet, somehow, sometime, it became Yoyo’s. Here it is,
faded and much-washed, and covering him during his last weeks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuf9hgKkRBoP-m4BnNrl-atoC11c7UfZsGX0DoMV-skCXtR_Z1KK77GVjnwAIVqqSaqaPVT7K8RA5I9nxf9v1e3S2ZgCkX4hFbKXJV9WkKxX55yTgydzXMLj9-vbCO7iECzlqMk5ip_-8/s1600/yoyo+and+flower+sheet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuf9hgKkRBoP-m4BnNrl-atoC11c7UfZsGX0DoMV-skCXtR_Z1KK77GVjnwAIVqqSaqaPVT7K8RA5I9nxf9v1e3S2ZgCkX4hFbKXJV9WkKxX55yTgydzXMLj9-vbCO7iECzlqMk5ip_-8/s320/yoyo+and+flower+sheet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Box, to be laid out as a separate inset in
this chapter layout. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 4.0pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; padding: 0in;">When Yoyo became Skin Horse<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">–</span><i style="color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </i><span style="color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">From</span><i style="color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> The Velveteen Rabbit</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; padding: 0in;">“What is REAL?”
asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery
fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that
buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”</span><span style="color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 19.4pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0in;">“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin
Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long,
long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 19.4pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0in;">“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 19.4pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0in;">“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was
always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 19.4pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0in;">“Does it happen all at once, like being wound
up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; padding: 0in; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #4a4a4a; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; padding: 0in;">“It doesn’t
happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time.
That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp
edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real,
most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose
in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because
once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: none; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div align="justify">
</div>
</div>
Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-28742490407802618262018-10-02T02:10:00.001-07:002018-10-02T02:10:14.670-07:00Chapter 17 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Chapter 17 <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo? Old? Comeon!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-FDytQEVq_qXCMXbtN5W-ZXdzE4CeX2qdsB-jQpEIpvkeUdwYGns61h3OQNTfad35b2y_Jg4nwHG7SShBmFUruIs_nQCBRdaH8ZP0rEtIQVsN2u8HIx4zuLdo-57LwtfWm4IzlqbyHCI/s1600/yoyo+going+school.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-FDytQEVq_qXCMXbtN5W-ZXdzE4CeX2qdsB-jQpEIpvkeUdwYGns61h3OQNTfad35b2y_Jg4nwHG7SShBmFUruIs_nQCBRdaH8ZP0rEtIQVsN2u8HIx4zuLdo-57LwtfWm4IzlqbyHCI/s1600/yoyo+going+school.jpg" /></a></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-23655834796263588292018-09-21T07:08:00.001-07:002018-09-21T07:08:13.069-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 16 - Catch Me If You Can<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Chapter
16<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo was ridiculously overconfident about roads.
Off leash, his thing was to walk bang in the middle of any road, even in the
colony we lived in, with the fearlessness and determination of an armoured
tank. You could scream yourself blue in the face for him to move, if a car or
larger vehicle approached. He would just keep walking, and the vehicle driver
would either with an understanding smile or an irritated frown, drive the
vehicle partially on the verge, almost in the gutter, to pass Yoyo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">When we took him out to forested areas a few
miles from home, he would have plenty of fun exploring, and in the early years
would shadow the older Snoopy, walking as if they were both tethered together
like a pair of horses, much to Snoopy’s irritation. But once puberty and
independence blossomed in full technicolour in Yoyo’s mind and body, these
outings meant that if it got too hot, or he unilaterally felt that the
picnic/exploration was over, he would simply start walking in the middle of the
road and find his way, over quite a distance, unwaveringly to where the car was
parked. These were country roads, but the occasional rattling ST bus would
thunder down them, or a gang of speeding motorcyclists could have easily
flattened him. His huge enjoyment of the car ride as well as the wide open
spaces or a water body was what made us go on these trips, in spite of this
dangerous pig-headedness of his that would spring up towards the end of the
outing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDTbLqCJc-B867D6Ru3axZhwn1b8o5yh03QBHCONruE76f3pEvwo3ynrEmDw_3Il2v30UrHVmPYfSEh4lb_s0TD7v-exfh6ILQoYm2_bx9TAPRXDYGjPNXJ06niwGjnU3MS1WFeZDnivQ/s1600/Yoyo+in+water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDTbLqCJc-B867D6Ru3axZhwn1b8o5yh03QBHCONruE76f3pEvwo3ynrEmDw_3Il2v30UrHVmPYfSEh4lb_s0TD7v-exfh6ILQoYm2_bx9TAPRXDYGjPNXJ06niwGjnU3MS1WFeZDnivQ/s320/Yoyo+in+water.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
On one particular outing, he played the opposite trick. The cool cloudy day on
which we had set out, had gotten suddenly very sunny and hot, and we decided to
return home. He as well as Jugnu had had a great time in a shallow flowing
stream, and he was in no mood to end the day out so abruptly. Jugnu reluctantly
but obediently came out, stood near the car, let himself be dried off, and
jumped into the car. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">When we
had picked up our things and headed to the car, Yoyo disappeared. We called, we
hid and hoped he would emerge, we whacked the bushes to flush him out like they
do on fox hunts. Simply no sign of him. I tried the Imcountingtillfive thing;
still nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">I even wondered briefly and absurdly whether
he had got back into the water, gone under, and was holding his breath, just to
mess with us. Finally, we had to start the car and pretend to leave, slowly,
when he appeared out of nowhere. Obviously the little rat had been watching us,
hiding somewhere, all the while. The minute we stopped the car and opened the
door, he crawled deep under the car, and sat there, completely inaccessible. As
we stood under the blazing overhead sun, he simply made himself comfortable
under the shade of the car, and would not come out from underneath. We pleaded.
We commanded. We issued warnings. At one point, we lay flat on the ground like
a pair of mechanics, begging, cajoling, threatening him to come on out from
there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">He simply lay there watching us, and if I
remember right, even fell into a light refreshing doze as we hyperventilated
there trying to get him out. At one point, we cut down a long stout stick from
a tree, and jabbed at him. To this his
response was to give the stick a good hard bite. Thinking quickly, I tried to
pull the stick out with him attached to it, but when he felt the drag, he
simply let go, and I fell backwards from my haunch-sitting position, in a
classical Tom-and-Jerry way. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Finally we decided to try to call his bluff by
getting into the car, closing the doors, calling out 'bye Yoyo'. It didn’t
work. We then turned on the engine, quite sure that this would flush him out.
But we were dealing with a past master of Who-blinks-first, and Yoyo simply
stayed put. I then got off, and guided Tatsat to start to drive forward a few
inches verrrry slowly…hoping this would scare Yoyo out. He actually rolled over
under it; we had to stop at once.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Cruel you say? But we were now desperate, as
we had been out there for over half hour in the come-on-out-please mode under a
blazing sky. As the car moved slowly, he actually got sort of rolled a little,
under the car, but he still did not budge. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">However, as the car had now moved forward
about 8 inches, I could get hold of Yoyo’s tail and pull him out. (Strangely,
for such an uppity character, Yoyo never minded his tail being grabbed, and
would sometimes find it extremely funny and urge you to pull his tail.) I gave
him two very solid whacks on his rump, put the leash around him and almost
hurled him into the car with frustration, fatigue and fury. While at most times
his cartloads of personality was something we not only lived with, but quite
cherished, on some days, on-the-ground, it was exhausting.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Once
inside the car, he took his seat (after the usual wrestle with me for the front
passenger seat) with a grin splitting his face, and glanced at us impatiently,
as we staggered back inside the car, as if to say: “Comeon, what’s keeping you,
let’s go.”</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1bCea6f62g0BuK9Bpv2erTLQHxA4OmXVQ9Nyv_cLTcP_w5lvw6Uj2ITpf0lCityl3UXDorhnJd0KcwyWhhBbT45LEOo_40Vyvk7xoFOY6hyphenhyphenitza9_jmk1bK8eWKPtSzmOc_cS8sdYXc/s1600/yoyo+ch+16+picnic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="361" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG1bCea6f62g0BuK9Bpv2erTLQHxA4OmXVQ9Nyv_cLTcP_w5lvw6Uj2ITpf0lCityl3UXDorhnJd0KcwyWhhBbT45LEOo_40Vyvk7xoFOY6hyphenhyphenitza9_jmk1bK8eWKPtSzmOc_cS8sdYXc/s320/yoyo+ch+16+picnic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-70120056339686821252018-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:002018-09-13T19:29:08.905-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 15 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alliances
– Easy and Uneasy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is amazing, though, that none of Yoyo’s fan-victims took a dislike to
him. They referred to him with all kinds of names, like Chakram, Paagal,
Werewolf, Holy Terror, Sannki, Crackpot…and Vijaya’s favourite name for him:
Chyappterr - all of which reflected in some way the unpredictability of him, as
well as the effect that his towering personality had on them. Even their
friends’ friends’ friends heard of his many shenanigans. They would, gleefully
or with awe, recall and report all the newly minted and absurd atrocities that
he heaped on them. These stories became part of the folklore that formed itself
around Yoyo, with much, much affection. For them too, after he passed away,
some of the delicious arbitrary madness suddenly disappeared from their lives.<br />
My friends Ira and Vaishali entered the Yoyo equation later, and were quickly
recruited by him as part of his retinue. He adored them quite unabashedly,
having mellowed now into a dog who did not have to show attitude at first and
then let people in slowly. He simply made them his own on the very first day
that he met them, sitting with his ownership arm on them or turning into that
silly puddle, all paws in the air, for a belly rub.<br />
There was another whole bunch of people, who simply did not like dogs and
steered clear of them. Yoyo managed to insinuate himself into their
consciousness too. He would come sit next to them and place one side of his
entire face along their thigh and nudge them with it. Sometimes he would even
sit alongside on the divan and place an elbow firmly on their lap, in a most
proprietorial way, and push his weight against them. After initially saying ‘Ay
go ya Yoyo,’ or asking me nervously if he was trying to shove them off the
divan, they soon got quite used to him and began to consider it quite a
privilege that Yoyo chose to come to them.<br />
Many of them would bemusedly tell their other friends: ‘I don’t know why, but
because of Yoyo, I am not scared of dogs.’ Or my friends David and Charmayne,
not pet people as such, became tuned in to the specialness of Yoyo. And would
make a stopover at my home on their way from Mumbai to Goa, as much to meet
Yoyo as to meet us. Once a month, the taciturn and busy electricity meter
reading man would always ask Yoyo’s permission to be let in near the meter box.
He would call out the question in deference, with a half-smile, ‘Yeu ka rey
baba?’ Yoyo would watch him without barking and would get a small pat on the
head from outside the gate.<br />
My friend and guru in counselling, psychotherapist Minnu, not a dog-person,
became one of his admirers, and had a special place in her heart for him. Yoyo
would return the compliment by stretching out behind and alongside her like a
bolster, with a contented sigh when she visited and sat on the divan. She knew
me just a little before Yoyo came into my life, and while I was training with
her in counselling. She later had no doubt in her mind that Yoyo was a soul
mate, who came along just when he and I both needed each other. Minnu
understood Yoyo’s special comet-like appearance in my life from the first time
that she met him, to the very last visit, when she said her farewells<br />
My father and Yoyo, was an uneasy alliance as flat-mates, when he came to stay
for a few months at a time, dividing his time between my home and my sister’s.
Never a dog lover, he had willy-nilly been co-habiting with dogs since we were
kids, and he was in a minority of 1 – the majority rule included my mother and
3 of us siblings and various dog-loving house help. So some manner of dog was
always around, and my father tried to be okay with it all. Now, however, he was
in his late eighties. He was afraid of falling, and there was Yoyo and Jugnu,
streaking across at the sound of a cat outside, or simply just sitting in the
way, all sprawled out. I kept them out in the yard as much as possible when he
was with me, but there were strange little interactions that were
unavoidable.<br />
For instance, my dad would pace inside the house after his lunch, what in
Marathi is called Shatapauli or a post-parandial 100 steps before lying down
for a nap. At this time, if Yoyo was indoors, he would have some esoteric
problem in his head with the swishing of my dad’s white pyjama legs as he
walked. Yoyo would suddenly, without a sound, get up and follow him in a kind of
stalking crouch, taking mock snaps at the flapping material. Luckily my father
would simply not notice the runt snapping at his heels silently. And one of us
would quickly head Yoyo off.<br />
During this time, Yoyo had briefly become a fussy non-commital eater. He would
go to his food, sniff it, and sit back, watching you archly, or he would simply
abandon it and go off. My father, ever the fussy nurturer when it came to
anyone’s eating habits, would come and report to me: “That dog hasn’t eaten.” I
would say “Ignore him, he’ll eat if he’s hungry. I will leave it there for 10
minutes and then put it away.”<br />
I was not going to be played by Yoyo over food, I had decided, and I also did
think that perhaps as he was now firmly in middle age, maybe his appetite was getting
smaller. Yet he would wait outside the kitchen for his food, so we would have
to serve it, in case he did eat. Someone would have to stand guard to see that
Jugnu, now a strapping young dog, didn’t help himself to a second round of
lunch. To this elaborate square-dance, got added my father’s step. He would
pace anxiously past the full food bowl every couple of minutes, and take peeks
to see if Yoyo had eaten yet. Now Yoyo, who was (surprisingly) always very
easy-going about who approached him while he was eating or touched his food,
would get a bit suspicious of my father’s motives, and rush possessively to his
plate, but then sit there and not eat it. This would almost trip my father, who
would let out a choice gaali, like Ay saalya, or the milder muttering, dambiss
ahay, or badmaash ahay (something like a rogue, a rascal).<br />
One day, I firmly firmly told my dad to simply stop obsessing on whether Yoyo
had eaten or not. He would offer some technical explanation about his concern:
‘flies will come’ or ‘it is meat, it will deteriorate and then if one of them
eats it they will fall sick’ etc. (My mother called him ‘health inspector’
because of his habit of playing food detective in the house after he retired.
He would check out the state of leftovers in the fridge, check if the milk and
dahi were covered properly, throw out old biscuits from tins, and would trot
out words like ptomaine poisoning, about which he would read up in The Lancet,
which he would read cover to cover in the British Library, though he was not a
medical field person at all!) But under all this, he was a worry-wart who
wanted everyone to eat well and on time and poop on schedule – his wife first,
then his kids, then his grandkids, and now even a dog who he didn’t even
particularly like.<br />
So I began to place Yoyo’s food on the half-landing of a small flight of stairs
to my bedrooms upstairs. This way, my dad couldn’t pace past it and examine it,
and Yoyo could play whatever yes-no-yes-maybe games he needed to play with his
food. One day, I saw my dad, sneaking, literally sneaking to that spot, not by
climbing the stairs, but by standing at a spot on the ground floor from where
he could reach out and check the contents of Yoyo’s dish. I found myself
exasperatedly saying, “Whyy do you need to check…let it BE. What if Yoyo comes
rushing at your hand? Or what if the food tips over on to your head, when
you’re checking from such a precarious spot?” We both ended up laughing at that
image, and he promised to let it be.<br />
However, I soon found that he would then secretly introduce a tiny piece of
sausage or salami that he had reserved from his breakfast, into Yoyo’s
abandoned meal, though there was already chicken mince in the food. This was
utterly to Yoyo’s satisfaction, as he had achieved a) Bringing some esoteric
element to his food ritual – the adding of ‘saamthing extra’ to induce him to
eat. b) Recruiting yet another baffled person into his valet-staff retinue,
this time my father, who wasn’t even remotely a fan!<br />
Jugnu too, would gamely take Yoyo's frosty attitude to him and give him a wide
berth. On some occasions, they would have to sit close in the car, which would
make Jugnu quite happy, like a fan forced into a small space with a
celeb.<br />
It was Jaya who discovered, that Yoyo, for all his esoteric rules of engagement
that we had all learnt to respect, surprisingly did not mind you passing close
to his food, or even moving his plate while he was eating. When he ate, he ate
slowly, ruminatively, with a faraway look in his eyes. It reminded me of the
way physically hard-working men and women eat when they break from work –
concentrating on the job in a single-minded way, to the exclusion of all other
distractions; but not eating greedily or with gusto. There is a certain
understated satisfaction rather than enjoyment in the act, never interrupted by
the more urban and urbane chatting, looking around, smiling…not at all a social
or sociable action; a more purposeful thing, without any social niceties. In a
quiet bubble, of well-earned food intake. When he ate rusk or the dog biscuits
that I made him, he would eat with that ‘khraau, khraau, khraau’ sound as he
munched – a sound that I simply love in any dog. Like Lord Emsworth enjoying
the sound of his sow, the Empress of Blandings, eating noisily at her food
trough, for me too, this sound has always been music to the ears.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-6146580392345416042018-09-06T20:16:00.001-07:002018-09-06T20:16:41.438-07:00Chapter 14 Yoyo-nama - Shifting the goal posts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span data-offset-key="3a8uq-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Chapter 14</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="aug1p-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Changing the goal posts - justforfun</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4693b-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Yoyo’s speciality was sabotaging any and every arrangement that you made for him if you went out of town. We never dared to keep him in a pet facility, because we were sure he would come up with something so totally unexpected, and find a way to run off. A friend’s beagle had done just that, never to be found again, and the idea terrified us. He was, over the years, simply better off in his own space, with a series of paid people or unsuspecting or brave friends who volunteered to house and dog-sit. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2lon8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">My going away meant that he would completely stop going out for walks, and yet not relieve himself in the little yard, as far as we could see. He just kept it all in, which was part tantrum and part laziness. It was something I feared he would have to pay for dearly, healthwise, as he grew older. Once I was gone, no one could (and Tatsat wouldn’t) take on the hard task of cajole-threatening him over things, whether it was walks, or nail clipping or medicines (though, thank god, he was a sturdy little fellow and rarely fell ill). </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9e2n4-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Yoyo would be saddish and sober when I was away, going all quiet as soon as any suitcase came out. But he would handle it fairly philosophically – no whining, moaning, barking or destruction once he was an adult. You see, that would be too obvious and unpolished a form of protest for the likes of him. He had a whole highly-imaginative armoury of disruptive acts that he could deploy when you were away. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8ksi9-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">So going out of town, even for a day or two, for me meant putting in place a series of arrangements in the house, involving a watchman-walker, a cook-feeder, friends and neighbours who would come to look him up and give him some warmth and love as well as put up with the convoluted and alternating love-cum-a-hard-time that he would hand out to them. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8qq99-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Young, unsuspecting Yashoda and Harini probably had the most ‘interesting and instructive’ time at Yoyo’s hands during one of my month-long vacations away. A whole lot of other people were kept on their toes and put through their paces by Yoyo over the years whenever I was away. (But more on that, later.)</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="2ft1r-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">He would change the goal-posts every time, and throw a googly ball too (to mix my sporting metaphors). And so, whatever elaborate arrangements I had made, with whatever combination of people for when I was away, there would always be an incident that involved calling in additional troops. This included simply refusing to go on walks with anyone for over 24 hours, so that those taking care of him could almost hear the backed-up pee and poo sloshing around in his system, but had to watch on helplessly. Serious man-hours would be spent in trying to trick him out of the gate. No one dared to simply let him loose out in the colony, to do his business, because perhaps I was the only person who could round him up if he decided to run about and stay just that one foot out of reach, playing catch-me-if-you-can. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="3glcl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Why not bung the wretch in a pet-sitting facility, you ask? I never dared to, frankly. Quite early in the day I had figured out that he would find devious and ingenious ways to somehow buck the system and escape or vanish. While Yoyo had the ability to take up a huge amount of space with his personality and by stretching his small body to tiger-like proportions, a la Hobbes, he also had the uncanny knack of becoming tiny and near invisible or transparent (this is why Mathangi began to call him ‘white-ghost’, and Charmayne called him the ‘shape-shifter’). He would hide most successfully when he wanted to, most times, except sometimes for a give-away tuft showing from somewhere. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9aal8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"> The vision of Yoyo Houdini-ing himself out of a pet-sitting place and taking off determinedly in search of home on completely unfamiliar streets, was a terrifying prospect – the friend whose dog had done just that, and was never to be found again, was haunted by that incident, as was the pet sitting facility. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="4c6k6-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">If there was a way to buck the system and do something outlandish, Yoyo would find it, this we knew. So in-house dog-sitting it had to be. That too came with its many complications and many unsuspecting victims. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="bs24t-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">In Yoyo’s head, there was a very clear-cut hierarchy of who he would and would not obey, I realized. When I travelled, leaving him to just the watchman, Parma and Vijaya to feed and walk, it could mean that he would scuttle all your best laid plans. Besides the refusal to come out for a walk, he would play bait-and-switch with them even over how and when he (and Snoopy, or later he and Jugnu) could be fed. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="fc5rr-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Or on one occasion, when there was no in-house caretaker, but a system of feeders and walkers in place, he decided to suddenly not allow any of them to approach the fridge at all, where his cooked food, meat, chappatis, etc were kept. Knowing him, it was not like he thought they were ‘outsiders’ against whose incursions he must protect our house. It only meant that he had thought up one more ruse to keep everyone on their toes and ensure that I get SOS calls in the middle of meetings or vacations or whatever thing I had dared to unleash myself and go to. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="dvlcl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">So on some days, I would get helpless calls when I was away, saying “Because you’re not there, Yoyo is not letting me approach the fridge to take out the cooker and make fresh food or approach the dry dog food tin.” Parma, the by-now resourceful watchman-walker-feeder had to learn to think on his feet. Per force, he would come up with some alternative food arrangement. The first time that Yoyo pulled this trick, Parma went out and bought dry dog food and fed them, carefully keeping the packet with himself, and not leaving it in the house, in case Yoyo decided to bar him from approaching the packet too. Sometimes he or Vijaya would get him chappatis out of their own meagre cash resources, or embarrassedly approach a tolerant neighbour and ask for some money for this, or cook something in their homes and bring it to feed the dogs. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5nlkh-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">When I returned, they would always report to me, deleting the expletives they no doubt must have had running through their heads, that after this bout of blocking them from the fridge, and them foraging for food for him from outside, Yoyo would then heartily eat what they served him and stalk off to take a large snooze under a bed or table. From this point on, he did not bother with who came in and out of the house. Now someone could trespass and take away the entire fridge for all he cared. The mission, of making people around wring their hands and dance around for solutions, had been accomplished. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="c75l8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I had long since given up locking our house when I went away, which would be open 24/7 so that the dogs could go in and out of the place, and the caretakers too could come and go, without the complication of door locks and keys, where or who to keep them with, the fear of Yoyo not letting people approach the front or back garden door, and any of those imponderables that he could suddenly mastermind and manifest. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="3405h-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Like all tyrants, Yoyo would change his rules and make you feel utterly stupid for doing so much bandobast for him. On some days when I was away, he would be sweet and completely sane and co-operative, and not pull any of these stunts. Quite soon, I found myself throwing in a dog-sitter into the mix, for when I needed to travel – even on short 2-day trips to Mumbai. He would happily, or at least quietly, go out for walks with these sitter-friends. Tatsat’s pleas and half-hearted attempts to be strict with him, he would in the beginning not pay any heed to, but once their bond deepened, he would agree to go out with him.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9252c-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">When Tatsat could not be here full-time, Yoyo had a slew of visiting temp staff-cum-fans. This was primarily four people, over the years. Jaya, my niece-daughter, who would stay sometimes, and house and Yoyo-sit when I travelled. Jaya took in her stride his many little rules and regulations. For instance, moving furniture meant that he would bite the leg of the chair or stool or table being moved, so she would be cautious about lifting a chair and never dragging it! </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="25a2c-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Mathangi was another recruit, when she visited from her stints in Mumbai, or Austin, or Chennai. He would be thrilled to have her around, but with her, there was that business of growling and fake-nipping at her pyjama leg if she came downstairs after lights-out and Yoyo had chosen to sleep downstairs. Mathangi would take everything upstairs, cold water, a snack, books, papers, anything that she might need from the pantry or fridge, to avoid Yoyo doing that white-ghost-attack on her. She too later learnt to tell him sharply to just stop-it, and he would then let it go. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6mrhj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Later there was a friend’s daughter, Harini, doing her MA here in Pune, who stayed for a couple of terms. She adored Yoyo, but had got his number and knew how to deal with him. While she indulged him, played with him, even dressed up his head hair in what she called a Yohawk, marked and respected every strange quirk of his, she dealt with him mostly with a firm hand when it came to him insisting on sleeping on her bed or hanging around her desk and asking to be petted, when she needed to concentrate on her reading and writing. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="ct218-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">They would have subtle, pitched battles, and she would find ways to keep him firmly out of the room, to which he most surprisingly conceded – surely a sign that Yoyo was ageing, mellowing. Or like all bullies, had learnt to recognize and respect stiff resistance when he encountered it. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6enc5-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">For one bout, of a month, Harini was joined by another friend Yashoda in my house, while I was away all of that time. Yashoda, he probably played fast-and-loose with, the most. She had not co-habited with a dog before, and certainly not a personality-packed fellow like Yoyo. In those 30 days he had ample opportunity to show them all his facets in technicolour. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a4lt4-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">He liked them both, but there was some degree of disorientation in his head, because Yashoda was housed in my room. Both Harini and Yashoda would not let him sleep there in the night. So he would come up with little acts of revenge. He did not de-bar her, as he would have the watchman and domestic help, from entering my room, but he would climb on the bed when she was away and dig it up, and even broke his usual excellent and unswerving potty-training to take a dump or a pee on the bed a couple of times. Both Harini and Yashoda and before them Mathangi, have been blessed with a neat round production of vomited food, specially upchucked for them in case they were slacking in their ministrations towards him. They all gamely mopped it up, knowing full well that he was not ill…and only being perverse. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="55c2k-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">He would be alternately sweet and then do something like this to them. Yashoda famously declared in complete exhaustion after a month at Yoyo’s hands: “Yoyo makes you feel like those women who are married to abusive men, you know…where they behave horribly with you, you never know if you’re displeasing them, but then suddenly they can be so damned sweet and sooo charming and so apologetic, that you forgive them everything, and hope that things are going to get better and the bad times have been put behind you, and that’s the time they begin to quietly prepare how they’ll give you a tough time again. And so the cycle of abuse begins again.”</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLaIQ_Bs_p-Cf9DQ2TojBiUTPXqoZXF7J2IUJ02vm6pOLD-BtLwIPsJ79Iar7S_64fH8D0H6_ODIj2lLRMvZgjwAThJOJZIsB-RZYMUBCc6GxbZdzytSVBIV6OUBvS7YMQhsA24r3cpjM/s1600/yohawk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLaIQ_Bs_p-Cf9DQ2TojBiUTPXqoZXF7J2IUJ02vm6pOLD-BtLwIPsJ79Iar7S_64fH8D0H6_ODIj2lLRMvZgjwAThJOJZIsB-RZYMUBCc6GxbZdzytSVBIV6OUBvS7YMQhsA24r3cpjM/s320/yohawk.jpg" width="238" /></a></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="55c2k-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;">
<span data-offset-key="55c2k-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9b7p5" data-offset-key="fghbe-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fghbe-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;">
<span data-offset-key="fghbe-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">(picture shows Harini and Yoyo - she styled his hair to look like a 'Yohawk-Mohawk' as she called it )</span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-10260776846815402162018-08-30T17:55:00.003-07:002018-08-30T17:56:23.615-07:00Chapter 13 Yoyo-nama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">A dose of
Yoyo-forte</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Overnight,
Yoyo had turned me and my life from vulnerable into fortified.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ESsAmHlA5vVGLI-EtkMxm74O888uBfNL21vp77Qeum30QyQIr35kCL92Cxn-ISJPsOKWUBmDqjywr9aRuIZ2bbQRHGwrR9rmae1HZPNj4g_2uJBfF6SqF0lQohIodxVDoquRtm5Q9Qw/s1600/snake+dp+2014.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ESsAmHlA5vVGLI-EtkMxm74O888uBfNL21vp77Qeum30QyQIr35kCL92Cxn-ISJPsOKWUBmDqjywr9aRuIZ2bbQRHGwrR9rmae1HZPNj4g_2uJBfF6SqF0lQohIodxVDoquRtm5Q9Qw/s320/snake+dp+2014.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-66316093963099084312018-08-23T19:51:00.000-07:002018-08-23T20:09:56.628-07:00Chapter 12 Yoyonama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Chapter 11 Yoyo-nama</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">The one
time that Yoyo got quite seriously knocked off his jaunty perch, was when we
suddenly let in a tiny new puppy into our lives. One winter, late evening, the
time when fireflies appear, I found a three-four week old mongrel puppy simply
waiting politely on my threshold, like someone who had appeared a little early
for his appointment. From where he appeared, remains a mystery. Snoopy had
recently passed away, and in spite of our resolve not to get any more dogs, we
simply could not turn away this tiny creature (who without any intimation,
proceeded to grow rapidly into a huge Collie-like fellow, towering easily a
foot over Yoyo. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYnGThit3gD_RlXtmdxPyB8QZgkYtPR7lcaGlHmmjKN2zTfVWR8ufvhPN6HXtO2S5eOdeR4ppp6NbyroznM3D71vXbRzzTj0QMDdy_HU_J0KKOT4ghFiKzK78JATN9mr1CkjFeYsRG-E/s1600/Jugnu+first+day+first+show+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYnGThit3gD_RlXtmdxPyB8QZgkYtPR7lcaGlHmmjKN2zTfVWR8ufvhPN6HXtO2S5eOdeR4ppp6NbyroznM3D71vXbRzzTj0QMDdy_HU_J0KKOT4ghFiKzK78JATN9mr1CkjFeYsRG-E/s320/Jugnu+first+day+first+show+002.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPcn2wxFNGOPJ62LheHJ_6NsAWf2vI5sp1eKLEOqBxXJ1iDG3g-AzQPT4j7hcgxN6aY9zmTt6op1vPo9I1ycA31wm7_N6P-AKaKvQCNZogz-fNVjJy9yp4mIFjOETrdxA5FIa-pZU5Uv8/s1600/jugnu+on+the+first+day.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="345" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPcn2wxFNGOPJ62LheHJ_6NsAWf2vI5sp1eKLEOqBxXJ1iDG3g-AzQPT4j7hcgxN6aY9zmTt6op1vPo9I1ycA31wm7_N6P-AKaKvQCNZogz-fNVjJy9yp4mIFjOETrdxA5FIa-pZU5Uv8/s320/jugnu+on+the+first+day.tif" width="267" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Yoyo was
out for a walk with Tatsat then, and when they returned, Yoyo took one
sniff-whiff of the tiny puppy, shrank from its overtures, and exaggeratedly
steered clear of him, skirting him widely and running into the house and
straight upstairs and on to Tatsat’s bed. The entire body language was so much
like Melvin, the Jack Nicholson character in <i>As Good as it Gets. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">When Yoyo
realised we had named this new entrant (Jugnu, which means firefly, as he had
appeared tiny, with eyes shining, in the twilight) and heard us talking in
terms of endearment to this new kid on the block, he stalked off to the narrow
back strip of the house, sat under the struts of a water tank, and stayed there
for ten full days. He was about 6 years old, then, and quickly turned into a
curmudgeon in front of our eyes, not letting the new dog anywhere near him, not
coming to us, and only staring out at us with one baleful, disappointed eye, from
under the water tank. We began referring to him as Melvin. ‘Has Melvin eaten?’ ‘Any
tail wags from Melvin?’ ‘Is Melvin willing to come out for a walk’? The answer,
most times, was No. The only time we heard any sound from him was when he would
growl at Jugnu if he tried to bat at him with one tiny paw, cajoling him to
come out and play, or worse, let him snuggle up!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"> Food bowls had to be slid across to Yoyo,
which he would half-heartedly eat. Getting him to go for walks involved
bullying him to get out and go. He kind
of came round, in 10 days, but proceeded to ignore Jugnu completely. Just like
Snoopy and him before, Yoyo and Jugnu too shared an uncommunicative, definitely
not playful relationship, rarely or never cuddling up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpFRTzSHp7uYQd7mvWQgth73Caf1CDwMbRqD63e1N3Z5F8q4IK7UfQbY_uUKTBTBzdkseD-nsnqgx7qPqYmB0H0ulA51rzeVx11WjsOaSzyOLnbigzl3H6vvpmzyN28j_HC9AZGJKsAgU/s1600/Bert+first+day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="236" data-original-width="354" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpFRTzSHp7uYQd7mvWQgth73Caf1CDwMbRqD63e1N3Z5F8q4IK7UfQbY_uUKTBTBzdkseD-nsnqgx7qPqYmB0H0ulA51rzeVx11WjsOaSzyOLnbigzl3H6vvpmzyN28j_HC9AZGJKsAgU/s320/Bert+first+day.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">A few
weeks later, we fostered another wandering puppy, and much to Yoyo’s horror and
utter disgust, kept him for several months.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_26" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 235.2pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 352.8pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Yoyo spent another few days sulking under the
water tank, and would snarl at Bertie, every opportunity that he got. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">While
Jugnu learnt to give Yoyo a wide berth, Bertie was one of those characters who
simply could not resist teasing and baiting Yoyo to try to get him off his high
horse. He would brush past him, or snipe jovially at his tail, or even push his
nose inside Yoyo’s ear and give a sharp yap and leap out of the way with a mad
grin splitting his fac. Sometimes he would irritate Yoyo merely by sitting at a
safe distance and stare in adoration at Yoyo, which of course Yoyo disliked
deeply. As Bertie grew taller than Yoyo, they would look ridiculously funny
together – Yoyo stiffly holding on to his dignity, while Bertie pranced over
him as if he was a low-slung hurdle to be cleared. When Bertie finally left for
a farmhouse, Yoyo became slightly warmer towards Jugnu – at least you know how
to keep your distance, he was saying. And once in a while, when he thought no
one was looking, he would do a nose-to-nose hello-brother kind of greeting to
Jugnu, even wagging his tail slightly at him. Jugnu too soon began to tower
over Yoyo, but remained respectful, even deferential, towards him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-77779552819700684352018-08-10T13:10:00.002-07:002018-08-10T13:10:25.627-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 11<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yoyo-nama Chapter 11</div>
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Yoyo was never ever unsure of his welcome anywhere, once he came to stay. His patchy sense of self from his early months at his first home, had now filled out fully, with no chinks for self-doubt or tentativeness. He felt totally free to scamper out some mornings and into the neighbouring house, wander around, go up the stairs to the bedrooms, and stand staring at or breathing on the retired army man next door. He would be greeted with a surprised smile and a treat, and be gently escorted home again. Or he would try to enter a super-clean neighbour’s home, where he was allowed only up to the threshold. There, he enjoyed leaving his large flower-shaped paw print on the super-clean doormat or on the three spotless marble steps and would be indulged with a ‘Ay what ya yoyo?’ He would look up yearningly towards the top storey, wanting very much to be admitted in, but he was firmly and lovingly kept at bay. But nowhere was he shunned or shooed away. Even those visitors to my home who weren’t much into dogs, would gamely submit to being leaned on, sat on, or at the very least be melted into submission with him butting their knees with his strong little coconut-head and looking up at them with the full power of his liquid black eyes.<br />On some days he would take a whirlwind tour of the large compound of a newly occupied building nearby. He would dash into the half open gate, sprint across its lawns, past its clubhouse, through its spic-and-span foyer, and come darting out before anyone could say anything. If he was a small human boy, he would have darted into the lift, pressed all the buttons for all the floors before he ran off – it was in that spirit that he entered here. The guard, who meticulously stopped and took down the name of anyone who entered, would look surprised when Yoyo whizzed past at first, and get up as if he should do something, but the entire foray was over in a few fuzzy-furry seconds, as he exited kicking up his heels and grinning in an eat-my-dust way. Soon the guard took to just smiling and saying to me, “bhawaal hai, bhawaal” – a whirlwind.<br />So sure was Yoyo of himself, that one day, off the leash and walking in the winter sun on our colony road, he strode most purposefully towards the large closed iron gates of a gated community that he had never explored. I called out to him to stop, desist, no! His entire body language was all about the head-toss, rump-shake, jaunty-stride, ignoring me completely. As he stopped short of the big gates and expected to be let in, he was greeted with a sound that he was quite unfamiliar with, and is usually reserved for Indian street dogs: “Ay huddd,” shouted the security man and waved a baton at him. Ever the face-saver, Yoyo quickly recovered from this blow to his poise, and veered away, pretending he didn’t mean to visit there anyway. I laughed very hard and had to sit on a culvert to regain my breath at this tableau.<br />The whole sequence - his shruggy-smarmy ignoring of my warning, then the rude shooing that he got, his utter shock, and his quick pretend recovery – sets me laughing out loud even today. That was perhaps the only time he was actively shooed away from anywhere in such street language as a Ay huddd, and his cool-dudeness had taken a small but of course temporary dent.<br />Yoyo’s first experience of the monsoon and Diwali had him rattled to the core. He didn’t even try to pretend that he was not terrified. But in that psychedelic circuitry of his mind, he decided that I had personally arranged to make life miserable for him. So no amount of asking him to come huddle and cuddle in my room, with the doors and windows shut tight and the music going loud would be of any use. He would give you a long withering look once the noise began, and go slowly and determinedly deep under a bed. He could never decide whether the noise was worse upstairs or downstairs. So at every bout of crackers, he would solemnly, tail at half-mast, go up and hide. When it started up again after some silence, he would wearily take himself downstairs again, thinking he would be better off there. No tranquilizers worked on him, not mainstream, not alternative, nothing. Running away to a quieter place in Diwali became the only option. </div>
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Quite soon into his young adulthood, Yoyo learnt the teenage art of appearing super cool at all times. Not for Yoyo the open begging or praying to the kitchen for his meals. He would appear from somewhere, and sit not directly in front of you, but at a 10 or 2 o’clock position, so that you could see him, but he didn’t appear to be asking for food. Or he would sit on the staircase, taking up three steps, so that if you were to go upstairs or come downstairs, you would have to vault over him, and thereby remember it was time to feed him – spread out that way, he was sure that you would figure out, oh ya, mealtime.</div>
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On outings where he roamed free in a meadow or on a lake front or in a forest or hillside, he would ignore our calling him; he would broadly stick to moving with us, but never appeared to be following. He was quite afraid of being left alone, but would never ever show it.<br />At first, Tatsat simply refused to believe that a dog could manipulate anyone. He simply did not believe him capable of deviousness or premeditated games of this kind. He held on firmly to the belief that I was reading too much into Yoyo’s behaviour, and I was anthropomorphizing rather too imaginatively. Till one day, when we had taken him out for a run to a nearby hillock and wooded area. When it was time to go home, Yoyo was out of sight. Snoopy came at once, but there was no sign of Yoyo when Tatsat began calling out to him. I signalled to Tatsat to just remain silent and wait, not even take a step on the crunchy dry leaves. I knew that as long as Yoyo knew we were near by, he would simply not come; but if he thought that we had left, he would get worried and appear at once. Tatsat just smiled and wagged his head at me, as if to say, ‘There you go again, imputing convoluted motives to that sweet and simple little dog’. But he did go quiet, and as we waited, within less than half a minute, an anxious looking Yoyo came round the hillock at a brisk canter, looking for us with a worried expression. The very second that he spotted us, from quite a distance, he immediately covered up his anxious demeanour. He abruptly changed his body language to languid, unconcerned, and stopped here and there to smell things even sitting down as if to enjoy the atmosphere, clearly hoping that we had not seen his frantic run in search of us. Coolness, at all costs.<br />For the first time, there came out of Tatsat’s mouth, a cussword, part angry and part impressed at the devious game-playing of this dog. ‘Haan rey, haraami hai yeh,’ he said in wonderment at how this had played out. Tatsat would be witness (and victim) of many more such tableaus, in the years to come.<br />When we left him in the yard for a few hours, well past his destructive phase, he would not like it, and by all accounts, he would be hanging around near the gate waiting quite anxiously for us to return. However, many of us observed this, and it is not just my overreading his cool-stance: the second he spotted us coming down the lane, he would run to the back of the house, to appear as if he was, in no way, waiting for you or anything. In fact I have been busy chasing cats and napping at the back, was the message. He would then come running round the corner of the house in a jaunty canter, as if in happy surprise, that we had returned. 'No appearing needy', was clearly Yoyo's memo to himself, which is the motto of so many people who start off life feeling vulnerable and starved for love.</div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-2698809147615435102018-08-03T18:46:00.001-07:002018-08-03T18:46:16.324-07:00Chapter 10<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span data-offset-key="70tg0-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Chapter 10</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="emvg9-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Terriers have powerful jaws, and they need to be exercised. Bhutanese terriers, I had read, would carry heavy bags of provisions for the monks climbing back up the hill to their high-altitude monasteries, after visiting the weekly market at the foothills. These dogs would walk some parts of the way backwards, the bag firmly gripped in their jaws. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1q4ci-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I could well imagine Yoyo, with his West Highland mountain blood in him, doing this. I suppose life in the West Highlands, where Yoyo’s ancestry lay, also provided jaw-work and climbing of this kind. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7m6lt-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Here, in an urban home in Pune, Yoyo would device his own jaw-exercising games and routines. He would regularly delight in grabbing my laundry bag of ironed clothes, weighing easily as much as him at the time, and haul it upstairs, bumping it up step by step, walking backwards. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="c2rmq-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Two people who came in with heavyish handbags were his favourites, Raju, the electrician, and Sultana, the beautician/massagist. He would jump up on his hind legs, hug their bag with his forelegs, and insist on taking charge of the bag by clamping his jaw on to the handles. They would laugh and give in, and he would then drag their bags upstairs; if they didn’t let him, he would hang on like a limpet and they would have to climb the stairs with him attached to it.</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="3b6d8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">There was also a figure-of-eight ‘pully toy’ that he loved. Once he clamped his powerful jaws on one end, he could yank you all over the yard if you held the other end. Or you could walk briskly with it in your hand with him hanging on with his jaws, on two legs, coming along like a wheely-bag. He was at first used to making allowances for my not so strong shoulders and arms; but when anyone heftier visited, he would bring the toy to them, confident that now he would get a real work-out, instead of the lame one that I would give him. This would include trying to drag the person around the yard, but also pulling hard enough for a seated person’s chair to move along the floor. You could see the look of impressed satisfaction in his eyes when he managed to hook someone really strong into playing this tug game with him, and when that person would hold his or her ground and not be budged by Yoyo’s might. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="fjgat-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">When he first came, my speaking on the phone meant that he felt ignored and neglected. His idea of terrific fun and a means to pull my attention firmly back to himself, was to attach himself to my jeans-leg with his jaws and fore paws, keep up a steady growl, and get dragged along like a honey badger as I walked in my yard and chatted on the phone. The person at the other end of the line often heard small yelps, curses and laughs from me. If it was a formal call, I would have to lock myself into my office space. Yoyo would then sit outside the door and sigh loudly; if the conversation went on for too long, he would sniff deeply and let out a powerful exhalation, like the wolf who huffed and puffed to blow the three little pigs’ house down. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="f1q3f-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">If I was sitting on my bed watching TV or at my desk working on my computer, he would crouch and then ambush my feet with nips and cuffs and smacks with his front paw. I had begun to wear thick jeans and socks, in defence. Several friends and relatives on the other end of the line thought I was letting this new dog get away with being a crazy brat. If I sat down to read the newspaper on my bed, he would jump on to it and spread himself all over. At times, I would read the newspaper by holding it upright in my hand and pacing the house, with Yoyo attached to my leg, gnawing and growling. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="1qo5-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Baiting him to bite was at times great fun, because this brought out the stalk-pounce, stalk-pounce instinct in him. Which made him look ridiculously sweet, with all that faux ferocity. I would wrap and protect my hand in the thickness of a duvet and wiggle it at him. He found this absolutely irresistible, and could not help but pounce on it and bite down hard. His vocabulary was expanding by the day during this time. He learnt to quickly let go, if I let out a yelp and asked him “What?? Serious biting?” We had, this way, established the limits of how severe the fun-biting could get. Sometimes he would realize himself that he was opening his jaws too wide to clamp down on my hand or leg too hard. He would at such times, turn this wide open mouth into a yawn, to save his face, and mine. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="dh16b-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I found this description that I wrote to a friend at that time: </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="frnib-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">It’s pouring and i am trying to keep up the exercise by spot jogging in the house, wearing good running shoes - only to be stopped in my tracks, quite literally, by Yoyo - who finds it such fantastic sport, arranged exclusively for his entertainment, he thinks. He makes a torpedo of himself and comes at you from different angles, ending the impact with a small nip or a large grab of either your calf or your shoes. I shout, I whack, I let my feet and knees bump his skull when he comes at me, but it just thrills him even more. All this makes me jump about most energetically, and that has its advantages. But when I move to floor exercises, he is on top of my head, or trying to flip me over with his snout, like a pancake. So finally I had to trick him out of the room by jogging into the corridor and then sprinting back in and shutting the door on the most hurt and mystified face…</span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="7952f-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Another game he played with me and with my house help was to romp all around the bed in the morning if anyone tried to make the bed. We would then heap pillows and duvets on him and cover him up completely – he would try to bite our hands through these layers, and we would take our chance to land a few good thumps on his rump. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="a20on-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">He too had a code for when he thought we were getting too rough and laughing at him rather than with him. He would emerge from this cotton-heap prison, shake himself, jump off the bed and stalk off. ‘Total nighunjanay’ is what we called this, meaning: G’uame over and a decisive exit in high dudgeon’. But if you called out to him to return and pleaded with him with a sorry sorry, he would delightedly sail through the air back on to the bed, pounce on you, and the game was on again. This time it involved a kind of victory dance in which he dug furiously on the mattress for a few seconds and then whirled round and round and round at top speed, like a wind-up toy, and let out some high pitched yaps looking menacingly, not at us, but at some imaginary assailants in the air. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="8qoi0-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">This sequence remained well beyond puppyhood and till his last year. We would be downstairs and we would hear him upstairs, on his own, digging, rolling, whirling, tossing pillows on my or Mathangi’s or Tatsat’s bed. Someone or the other would call it: “Weda” or “Madman” or as Vijaya the house-help would sum it up: “Yedyachya ispitalaat pathwaa - Belongs in a madhouse” or simply, “Saraklela” – which is unhinged or off-centre. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDK3HYLvYr6uHqRQ5mAQI1TiUVxr8KpaDGbGBwnQUrS2IoB2r6ExVqnStoVYUG30njGNXCUpQj4Zao9J9vFWWUoDFdwxq9DuXxzUWFn7bAEtzgfW2VWOzBlhUz2Hg4H1KL1EHx6nwqiw/s1600/yoyo+steals+razai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDK3HYLvYr6uHqRQ5mAQI1TiUVxr8KpaDGbGBwnQUrS2IoB2r6ExVqnStoVYUG30njGNXCUpQj4Zao9J9vFWWUoDFdwxq9DuXxzUWFn7bAEtzgfW2VWOzBlhUz2Hg4H1KL1EHx6nwqiw/s200/yoyo+steals+razai.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
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<span data-offset-key="9e4nc-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">His puppyhood walk, the toy-train one in which four sections of his body seemed to move slightly independent of each other, now became more polar bear like, padding along on his large paws. And when he walked on his leash (he had developed into a wonderful non-pulling, slack-leash walker), his gait turned into a kind of side-winder like movement. He would walk on a straight road on leash, at a 45 degree angle or slant to the road. And yet we moved forward along the road. I spent many walks trying to figure how he didn’t go off at a tangent, and how the straight road could be negotiated in this slanting way. Yet another sign of his ‘saraklela’ personality. Off-centre, for sure. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="6qrhl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Later, I would make a small asymmetrical memorial installation to him, in honour of the physical and mental unhinged elements of his personality. But more on that, later. </span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="59hou-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">His beautiful coat, double, perhaps even triple-layered, now in its prime, needed regular grooming and trimming. He quickly took to this routine. He loved to be brushed and groomed. So that I could have him at working-table level, I would call him up on a chair and from there on to a table, in the garden. It started with me jokingly calling it ‘Beauty Parlour’. Very soon, he would come out from wherever he was, to climb in one fluid move on to a chair and then on to the table or tall stool, as soon as I called out ‘Chalo Yoyo, Beauty Parlour!’ Here too there were many rules of engagement, set down by him. Only a light big-toothed comb for his whiskers and forehead. If there was to be trimming of the snout-fur, it would have to be done deftly and quickly, under the continuous barrage of low-grade growling. Back brushing with a strong bristly brush was always welcome and he would keep moving like the needle of a compass, so that even if you started off with brushing his face, you somehow had his rump under your brush. Paw brushing and checking for ticks was just about tolerated, and you had to keep up a threatening dhamki-voice to keep the growling and the furling of lips in check. Teeth and eye cleaning would be gamely tolerated if done quickly and with chicken-flavoured toothpaste and suchlike. Nail clipping was a whole other ball game, that involved a lot of growling and counter-yelling, but he would kind of let you. He had four dew claws, not removed when little, so those grew into curls and whorls if you didn’t keep them in check. Every click of the clipper was accompanied by a pretend snarl, but the mad fool would get distracted and most engrossed if you gave him the little cut piece of nail to investigate and chew on. Some of my non-dog-lover friends found the Beauty Parlour story plain silly, until they saw it in action. At first they thought it was just the usual anthropomorphizing of animals that dog lovers indulge in. But on the day that my friends David and Charmayne, for example, saw it in action – Yoyo coming out from under some snooze spot, and solemnly getting on to a tall stool when I called out Beauty Parlour – they were charmed muchly. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVqRwy0Xvio4EdePvnBr-5j8qtCDfUA2z5Y2uAXsPeXb58lbfXztS5Qw3LNXfDXiR4O_oYKi6ekENHJeEIVFmm6wuqPc4M1VoFTPTQpyPKVKPiy-66CcPGU5EcFvFPmkkItybSahd2KQw/s1600/yoyo+tall+stool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="717" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVqRwy0Xvio4EdePvnBr-5j8qtCDfUA2z5Y2uAXsPeXb58lbfXztS5Qw3LNXfDXiR4O_oYKi6ekENHJeEIVFmm6wuqPc4M1VoFTPTQpyPKVKPiy-66CcPGU5EcFvFPmkkItybSahd2KQw/s320/yoyo+tall+stool.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<span data-offset-key="f5dg0-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">After it was all done, this grooming session, huge handfuls of fur would be taken off the brushes and gloves, and put into a wire box on the wall. From here, all kinds of birds would come and take away little clumps of his fur in mouthfuls, to line their nests. Once a tailor bird’s empty nest fell to the ground after it was vacated, and we saw that Yoyo’s fur had made up the primary bedding material in there. </span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-53184267706486954412018-07-26T17:48:00.002-07:002018-07-26T17:49:26.802-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 9<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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 “<i>maanjar, maanjar</i>” (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
<i>inge</i>?” to her German Shepherd, and
the fellow would look at the switch and then at the fan. If you tried “Sridevi<i>inge</i>?” in the same tone, he would
probably say go find her yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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: <i>Kon tonda kaday baghtay</i>? I
would ask, dripping Maharashtrian sarcasm, and Yoyo would look guiltily away
and push off with a very distinctly Marathi hmmph. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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 “<i>kaalichappal</i>”, 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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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 “<i>shahana kurta”</i>. 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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">When I would<span style="color: red;"> </span>go out on a walk with this <i>jodi</i>, things got complicated. <i>Kadeynichaal</i>,
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). <i>Paanihava?</i>
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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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 <i>sadak-chaap</i>, or <i>gauthi</i>. <span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;">INSERT PIC OF SNOOPY)</span>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 <i>angrezi-kutta</i>(English
dog) or <i>phorener</i> (foreigner), but
responded only to brusque Marathi. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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 <i>sadak-chaap</i>(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!”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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: <i>Array gauthi kutra asoon English kay boltos?
Marathi yet nahika?</i>(Hey, you’re a local breed and what’s all this
English-speaking? How come you don’t know any Marathi?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">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 <i>gauthi</i>.
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 <i>gauthi</i>
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.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaOX_yet0aN6tFvm5Z_56niblKlM7Tz-UehEXz10pthcvRnbEDgNt71Klz1-uaTFQsQwyyJTwUWyX4Qxu9XK46UgURowqRh0Ot9VOFzDVJ_-w94UUJIsSwRjVnolJPUkLImB_4M3kwwB0/s1600/saint+snoopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="928" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaOX_yet0aN6tFvm5Z_56niblKlM7Tz-UehEXz10pthcvRnbEDgNt71Klz1-uaTFQsQwyyJTwUWyX4Qxu9XK46UgURowqRh0Ot9VOFzDVJ_-w94UUJIsSwRjVnolJPUkLImB_4M3kwwB0/s320/saint+snoopy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSL1OZR161Q3IwHpDXR8mWjbUHP1LN5M2ZZgX3fGrUZjle7TJp6h7bRVYKrJviokcy4BgxfHSUrysm1x5V8487itUfCXQ8cZmi9kYSAvm6EFR5mbk9tcRxVW-Po6tHUj7UbZUPad-McE/s1600/gouri+yoyo+lavassa+road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="961" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSL1OZR161Q3IwHpDXR8mWjbUHP1LN5M2ZZgX3fGrUZjle7TJp6h7bRVYKrJviokcy4BgxfHSUrysm1x5V8487itUfCXQ8cZmi9kYSAvm6EFR5mbk9tcRxVW-Po6tHUj7UbZUPad-McE/s320/gouri+yoyo+lavassa+road.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-60134306581576833362018-07-20T09:12:00.001-07:002018-07-20T09:12:30.542-07:00Yoyo-nama Chapter 8<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">With the coming of Tatsat in our lives, day-long outings to
pretty locations where the dogs could run loose in hills or meadows, increased
rapidly. We would pack a few things and simply take off – at first with Snoopy
and Yoyo, and later with Yoyo and Jugnu. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now, in Yoyo’s scheme of things, Tatsat was to be in the
driving seat, he in the front passenger, and me and the other dog at the back.
His idea of fun was to ‘catch’ my place in the front passenger seat, by vaulting
on to it from the back seat where he had climbed in. He would root himself
firmly there, hoping to relegate me to the back while he and Tatsat,
mano-a-mano, drove into the sunset. I would make him get off from the front
passenger door, and climb right back in to the back, from the back door. I
would have to quickly get into my front seat, because he would coil himself up
to spring into the front seat again. I would bar him, but he would threaten to
land on my lap with a diagonal jump. To stop him, you had to put your arm
firmly across, and lock eyes with him, with a NO. If he computed from that long
eye-lock, that you were firm but amused, he would sneeze on your arm,
justforfun.</span></div>
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Our little see-saw tussle about who gets to sit where carried
on for many years over many outings. At times he has also jumped into the
driver’s seat as we loaded the car, and look ahead with a silly grin. He would
move off only when you demonstrated some kind of mock horror, shock and awe and
at the prospect of him driving the car. “Show me your license,” one of us would
say. Or ‘Your legs wont reach the pedals, Short-stuff.” What words he
understood, I don’t know, but the whole joke put him in a terrific mood. And he
would bounce back into the backseat with an air of mission-accomplished. The
excitement over the outing would invariably lead to a need to go potty, 10
minutes into a drive anywhere. This was expressed in a low, descending three-note
groan which ended on a pleading note. After the stopover at the roadside, he
would rush back into the car in a good mood, try to capture the front seat
again, kick his hind legs in the air as he vaulted into the back seat, and we
would be on our way. Once we reached the destination, there would be another
instalment of what came to be known as picnic potty – this time for some reason
on a hill slope at a perilous angle, with his hind higher than his front. This
would cause some of his potty to roll down past him, and he would watch this
with a kind of mild interest. <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">While the
earlier lessons of coming back when he was called usually worked, of course, he
continued to be a dog who marched to his own drummer, most times. Going on picnics
to a large meadow or a hill slope, at first he would stick to Snoopy and shadow
his every move, sticking to him, however much Snoopy tried to shake him off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
picture of only the tops of their tails showing, one beige and one white, moving
in sync, above tall golden winter grasses on hill slopes, with them suddenly leaping like Springboks
over the ticklish grass, is one of my most abiding and favourite mind-pictures.
At one such spot, from here, we would then put them back on their leashes,
cross the highway to a dhaba to have omelettes and chai. The seating here was
thick razais on the Indian rope-cots, the <i>khaats</i>.
Snoopy would sit on the floor, and of course, Yoyo would jump nimbly on to the
khaat. The Sikh owner would watch on with some indulgence, and a saucer of milk
was sent out to both dogs. Yoyo would greet the approaching waiter with a small
flutter of his lips to show him a brief glimpse of his teeth, and then proceed
to haughtily drink the milk when the man hastily moved away. The message was:
leave that saucer here, and take yourself off, man. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">When Yoyo
became a little older and more smarmy, foolishly overconfident, at times he
would unilaterally declare the picnic over and suddenly head for the road below
and choose to walk in the middle of it. Often we were near country roads
without much traffic, but on which rattling ST buses could appear suddenly,
thundering down. At such times, the stentorian voice commands that I would
summon up worked to make him veer back towards you and rush back into your
arms. But at times you had to simply scramble downslope, catch up with him and
smack him one tight smack. In later years, this meant putting him back on the
leash and continuing the picnic with him sitting looking out over the vista
philosophically. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">On one
particular outing, it was the reverse. He simply did not want to leave the
gentle water spot that we had found, and when we picked up our things and
headed to the car, he disappeared. We called, we hid and hoped he would emerge,
we whacked the bushes to flush him out like they do on fox hunts. Simply no
sign of him. I tried the Imcountingtillfive thing; still nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">I even
wondered briefly and absurdly whether he had got back into the water, gone
under, and was holding his breath, just to mess with us. Finally, we had to
start the car and pretend to leave, slowly, when he appeared out of nowhere.
Obviously the little rat had been watching us, hiding somewhere, all the while.
The minute we stopped the car and opened the door, he crawled deep under the
car, and sat there, completely inaccessible. It was getting hot, we were tired,
and it really was time to go home. Finally we cut down a long stout stick and
jabbed at him, ourselves almost flat out on the ground. He simply growled and
took a couple of bites at the stick. We finally decided to start the car,
hoping the sound of the engine purring would flush him out. It did not. We even
drove the car forward a few inches, and he actually rolled over; we had to stop
at once. Finally, Tatsat managed to grab his tail and pull. I gave Yoyo two
very solid whacks on his rump, put the leash around him and almost hurled him
into the car with frustration, fatigue and fury. While at most times his
cartloads of personality was something we not only lived with, but quite
cherished, on some days, on-the-ground, it was exhausting.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQ8IqfaEgvfqoh4UnvbQy-LqSmeJmvH9yFYpT6YiRj33wrrawbH1jbpl1N1OTFwBC8V9ZlEHfXZXKxeocJ81Xh1rw43NYXCjFw-pgKfxrK8OYiLH4vO5u2PpexURbbm09CEixmnatrao/s1600/Yoyo+in+water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQ8IqfaEgvfqoh4UnvbQy-LqSmeJmvH9yFYpT6YiRj33wrrawbH1jbpl1N1OTFwBC8V9ZlEHfXZXKxeocJ81Xh1rw43NYXCjFw-pgKfxrK8OYiLH4vO5u2PpexURbbm09CEixmnatrao/s320/Yoyo+in+water.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">‘Kaali chappal,
Athawtay? remember??’ was another of my tools to get him to stop doing
something at once. Well after he had settled in, stopped teething, and there
was a system in place so that he was rarely alone for long hours, he arbitrarily
shredded a beaded black slipper that I was particularly fond of. Unlike the
time that he had shredded the books, this time I felt no guilt or need to
introspect about why he had thrown this tantrum, and how I could have prevented
it. It seemed to be a random act of wanton destruction from him, and this time
I picked up the other slipper, and so bite me, I whacked his rump a couple of
times and asked him loudly, why, why did you destroy my slipper? “Kaa chaawlis mazhi
kaaali chappal?” was the string of words, which I used while giving him those
few sound whacks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">He was
contrite enough to not growl, or stalk off in a thatsyourproblem kind of strut.
Came right to my feet and submitted himself in an inverted puddle of apology.
After this, if he was up to no-good sometimes, I would simply have to say in an
ominous, sepulchral voice, “Remember the black slipper? Athawtiye na kaali chappal?”
and he would drop whatever mischief he was up to – digging up newly laid
plants, sneaking up on the garbage bin, gnawing at furniture legs just for fun,
at once, and come sit at my feet with an I’m such a good dog aren’t I expression.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-50141829580458204462018-07-12T08:37:00.001-07:002018-07-12T08:37:26.268-07:00Chapter 7 Yoyo-nama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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, <span style="color: red;">unwalled </span>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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3OO8BjyCfJbkmc33ILLQNSIwRSKMT0cgJjMpvONB8LBA2n_iwuVA3Jt6ZVu8-1tG5FVZgFK8-SfZVG3fkE8-fdrBaA5IJC9oiX2b0RoBxXAMJ5kVKY1n82HtEd3IUrA4uwTlBNFXdYbc/s1600/yoyo+ankle+broke+I+resize.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3OO8BjyCfJbkmc33ILLQNSIwRSKMT0cgJjMpvONB8LBA2n_iwuVA3Jt6ZVu8-1tG5FVZgFK8-SfZVG3fkE8-fdrBaA5IJC9oiX2b0RoBxXAMJ5kVKY1n82HtEd3IUrA4uwTlBNFXdYbc/s320/yoyo+ankle+broke+I+resize.jpg" width="240" /></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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 <i>Chuukar, mere mannko, kiya tunay
kya ishaara,</i>(Just that one gesture from you, and you touched my heart) to
him. Really, the next line of that song applied too: <i>badala yeh mausam, lagay pyara jaggsara (the season has changed (with
your coming), now everything feels charmed and joyful)</i>; and the third line
seemed to fit perfectly too: <i>Mere geeton mein
tujhe dhoonde jag saara (People look for you and find you in all the songs that
I write). </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo now took the fourth line of this song, </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: whitesmoke; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Tu jo kahe
Jeevan bhar… tere liye maen gaoon (If you like, I will sing for you all my
life) </span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: whitesmoke; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">very seriously. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Jaya, my then teenaged<span style="color: red;"> </span>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.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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.”<br />
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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjenysv6Fy3msqPr4AyHoK6rTAZdE1E8z2bCIhGPfykaac6obiWClYzFkPdkp3orEe-bL9D1ycLluatGbijd9IfTjDejz7REucEMeBDuhsPUuy3pbNjMPS68tn8JggmJ85tzIvJFK1ApNk/s1600/yoyo+tatsat+shin+black+white.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjenysv6Fy3msqPr4AyHoK6rTAZdE1E8z2bCIhGPfykaac6obiWClYzFkPdkp3orEe-bL9D1ycLluatGbijd9IfTjDejz7REucEMeBDuhsPUuy3pbNjMPS68tn8JggmJ85tzIvJFK1ApNk/s320/yoyo+tatsat+shin+black+white.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">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.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div>
<div align="justify">
</div>
</div>
Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-89803909551565592422018-07-05T18:11:00.003-07:002018-07-05T18:11:43.270-07:00Chapter 6 Yoyo-nama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><b>Yoyo-nama<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><b>The
Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Chapter 6
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">A little
before Yoyo had come to stay with us for good, and was still at his previous
house nearby, I had heard amidst much giggling and hushed whispers from the
neighbourhood watchman and domestic help from that house, that this new dog
Yoyo had caught and eaten a piece of bhaakri that was used for ‘<i>ovaaluntaaknay’</i>. It is a ritual in rural
Maharashtra, where a piece of dry food is circled around the head of a new groom
and bride and then thrown away, so that the evil spirits can’t harm them.
Usually a crow or a cat or just the ants will eat up this piece once it landed
safely somewhere. There had been a wedding in the ‘servant’s quarters’ at his
first home, and Yoyo, standing at the periphery watching on, had apparently
darted out and deftly caught the piece of bhakri once it was flung away, and simply
gobbled it up. And this meant surely that there was a wicked and/or wayward
spirit now firmly lodged inside of him, was the general consensus. And the way
to get an evil spirit to leave someone’s body would be to smack the person with
the soft end of a broom, was another belief. I don’t know if someone there had
tried it, but Yoyo did have a life-long vengeful-visceral hate of brooms, and
would often growl at broom-wielders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">One of
the things that to Yoyo were totally optional was going for a walk. I had a
hired dog walker who would take both dogs out for 3 walks a day, whether I was
in or not. Yoyo would love to go out with me and later with my partner Tatsat,
who entered our lives. All we had to do is, even when he got pretty old, pick
up his leash, and say and signal ‘Chall walk la, tu ani mi tu ani me’ – meaning
just us, no walkers. He would be out in a flash. We began to wonder if the
walker Parma was abusing him in some way or just annoying him by sitting in one
place and smoking his bidis. But this was simply not true; he as well as Vijaya
who walked him in the afternoon, were sincere walkers, and it was just Yoyo’s
cussedness at play. Vijaya would even allege: “I do so much for him and with
such love, but see, he thinks of me just as an employee and prefers you people
any day.” At times she would try and use the pet-names that Tatsat and I
used - and you could almost hear the
“quote marks”: “Chall Manchu,” she would try to say, using Tatsat’s term of
endearment, when calling him for a walk. Or “Yoyuski, Yoyoppa,” she would call
him, like me, leash in hand. Yoyo would look blankly stonily (the Marathi word
is ‘makkha’) back at her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Vijaya
had seen me whisper to Yoyo, ‘come let’s go’, and then in Marathi,
‘to-ani-mi-tu-ani-mi’ – meaning just you and me you and me no one else. This
would bring him out instantly. When Vijaya tried it, he would actually turn
around and show her his butt and fall asleep. “Aik mazya dhugna,” she would
label this action of his. Something like, as if he was saying to her: ‘talk to
the butt’. Again she ruefully repeated … “How much I do for this dog, cook,
feed, even clean up after him, rub his belly, put up with his nonsense, but he
still thinks of me as paid help, not like you.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">I tried
to tell her that he couldn’t make that distinction in his mind, but then I
wasn’t even that sure. One of her other grouses was, that even if he did go for
a walk with her, he would employ a series of vocalizations that sounded so
un-dog like, that people walking ahead of her or behind her would look
curiously at her, as if she was making them. One of the sounds was a sort of
yawn-turned-burp with a question-mark ending. People would turn around to look
at her, never at the dog. She would lamely try to say, the dog made that sound.
And she claimed that people would think she was a bit mad. Or worse, that she
was burping and/or farting musically. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Another
sound that Yoyo produced was a meow – not just any meow, a sound like a human imitating
a cat meow sound. Again, Vijaya claimed, people thought she was walking around
meowing. There was also a duck-like quack he would emanate at times. Right to
his last days he would surprise us with the kind of new utterances and
vocalizations that he could come up with. Haan (downward inflection) eeee
(upward) was one of them, which was the yawn turned into a joyful outburst,
when he waited impatiently for something good in the offing, like a car ride or
a game. He would produce this sound if Vijaya stopped to talk to someone on
their walks too, and she would come home crossly declaring that yet again, this
dog was hell-bent on making her look silly. She claimed that people laughed at
her, asking her if she was walking a kutra or a gaadhav - a dog or a donkey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNUZwOuSJSuH0eaVRTSHfcJOMr7_Juuzh6ip9bzSMGHpy1-9QJ9M3DH25kgGwWKX8PD-NvLWJYZYIwGYhjc7A3GmrZvreKLea8u8vzAEfVWAXcfoOjGKOW6VdVwvqghV-tRgjjFQQn2wQ/s1600/yoyo+doing+potty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="574" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNUZwOuSJSuH0eaVRTSHfcJOMr7_Juuzh6ip9bzSMGHpy1-9QJ9M3DH25kgGwWKX8PD-NvLWJYZYIwGYhjc7A3GmrZvreKLea8u8vzAEfVWAXcfoOjGKOW6VdVwvqghV-tRgjjFQQn2wQ/s320/yoyo+doing+potty.jpg" width="320" /></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
long-suffering Vijaya, however, was truly his fan. At one time, she actually
asked me to take a picture of Yoyo pooping out in the open, because she felt he
did it so elegantly and had such a cute look of concentration on his face! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">On days
that I could not walk him, Yoyo would simply make himself very tiny and vanish
in the house somewhere, so that none of the other walkers could access him.
(Equally, he could make himself huge and take up more than half a bed, if he
chose to. He was highly elastic, that way.) Sometimes, to avoid detection, he
would sit at the bottom of a long window, behind the curtain that came right
down to the floor. Here his nose was in plain view actually, but he would have
covered his eyes and head and most of his body with the edge of the curtain.
His rump would be sticking out from under the curtain, in plain view actually,
but he thought that he was clad in a magic cloak of invisibility.
Ostrich-asana, we used to call it. The walker Parma or Vijaya would stand right
there patiently calling out to him, Parma laughing and saying “Saaf dikhayi
deta hai, usko lagtaay chupa hai,” – Can be clearly seen, but he thinks he has
hidden himself. Vijaya would say wearily in Marathi, “Chall, ata natak banda
karr, mala ajoon kaama padleli ahet,” – Quit these games and come out, I have
other chores to finish. Or on occasion she would say “Dolyawarr patti ani
magcha sagla ughda-nagda.” – ‘A band over your eyes but your backside all
exposed.’ Yoyo would not budge, even when they stood right next to him saying
We can see you, comeon! And then I would hear an appeal from them, shouted out
to me: ‘Yoyo is not coming for his walk… Gouritai <i>do something.</i>’<span style="color: red;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Why any
of the devoted long-suffering paid walkers were a no-no for Yoyo, is simply not
clear. I once, absurdly, even followed Parma the watchman-walkman at a distance
to see if he was simply tying Yoyo up to a tree and going off to chit-chat with
his cronies, or pulling his leash too tight, or even maybe whacking him with
the leash (as if anyone would dare and then live to tell the tale) – because
there had to be some explanation about Yoyo’s extreme and open reluctance to
walk with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
morning walk, at least, after 8 hours of being in the house and not relieving
himself, I thought I must insist on, even if I was working and the walker
arrived. Yoyo would have sensed who was headed towards the house to walk him,
or heard the gate and would quietly melt away. He would not appear when called,
and wait it out. Till I raised my voice. Only when I shouted loud and
threateningly, he would scamper out of his hiding place in utter glee, run past
the waiting walker to the gate, and turn around and look at the man standing
with his leash, giving him a ‘come on, what’s keeping you’ expression. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">“Yoyo,
Why Why WHY do you make me shout at you first thing in the morning?” I would
ask him angrily. And he would look back with an unfathomable expression in his
eyes. “Because I’m me” he must have been saying. “And it’s fun to watch you
being you,” he might have added. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB">(Next
instalment of Yoyo-nama on 13 July 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="justify">
</div>
</div>
Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-68326699035699895962018-06-29T08:50:00.001-07:002018-06-29T08:56:43.929-07:00Chapter 5 Yoyo-nama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Yoyo-nama<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">The
Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Chapter 5<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Under
Bonnie’s watchful eye, some protocols were put into place that day. I had
established with Yoyo, somewhat, that I would not stand for utter disobedience
and disregard for house rules. Impressed and a bit chastised at the fact that I
could be strict with him, Yoyo made the first placatory move. He came to me
studiously avoiding looking at the plate of biscuits, and butted me with his
forehead. I hugged him, under Bonnie’s just-about-approving smile. From then
on, I was, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Boss, but it simply got accepted
between Yoyo and I, that on most matters, he had a free hand, but on some
matters I would intervene and he would obey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">This balance
made for a much easier time as he grew, so that he could be around when human
food was served, without us having to guard it from him. And that he would
simply come when called, no questions asked, no teeth-show. Of course, Yoyo
would push the limits of this balance. Soon after this, one day he didn’t
listen at all when I asked him to come to me. As a half joke, I began a
countdown delivered in drill-sergeant volume
(thereafter, always causing people from neighbouring buildings to laugh
out loud). “IM COUNTING TILL FIVE. ONE…TWO…THREE…” I shouted as if on a
megaphone. When he didn’t budge when I reached FIVE, I wasn’t quite sure what
to do, and simply invented, on the spot, a pretend whirling displeasure,
throwing a couple of light objects at him and using of a tone of deep sadness
and disappointment and anger all cleverly rolled into one. He came out at once
at this point and sat down with a saintly expression, all-attention. From then
on, the countdown worked beautifully even if it had to sometimes be dragged out
to four-point-five, at which point he would quietly come to me. This
come-when-you’re-called learning is not just a power-play ego thing between
human and dog. It is essential for various things like stopping them from doing
something dangerous or stupid. This allowed us to take him outdoors often, to
the wide open spaces, and have him return to us when called (most times, but
more on that later).</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhumjM5Ua_DFlA_KG7_5f2fLT4mv_uDZOSe6tq8BOe29s-cYjFcfIepfojCq1WnXp_e5KMVJZm6Om_UZP7xIlHmjY4O2d9ckF5uhGNAcHa-X1pAzF8KqcT8mKS1HJS6PbQZRhbbH4DR1sU/s1600/yoyo+young+tree+stump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="555" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhumjM5Ua_DFlA_KG7_5f2fLT4mv_uDZOSe6tq8BOe29s-cYjFcfIepfojCq1WnXp_e5KMVJZm6Om_UZP7xIlHmjY4O2d9ckF5uhGNAcHa-X1pAzF8KqcT8mKS1HJS6PbQZRhbbH4DR1sU/s320/yoyo+young+tree+stump.jpg" width="320" /></a>The Maverick</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Yoyo also
learnt to walk on the leash at a beautiful trot, or a canter if you speeded
things up, and he and I would walk 3 km to the circle and 3 km back most
mornings, with the leash slack. He seemed to be almost on wheels as he walked,
and with the characteristic side-winder walk that he had now developed – he
looked like he was on a diagonal, but walked straight ahead on the pavement. He
now had strong stocky legs, with the fur grown thick and straight, which gave
him the appearance of someone wearing straight boot-cut trousers. Unlike small
white dogs like the Pomeranian, Yoyo did not taper into spindly legs with
itty-bitty feet. His legs and paws gave him a distinct polar bear appearance.
Those broad paws served him well. He could hold his ground and not budge or be
tipped over, once he planted all four on the ground and decided not to move. But
on walks with me, he was the model of well-behavedness.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">The first
time that I had to leave Yoyo alone, after Mathangi had left, I went on a quick
24 hour trip to Mumbai. Vijaya my help, and the watchman, took turns to walk,
feed, play with him. And there was Snoopy too, so in that sense, Yoyo was not
all alone. However, during one stretch of these 24 hours, he was left to his
own devices for a few hours, with no one around. This may have been not more
than two hours. It was during this time, that he famously (the story did the
rounds of the neighbourhood and other circles, for various reasons) clambered
on to a diwan, from there on to a book shelf, and systematically pulled down
and tore up what must have been at least 30 books. Whether my absence had set
off some deep abandonment issues, or whether he was just being a complete <i>haraami</i>, we will never know, but I did
think it was the former, at the time. So when I returned, and was told in
hushed whispers by a neighbour that Yoyo had torn ‘all’ my books, I only felt
anguished at his anguish, and rushed inside to greet him. The books were now a
pile of shredded covers, paper, gummy spines, binding and thread, swept up and
kept in the corner for me as evidence by Vijaya. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">The
neighbour, who followed me in with a grim expression, picked out some scraps
from the heap – there was the half-chewed autograph of a well-known writer
whose book I had edited. Not one of my favourites, the writer or the book, by a
long chalk. I said ‘good riddance’ and laughed, much to Vijaya and my
neighbour’s shock. I just asked for it all to be thrown away, much to the
disappointment of my neighbour, who had followed me hoping to witness a good
chastising, if not an actual inquisition and burning at the stake of Yoyo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Vijaya
the help too looked on in stunned disapproval as I hugged Yoyo. I had missed
him, and I felt deeply guilty about having left him alone and about what must
have gone on in his little head while I was away. I muttered sorry-sorry into
his fur. This drew a massive snort from Vijaya. And as she cleared the heap of
paper, she muttered sulkily: “He tore up your books and YOU are saying sorry to
HIM? And what would you have done to me, if I had torn or broken something? I
would have really got an earful from you.” I could only giggle helplessly at
the image of her sitting amidst a heap of books that she had torn asunder. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">As she
tidied up, she said to the departing back of the disappointed neighbour: “Next
life…I tell you, we should pray, pray hard this life, that next life we should
be born as Yoyo in this Gouritai’s house. Just do what you please, and get away
with it. Now <u>that’s</u> the life I want. Just no consequences to face,<span style="color: red;"> </span>in this house, if you are a dog.” She then rounded on
Snoopy, and asked him why he hadn’t stopped Yoyo from tearing the books.
Snoopy, who had quite early decided that everything about Yoyo was simply to be
studiously avoided, and the only way to cope with this new pest was to
white-ink him out of his visual and mental space, looked back stoically. He
must have been appalled at Yoyo’s book-tearing spree while it was going on, but
had already developed an older person’s attitude of a kind of detached disdain
to the new entrant and his shenanigans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6iYmRPBghNxgwtayN4xsNjJdkwHXQmNmw1HnBRpw1FJjXa_SZIFuEL6o9UsceQEInk9Y9SAs0GiZKoFacppn4043Qma21fduEePdl_4_galG21WMU1WzTLC_Hchx458qqjexZ1q1rJiI/s1600/saint+snoopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="928" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6iYmRPBghNxgwtayN4xsNjJdkwHXQmNmw1HnBRpw1FJjXa_SZIFuEL6o9UsceQEInk9Y9SAs0GiZKoFacppn4043Qma21fduEePdl_4_galG21WMU1WzTLC_Hchx458qqjexZ1q1rJiI/s320/saint+snoopy.jpg" width="320" /></a>The Stoic</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB">(Next
instalment of Yoyo-nama on 6 July 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</div>
</div>
Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-24426393115078039662018-06-21T20:32:00.001-07:002018-06-21T20:46:17.331-07:00Yoyo-nama (The Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Chapter 4<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Yoyo had
come to us without the benefit of any rabies and other shots, no deworming
either, we gathered. (Talk about unplanned and then unwanted dog-owning! –
Mathangi and I said to each other in grim dismay about his recent past.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So pretty soon, a vet visit had to be
scheduled. Both my earlier dogs, Annie the boxer, and Snoopy the Mumbai
street-find, had always been a vet’s delight, taking shots, gland cleanings,
teeth and ear clean ups, nail-clipping, medication with grace and forbearance.
‘A model patient’, as the various vets who attended to them over the 14 years
of their respective lives, always said. The two of them were greeted with much
joy and hugging at any vet’s clinic over the years. For their vets and their
assistants, it was a break from the daily snarling, pulling, barking, growling,
and frantic resistance and struggle that most of their patients put up. With my
two dogs, none of this ever happened. No muzzles and restraints were needed on
Annie and Snoopy, ever. This meant, that for the previous 10-12 years I had
been lulled into thinking that going to the vet was a routine chore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Yoyo
turned that upside down from his very first visit, to the very last one that he
had in his life. Most vets and their helpers were caught off their guard
because Yoyo did not look like a nasty-tempered dog or a very strong one. He
looked like any practised person could quickly overpower him, immobilize him
for a few seconds, and deftly do what was needed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Never, no
way. Not till the very end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">On our
very first visit to the vet, we got off the car and headed to the small open
enclosure where other patients waited. Yoyo took one look/whiff, and got wind
of the fact that this was not good news at all. Smells like trouble. He about-turned
and pulled with all his might away and towards my car parked across the road.
When I wouldn’t comply, he twisted this way and that, tried to sever the leash
with his teeth and then with both front paws-claws. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then did a double-flip, lateral, and then
vertical, thereby almost choking himself. After a huge struggle he also managed
to slip out of his collar and dash across the very busy street towards my car,
causing two-wheelers to brake and teeter and cars to skid to a halt and people
to shake angry fists at me while my house-help, the up-until-then
in-love-with-Yoyo Vijayabai and I stood helplessly and ineffectually on the
road, trying to look like responsible and apologetic citizens. This is when we
learnt that for Yoyo, we would have to get a choker-chain. Collars were only
for wussy obedient dogs, apparently. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Subsequent
visits always involved the vet coming to the car and trying to muzzle him,
which was almost never accomplished. He would then get someone to yank Yoyo’s
choke-chain in a way that his face was scrunched up briefly against the seat or
dashboard for a few seconds, and manage to jab a calming-down injection into
him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">The sight
of this infamous chain usually had most dog owners standing around tsk-tsking
at us while we wound it around a seat or some object that would hold out to
Yoyo’s angry struggle. We would then sit around and watch his internal tussle
against the sedative shot, trying his damnedest to not let go and relax, and to
remain on high alert. He fought that sedative mightily. Always, thence-forth,
any vet would have to leave his other patients, come and check in the car to
see if Yoyo had become calm enough to allow him to vaccinate him, or to
anaesthetize him, if his teeth or glands needed cleaning, nails needed
trimming. Why don’t you use a muzzle, people around would ask us, puzzled. In
answer to which the vet would demonstrate how impossible it was to get a muzzle
on to him. People would simply fall back in shock and awe at the massive
whirling storm this attempt would create. Suddenly that choker chain would not
look like such a cruel option, to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">We tried
out many different vets at many different locations, including ones that came
home, come vaccination time, hoping that Yoyo would not suspect our motives as
we approached a new place, but the story everywhere was the same. Vets for
miles and miles around knew of him, his reputation having spread quickly, and I
suspect they avoided us after witnessing even once, the giant tamasha that he
could produce. There was only one rare occasion when Yoyo was tricked into
wearing a muzzle. Here he is, below, in full-on Hannibal the Cannibal mode. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2200bTgewdYpgXdix5JJK16r8LTRPhJoGnGyowiGCCd6xRKpLEv8y1OIzaY4ueTt3yE3S1j-hk7rmWYvTF2imMnZm0_HynOq4NZIEtoOuoykp1j7-U-14m4YO7lE_meXmuBRiKHVdcc/s1600/yoyo+hannibal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2200bTgewdYpgXdix5JJK16r8LTRPhJoGnGyowiGCCd6xRKpLEv8y1OIzaY4ueTt3yE3S1j-hk7rmWYvTF2imMnZm0_HynOq4NZIEtoOuoykp1j7-U-14m4YO7lE_meXmuBRiKHVdcc/s320/yoyo+hannibal.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">It was
funny, sad and exhausting, all rolled into one, these vet visits. Luckily for
us all, Yoyo enjoyed a basic robustness, which meant that vet visits were soon
settled into a ritual that had to be braved but once a year for his shots. As
for all the other services that normal dogs allow vets to deliver, I had
developed some counter aggression tactics, so that I could bully him into
coming to me and allowing his teeth to be cleaned, nails to be clipped, be
bathed and towel dried, groomed, and dewormed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Oral
medicines, like the deworming tabs, he would simply not allow me to shove down
his throat. Every four months, for the deworming tablet, the strategy would
have to be changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You got a pedha,
powdered the med thoroughly, mixed it with the pedha and reconstituted it. This
would work once. The next time, he would sniff suspiciously, and simply reject
it, and stalk off in high dudgeon. He loved pedhas, so a contaminated pedha, he
felt, was a really mean cut on our part.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Come
medicating time, it was important to come up with elaborate ruses, which
included laced tandoori chicken, doctored cheese spread, spiked mutton stock,
and suchlike. When he got older, we simply gave up on deworming him that
regularly. When I recently heard about little beef pouches that you can buy in
the US, in which medicines can be pushed in, it was after Yoyo had gone. And
anyway, we thought, the SOF would have smelt a rat most probably. He acquired
the title SOF when he was quite young – Suspicious Old Fart – because of his
habit of first sniffing out, after much stretching of the neck and twitching of
nose and whiskers, any unscheduled tidbit that you offered him. Not for him the
gulp first think later trustingness of other less complex canines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Quite
early on, a few weeks into his coming fully into my home, a visiting friend had
warned me that if I let him get away with simply not listening to me, it would
be very difficult to take care of him. I would need to handle him with a firm
hand and tone, for his own good, she cautioned me. So this soon involved
playing good cop bad cop, several times in one day. This worked to have him
come readily to me when I called, instead of his earlier ‘Try and make me’
stance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">A few
weeks after he came to stay, my friend and one of Yoyo’s favourite people,
Bonnie (Nilanjan Mukherjee), dropped in and he too advised me strongly to take
charge as Yoyo’s dog-owner and not dog-fan. He noted that Yoyo was fast taking
over the household, bending the power equation completely in his favour, and
basically had me wrapped around his little finger. Though much charmed by
Yoyo’s looks and demeanour (the book cover portrait of Yoyo is by him), Bonnie
warned me plainly: “This gorgeous haraami is going to be a handful very soon,
and if you don’t want this to end in tragedy where you’re giving him away or
keeping him tied, because he destroys stuff, snaps at people, refuses to come
when called, does not drop something that he has picked up to destroy, sits
wherever he likes, steals food, refuses medication, and generally becomes a
complete law unto himself, you’ll have to do better than just bleating at him.”
This was his firm advice, in these exact words. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Up until
then, he had seen my interacting with the saintly Snoopy – my dog who was now
in his middle years, and was also just naturally obedient. And before him,
there had been the boxer Annie, a regal and stately sort, but not at all above
eating entire <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>unattended mithai dabbas
and deftly pressing the pedals of garbage pails if there were bones in there, and
eating blocks of Kraft cheese off the dining table, eating it all in one
sitting foil, carton and all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">Now
Bonnie had been watching me trying to ineffectually get Yoyo not to sniff and
try to inhale our tea biscuits sitting on a low coffee table. He politely asked
me if he could demonstrate how Yoyo would need to be handled, rolled up a
newspaper, gave it to me in my hands and said make a loud noise on the floor
with it near him to stop him from whatever he is doing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">A few
minutes later, the occasion arose, as Yoyo began gnawing at the leg of the
table (a beautiful old swing turned into a table, with the addition of sturdy
teak legs). I shouted STOP THAT – to which he just looked back with laughter in
his eyes. I then banged the rolled up paper on the floor and shouted STOP IT. I
could see that Yoyo was impressed, but he quickly tried to recover the balance
by showing me his teeth (an enormous impressive set in a small dog).</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs1uXaJwygwf91L6IagN74QIuIqkQbDFeUHjtUTaMdWKIpuUa6-x4au8odhvu_0q__eTEbROcOTDhRyyTKmfef-y1Nd7w__2pHumUGc7ghHvaxdudJm4OxdiWjVdr1AqfCRfhHTmaBLt8/s1600/growling+westy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs1uXaJwygwf91L6IagN74QIuIqkQbDFeUHjtUTaMdWKIpuUa6-x4au8odhvu_0q__eTEbROcOTDhRyyTKmfef-y1Nd7w__2pHumUGc7ghHvaxdudJm4OxdiWjVdr1AqfCRfhHTmaBLt8/s320/growling+westy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">With
Bonnie coaching me from across the room, I stepped away, crouched, and called
him to me in a stentorian voice, IKDAY YAY TABADTOP – COME HERE THIS INSTANT. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">This was
the turning point. Utterly impressed at the sheer volume of my voice and
determination in my tone, he hastily covered his gum-teeth show, and ran out
from under the table and turned into a puddle at my feet. Bonnie hissed to me:
“Now you don’t go all aww and hug him, just show him you are satisfied with his
response.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%;">(Next instalment of Yoyo-nama on 29 June 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-80999788170631056842018-06-14T19:03:00.002-07:002018-06-14T19:03:29.012-07:00Yoyo-nama; Chapter 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo-nama<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Chapter 3<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is
a Hindi expression about beautiful people: <i>‘Khuda
ney phursat sey banaya hai’</i> – meaning God really took his time to create
and perfect this person. With Yoyo, it seemed quite the opposite had happened.
As if he had been hastily put together by his Maker and sent off quickly,
because he simply would not hold steady or sit still during the creation
process. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">He had,
under his snout fur, a skin that was some parts pale pink and some parts dark.
The nose was pitch black except for a little pink in one nostril. One of his
lower eyelids was pink while the other one was fully black. This gave the
impression that one eye was smaller than the other, and in later years, when he
would show us his temper, this earned him the name Lalita Pawar, the actor with
the one-smaller-eye, who played the proverbial nasty old lady in many films. My
friends David and Charmayne and I have spent many (wo)man hours talking about
the utterly perfect aspect of imperfection. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBTr_o5samn4oyo3LTpV-kffiLhWuJqHvTjJ1wgF6BRZgl2D75Cb5m71Lt2egL3RPlDtFOi2xwF2BRPDFMp9P8mzPMk-eF8IXOyXwBABTC1nHEKdeVFf3yifBPre4DDuXpdPIrcC80qFA/s1600/yoyo+closeup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1138" data-original-width="853" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBTr_o5samn4oyo3LTpV-kffiLhWuJqHvTjJ1wgF6BRZgl2D75Cb5m71Lt2egL3RPlDtFOi2xwF2BRPDFMp9P8mzPMk-eF8IXOyXwBABTC1nHEKdeVFf3yifBPre4DDuXpdPIrcC80qFA/s320/yoyo+closeup.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">At about
3 months old, he was at that stage of growing when for some reason he was
growing long but not very tall. So his jaunty walk was something like a goods
train, with the wagons moving slightly independent of each other. Head and
snout was the engine, shoulders and front legs one wagon, middle body another
wagon, hind legs, butt and tail a third one. On top of it, his head was rather
large for his body at the time, and during this stage he looked like an actor wearing
the head of a donkey in a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTxI_OqkvS0iDXwSqp4xacGNm1QYTK_dUH-KFePcqOrIqNE-ozB98YA_fEj-xQkktGFPsGX8gmPQtad4FCgJvqfhApaUwnc6vs_M3i2VHEoWvE0Eb5VQvk6YcWsLwT7KhnTzi0F_3Wp1k/s1600/big+head+young+Yoyo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="928" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTxI_OqkvS0iDXwSqp4xacGNm1QYTK_dUH-KFePcqOrIqNE-ozB98YA_fEj-xQkktGFPsGX8gmPQtad4FCgJvqfhApaUwnc6vs_M3i2VHEoWvE0Eb5VQvk6YcWsLwT7KhnTzi0F_3Wp1k/s320/big+head+young+Yoyo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">He was
all white, except for faintly golden-auburn ears, which looked like satin-silky
corn hair. There was one coin-sized orange patch on his lower spine area, as if
to designate where his curled tail would rest. Unlike full-fledged Westies,
with their signature carrot-tail as the websites described it, Yoyo had a
turned tail. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">We have
debated many times, throughout his life, whether Yoyo was aware of how
extremely adorable his entire body and face looked, the effect those eyes had
on people…And the consensus was that he did not. He just was. Also, he took
himself too seriously to consider himself in terms of being words like adorable,
cuddly, or cute, is what someone once pointed out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo had
begun to show us the many facets of his eccentric, jaunty, jagged personality,
minutes after his full move to my place. He had become fiercely territorial
about my little yard, as soon as he came to stay permanently with me. It was as
if, overnight, he had realized that his shaky position as a not-wanted,
barely-tolerated pest in his first home, had been restored to firm,
most-cherished status. The gate was now his beat, and Snoopy, never much of a
watchdog, and always ready to welcome guests, workers, salesmen, thieves and
dacoits with equal joy, now seemed happy to let Yoyo fulfil any expectations of
patrolling the borders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">This
meant that when the bell rang, Yoyo would rush out and stand what he thought
was menacingly and bark a pretty impressive and surprisingly deep bark from
such a little dog. If the person on the other side found his small stature
unimpressive, and proceeded to try and open the gate, the bark would turn into
a growl that came from inside his chest and was projected mightily outwards;
that would have people hastily remove their hand from the gate and step
back. Once I got to the gate and let
them in myself, he would quieten, sniff them down, and let them pass. My
getting there and letting people in was important, in his scheme of things. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Some
people couldn’t help giggling at what they thought was a comical little fellow
doing a watchdog act, and would ignore my ‘Wait, wait, don’t come in till I let
you in’ that I would shout from inside the house. A couple of them made the
mistake of laughing and teasing him with a counter-bark, or worse, a mocking
high-pitched yap. Yoyo straightened that matter out by going for their calves
as soon as they were let into the yard. He never actually drew blood, but that
could be only because they were wearing thick legwear. He did leave a lasting
impression, on the calf as well as on the psyche of such visitors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">One such
person he had marked out as persona non grata; and this was in perpetuity,
permanently. Any future attempts to get him to let the matter go were never
successful. He would growl throughout her visits. You could bully him into
retreating, but then he would sit on the staircase landing, kind of hanging over
the edge, like an eagle waiting to swoop down. From here, he would watch her
every move, growling menacingly when she reached for her drink or got up from
her seat. None of our nerves could take this, and after a few attempts to
broker peace, we accepted that something had got hard-wired in Yoyo’s mind.
From then we would have to simply round him up and lock him in a room upstairs
well before she came over. From there too, he would bark whenever he heard her
voice. Which meant that she had to speak <i>sotto
voce</i> throughout her visit with us. On a few occasions, if we passed her on
the street, us in the car with the windows rolled up, he would even then hurl
himself at the windows with a “let me get at her, I say”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">But
mostly, he would warm up to people once they had strictly followed the protocol
that he had established. It went something like this: a) do not address any
remarks to him, particularly no exuberant Hiiis and flailing of arms and
attempts at head patting b) but do not sweep past him ignoring him c) do not
laugh at him or imitate him, however comic or cute you find his fierce stance
d) let him sniff you out and only offer a muted ‘hello yoyo’ f) do not hug me,
the host e) glide, don’t stride, towards the front door, once he stops sniffing
you out f) let him then come to you once you are seated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Being
received by the Queen, meeting and greeting her at B-Palace, possibly involved
a less intricate network of conventions to follow. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">But it
was worth following through, because anyone who followed this routine was then
rewarded with a swift and wonderful reversal of fortunes. It was like they do
it once you pass the hard-eyed examination by the US Immigration Services as a
visitor. Suddenly, after treating you as a potential terrorist, a possible
alien who will vanish inside their land, once you pass all the requirements at
entry point, the same suspicious and paranoid officer is suddenly all smiles
and trills: ‘Welcome to the US of A, have a good stay, here’s your free map,’
and whatnot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Once the
new visitor was seated, Yoyo would proceed to get friendly, whether the person
wanted it or not. This could be in the form of suddenly turning into a puddle
near the person’s feet, with all four legs in the air, for a belly-rub. Or he
would sometimes decide to jump up on the divan and sit with one proprietorial
elbow and arm firmly placed on the person’s lap. The whole demeanour was of
those hunters of yore who stood with one foot on a tiger that they had slain.
And in this way, many of my friends and associates and relatives, including my
ageing father, who had never particularly liked dogs, got drawn willy-nilly
into accounting for him, if not outright falling for him. “And how’s that
Yoyo?” they would find themselves asking on the phone, and would end up buying
him little gifts from their travels, and put up with him gnawing gently at
their socked feet under the dining table or sneaking into their <i><u>razais</u></i> if they spent the night. I
began to hang a sticky-roller by the exit gate, so people could brush off the
wiry white fur that he liberally left on their clothes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">His pride
and joy at now belonging unambiguously to us, he would display elaborately,
when we walked past his previous house. He would stiffen a little, slow down,
and kind of goose step starchily past their gate, his butt doing the talking.
It was like he was mooning that household. If anyone from that house happened
to be around and called out to him, he would ignore them completely, and
sometimes pointedly take a grown-dog one-leg-up leak on a plant nearby, looking
studiously away from their gate. He would relax his formal butt-stride only
when we went out of sight of that house. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The only
person he dropped this act for, and turned himself into a little smudge of
affection for, was the resident house help there, from whom even a ‘Kay rey
Yoyo?’ would have him curling and uncurling like a caterpillar, in great
affection of an uncharacteristically shy-child kind. This is the same person
who fed him and allowed him to gnaw at her hair justforfun, when she rested in
her quarters in the afternoon, during his early few months there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">At first
he had just the one soft short wavy coat. As he settled into my house, he grew
a second coat, a luxurious, longer wiry top layer. He grew a ‘snow-fringe’ – to
keep out the snow from his eyes, were he to ever visit his native Highlands. The
borders of his ears grew silken pale orange-gold long fur, like corn cobs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">(Next instalment, 22 June)</span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ0Os6eFHrgERot-6qejfh8e6zUUUtx4ytu2fiG-wVElkk4KtOSn3KI_xoB2Y6_Q7q192YpPxDP3DLi0ieSaPwMA7bvfwHc6Uf8nB6PyxVfWA7Slt8cKTFiUpUmFerxlW_tLJ1vLlgNfc/s1600/yoyo+young+tree+stump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="555" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ0Os6eFHrgERot-6qejfh8e6zUUUtx4ytu2fiG-wVElkk4KtOSn3KI_xoB2Y6_Q7q192YpPxDP3DLi0ieSaPwMA7bvfwHc6Uf8nB6PyxVfWA7Slt8cKTFiUpUmFerxlW_tLJ1vLlgNfc/s320/yoyo+young+tree+stump.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-6614360532435017212018-06-07T21:16:00.000-07:002018-06-07T21:16:35.143-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo-nama<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">(The
Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Chapter 2<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">A few
weeks into his house-arrest and regimented routine at his first home, after we
had sadly and firmly decided that he had just been a comet in our firmament,
now gone, one late morning he turned up at my gate. I let him in, and he was
allowed past the gate only after Snoopy gave him the US Immigration Services
treatment…a thorough once-over, just short of a cavity search. Once cleared
gruffly by Snoopy, he came in shyly, but simply decided not to leave till
evening. He seemed to tide over his mealtime and hunger, and when I broke my
rule of not feeding him full meals (since he usually went off<span style="color: red;"> </span>on his own when it was his mealtime; this way we
could all keep up the pretence, the self-deception, that he wasn’t our dog or
meant to be in our lives in any kind of permanent committed way, but was just a
wayfarer), I offered him some of Snoopy’s khichdi without any meat in it, as he
was now just about 4 months old. He came up to the plate, but stepped back from
it at once, and waited. As if the only explanation for no meat in his food was
that I had forgotten, or that it was still being cooked. The second I added a
tablespoon of mince, he ate hungrily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">And thus,
he had trained me in one shot, never to forget meat in his meal forevermore. For
the rest of his life, if you gave him only vegetarian food, he would sit
watching you archly. ‘Where is that ‘saamthing’ extra’ (which for some reason
we pronounced in a Bengali accent), we thought he was asking pointedly. But I’m
getting ahead of the story. We weren’t yet into forevermore. He was just a dog
who would slip away from his house-arrest, and drop in on us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">That
evening, the doorbell rang. It was his
politely irate owner standing outside my gate, leash in hand. He had come <u>to
take his dog back</u>, he said. Yoyo, who had come up behind me, now quietly
hid, behind my legs. He was now grown enough to be certainly most visible, with
a nice round rump, and big corn-silk ears, but he seemed to be convinced that
if he stood very still behind my legs, he would not be seen, and the man would
go away muttering to himself, ‘where the heck did that dog go’, and then forget
all about Yoyo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Not
wanting neighbourhood awkwardness, I did not ask the gentleman why he had left
his dog to wander the streets, over the last some months. I did not point out
that Yoyo was often in all kinds of perilous places, like the time I saw him
standing looking down from the second storey of a half constructed building
without any sides to it, or the time that a workman had rescued him deep from
the rubble of a swimming pool being dug out, where he must have gone exploring
and been unable to clamber back up the steep 12-foot deep pile of excavated mud
and rolling stones. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">I stepped
away, clearly signalling that I was not hiding the dog, and asked Yoyo to
please go home. I took the leash (just a rope actually) from the man, put it
around him, and handed him over. He left, looking askance at me over his
shoulder. Again, I pulled my mind-shutter down. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Only, of
course, to have it rolled open firmly again, a few weeks later. Yoyo’s family
had gone on vacation, and only one aged great-grandmother was holding fort. From
her seat in a patch of sunlight in their garden, she called out to me as I
walked Snoopy past their home, and said, “Look, please take this dog. No one
has time for him, no one was prepared for a dog, just an impulse
purchase…please take him. He’s just lying there tied at the back of the house.”
If I take him, I will get involved, I won’t be able to let him go again, I said
to her. That was my polite, tangential indication that I did not want to risk
having him yanked away from me (on a rope) after the family returned from
vacation and was in the mood to have a dog again. She assured me it wouldn’t
happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">I went to
the back of the house, and there he was, tied near a genset, sleeping against
its warm and loud vibrations. He looked sad and tense but stood up. I led him
away, and as soon as we were out of his sitting-sleeping area, he sort of let
go and produced a mighty, spreading puddle of pee. He watched solemnly,
helplessly, as the puddle grew all around him and under all four paws. He had
been holding on for long, not wanting to dirty the area in which he had been
sitting for hours and hours. When he was done, he neatly jumped clear of the
puddle and began to walk with sprightly determination on the leash, towards my
gate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievP4p8dzagD2zx00BpMsWpVir-wQVcjviCxUAAsaUMlS7Cqiwei5JaOk6EFlkH2S-gFPXZ2TiuwoRik8ktRId2Q9Wbz4SX0EYzxGaSDTC-rfG0O3rcTBHHNm5RBWzwI-mY-lNjno-cTE/s1600/Mathangi+and+yoyo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1055" data-original-width="1407" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievP4p8dzagD2zx00BpMsWpVir-wQVcjviCxUAAsaUMlS7Cqiwei5JaOk6EFlkH2S-gFPXZ2TiuwoRik8ktRId2Q9Wbz4SX0EYzxGaSDTC-rfG0O3rcTBHHNm5RBWzwI-mY-lNjno-cTE/s320/Mathangi+and+yoyo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">And just
like that, Yoyo came to stay. And life became a new flavour of madness for us -
me and my then flatmate Mathangi, who had been encouraging me to just keep him.
He adored her till the very end; over the next 15 years, when she would visit,
he would have a special ‘my person’ expression on his face – as she was part of
his early years. She was also a willing victim of his arbitrarily made rules
like no coming downstairs at night or I will snipe at your pyjama leg, but I
can crawl into your bed and up your blanket and emerge to sit on your face. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo’s
coming and my taking him in was clearly a redefining of who I was and where I
really would and should put my energies. The person I was seeing then asked me
challengingly, “I see, so taking in one more dog…this means that you’re
signalling to me ‘Love me, love my dogs’, right?” Some of Yoyo’s sparkiness had
already rubbed off on me, and I had rediscovered my temporarily silenced
snarkiness to reply: “No, the signal is that you should go back under the flat
stone I lifted that you came out from under” (or words to that effect). And with that, I pulled the plug on a
limbo-relationship in which I had been floundering for longer than I care to
disclose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo
seemed to have recognized fully that this was now his home. He ate, drank,
slept, and took his first pee and dump neatly and discreetly under a clump of
bamboo. And would never after that, ever, do it in the house. Very soon, he
began to relieve himself only when he was taken for a walk along with Snoopy –
who had now resigned himself to having a feisty housemate under foot. He
continued to be frosty, and Yoyo continued to either not notice, or deftly
wheedle some leeway out of Snoopy, so that his aggression simply died down, and
sometimes he even allowed Yoyo to almost snuggle up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Snoopy
must have noticed how very captivated everyone was by this maverick new
entrant, but he took it with much grace. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Here he
is, Yoyo, a few days after he had become decidedly my dog and I had decidedly
become his human:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_GAD3IOjSFeNTMJbq1tiimvJzKOwY7IVPNQSY5tRf4kUUrigInzgTGcbH9ANnb_yFRUpP85mb3bbGayWofNoCEF1SaMTNXs8Gr6dGEjhNfHEthsmr1UjBHxVv5uPF5HioSAFXmAq3IZY/s1600/gouri+yoyo+young.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_GAD3IOjSFeNTMJbq1tiimvJzKOwY7IVPNQSY5tRf4kUUrigInzgTGcbH9ANnb_yFRUpP85mb3bbGayWofNoCEF1SaMTNXs8Gr6dGEjhNfHEthsmr1UjBHxVv5uPF5HioSAFXmAq3IZY/s1600/gouri+yoyo+young.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">There
continued to be people for whom Snoopy was their one-and-only, with his gentle,
noble manner, right from the time he had jumped off the garbage pile at Seven
Bungalows, Mumbai, and decided to become our dog. Much had happened after that,
and now just he and I had lived companionably and uneventfully, a monastic
existence, for several years. We walked, worked, we met old and made new
friends, we ate simple and regular, and occasionally treated ourselves to a
shared plate of chicken haka noodles from Kiran Dhaba, the only eatery for
miles around at the time, in the far-flung Pune suburb that we had moved to,
from our ex-life in Mumbai. <span style="background: white;">The dog that we had
had when Snoopy came into our lives, Annie the boxer and his biggest buddy, had
been gone for a while. </span>The niece who grew up with us for some years, had
left.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Khudsey juda, aur, jaggsey paraye…hum dono they
saath</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">, a sort of quiet evensong,
is how it was between me and Snoopy, after our exit from Mumbai and the
dismantling of what used to be our family unit.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">My nieces
and nephew and sundry other people were Snoopy loyalists, but even his old
die-hard fans could not help being drawn into the unconscious charms of the
newbie Yoyo when he burst most unceremoniously into this quiet scene. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 106%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">(Next instalment of Yoyo-nama on 15 June 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-10549777914993352612018-05-31T18:29:00.000-07:002018-05-31T18:29:07.556-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yoyo-nama<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">(The Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Instalment 1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">It was a most random beginning.</span><span class="TitleChar"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"> H</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">e came pre-owned and pre-named to us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">I had heard that someone nearby had acquired a new Lahasa
Apso puppy who had been named Yoyo. What an odd name, I thought. Not one I’d go
for if I was to name a dog. The first time that I clapped eyes on him, it
seemed that he was no Apso, but more some kind of Pom, likely to grow into
something yappy and hyper and annoying like the <i>Hum Aapke Hain Kaun</i> dog. That he developed a most respectable wroof
and a guttural growl that came deep from his chest, and not a tinny yap-snap,
would soon be revealed to us. Another thing that he clearly did not have, were
Pomeranian itty-bitty paws. He grew broad round ones that looked like polar bear
paws, left an imprint like a big flower, and felt like the tread of a buffalo
if he stepped on you, even though he grew into just about an 18 kg dog. But all
that was later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">He was about </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">5weeks old when I first saw
him. The next time that I saw him, some weeks later, I saw him in silhouette and
I remember wondering, wow, a Scotty? Not so common here in India. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
Scotty most of us have seen is as an illustration of Buster in Enid Blyton’s
Five Findouters and Dog series,</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">then Snowy in Asterix when we were a little
older;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">and then
when firmly in adulthood, we became familiar with the two Scotties of the Black
& White Whisky label. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Why was this
new puppy in our colony visible in silhouette? </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: black; border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; padding: 0in;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Because <span style="background: white;">he was standing with two kids, stock still, intently
waiting for their school bus, squinting against the morning sun. When the bus
arrived, his head did a kind of kathakali dancer left to right, right to left
up down down up; and at the same time his body did an opposite right to left,
left to right. These adjustments were being made as he judged the optimum
distance and position he needed, to take a jump into the narrow three-stair
entrance to the bus and sail off to wherever the kids were going. When they
shooed him off and the bus roared off without him, he looked most puzzled. For
all his entire long life, Yoyo has rarely doubted his welcome anywhere, and so
this boorish going off to school and leaving him behind, puzzled him rather
than hurt him. As the dust from the departing school bus settled, he went back
towards his gate, waddling off moodily. I called his name; he looked over his
shoulder, and I crouched low on the ground and called him – something most
puppies cannot resist. He tucked his ears back and bounded across to me on
short-stocky legs. In a few seconds he was flopped on his back, and because I
did not instantly rub his belly, he gave me a helpful nip on my fingers. This
was possibly the first of the many helpful nips, smacks, warning growls and
imperious barks that he would rain down on us over the next many years when we
were derelict in our duty of belly rubs, ear scratching, treat-tossing, etc.
But that was later. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">That day,
it was late December, I went home and told my flatmate at the time, Mathangi,
about this new creature. The next morning we were out there to watch him
standing patiently for the bus, readjusting his entire body to be able to this
time catch that bus. Yet again he was shooed off amongst much giggling and
there he stood, looking most non-plussed at the departing bus refusing to let
him board. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">We had
begun to hear some rumbling grumblings from his owner, about being ‘cheated’ by
the breeder, and having paid for an Apso but got some odd fellow instead. Back
at my desk, I looked up Scottish Terrier, and the images that came up were not
exactly like him. But on one site, a chart of all Terrier types opened up, and
there was our Yoyo. (Dangerous territory, already we were thinking of him as
Our.) He seemed to be a West Highland Terrier; a breed we had never seen or
even heard of. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">More
explorations on the internet, and the pictures that showed up of Westies were
amazingly like him. None of these here are him, and yet they are so him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">One
phrase stuck in my mind, when I read up on the breed: <i>A lot of personality packed into a little dog. </i>I and many other
people would have reason to experience cartloads of personality again and again
over the next 15 years<i>. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">We would
see him wandering about aimlessly in his lane, investigating this and that,
sometimes pouncing on moths or cockroaches, running up to passersby, who would
either pet him or shriek in horror, and he would look back at them puzzled, and
take himself off in a moody manner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">One day,
a few weeks later, Yoyo simply decided to follow me home, 5 houses away. The
aloof 8 yr old mongrel who I had then, Snoopy, took a very dim view of this
incursion, shelved his usually philosophical and stoic stand on most things,
and received him with growls, hackles raised, smelling him all over. When his drop-ins became frequent, Snoopy
would either give him the once-over or ignore him completely, after rolling his
eyes upon seeing him. Yoyo would quickly and cannily flip over on his back in
complete supplication, allow himself to be sniffed over by Snoopy at the
entrance, and then gain entry. He would try to play with Snoopy, take the
ignoring in his little stride, sometimes he would walk right under the standing
Snoopy, treating him like some kind of overhead bridge or arch, to enter our
yard. Once safely in, he walked about solemnly, inspecting everything, going
around the yard, climbing up to the top floor, batting and boxing, growling and
backing and advancing on himself in the long mirror that he encountered. We
would try to scoop him up to take him back to his house, but he would, all 10
kgs of him, stand firmly rooted to the ground, unbudgeable. Or go completely
limp and become a deadweight. Or turn into an almost fluid puddle on the
ground. The lady who kept house for me would call out, no, he’s playing statue,
we cant lift him. Or she would say, ‘saandla’ – meaning he’s spilt, like milk
on the floor. For such a small dog, he was always difficult to lift. Too much
personality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">The shine
had totally gone off the ‘new puppy’ for his first household that bought him,
and complaints about him decimating a cricket bat signed by Sachin Tendulkar
Himself, into tiny matchstick sized pieces, eating up the corner of an entire
giant 200 page dinosaur encyclopaedia, gnawing his way through sofa cushions,
or climbing on to a bed and batting and scratching at the fish tank, etc would
come to me from the amused bemused watchman driver maid from his house. It was
a household ill-prepared to own a dog. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">After
this, he would often come in through a small gap in my gate regularly. Once
here, he would romp around in abandon in my yard, on his broad little paws,
like a polar bear cub. This would include rushing angrily after overhead birds,
bees as well as aircraft that dared to fly over what he too was beginning to
think of as ‘his’ airspace. (We were falling in love, clearly.) Or take a quick
whirlwind tour of the house or make it known to me that if cheese was being
grated, he was in the queue for some. This he would do by turning up from
wherever he was, into my tiny kitchen, with what we would later come to call
the cheese-nail-click. Whether he stuck his nails out extra so that they would
click on the floor, is not clear, but this much I know, that sometimes even if
I was not grating cheese, I would think of doing it, because I heard that
particular clicketyclick behind me in the kitchen. After amusing himself for a
bit, getting thoroughly petted and cossetted by my then flatmate Mathangi, he
would then trot off back to his first owners, at his meal time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">One
redeeming feature of that home was that, I was told, he was fed well, with
plenty of non-veg leftovers. He was now not much of a pet dog, with the family
not too interested in him anymore. His meal was served by one of the kitchen
staff, after which, we were told, he would enter her quarters where she rested
for the afternoon, and proceed to gnaw at her hair, justforfun while she slept
on the floor. He was kind of indulged, in the outhouse, going by these little
tidbits of information about him that would filter through to me from the
amused and bemused watchman, driver, domestic help attached to his owner’s
house. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">His
hangouts at my home began to increase in frequency and duration, much to
Snoopy’s irritation, who would not let him enter without a growl, raised
hackles, and a thorough once-over, to which Yoyo submitted himself gamely. On
days that I was not at home to let him in, neighbours would report that ‘that
dog’ had come, peered in through the gate, loitered around outside for a while,
and gone off a little dejected after being told to bugger off by Snoopy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">A few
weeks into these comings and goings, he abruptly stopped showing up. The news
that filtered through to us was that his owner had suddenly decided to take
charge of him, and turn him into a watch dog, and instead of letting him roam
the lanes, had locked him up, tied at the back of the house. We once saw him
being walked, frog-marched, really, past our place, and he was trying to look
towards my gate but was firmly asked to keep this head and eyes straight ahead.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">Wanting
to stay out of emotional entanglements, I allowed myself a few moments of
sadness about this, and pulled down the shutter of my mind with a decisive
rumble. I was at the time in a going-nowhere relationship, after the end of my
first marriage, but had not seen (or was refusing to see) the limits and
limitations of this non-starter. For this rather amorphous and nebulous
relationship to crystallize into something more definite, I had decided I
needed to stay all nimble-footed and ready to merge with another person and not
get anchored-weighed down with a second dog in my life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Calibri Light"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-latin;">But Yoyo
had other plans. And thank god for that; he was to subsequently stand between
me and a few other serious perils, human and reptilian, in his lifetime. But
more on that, later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-GB">(next
instalment of Yoyo-nama on Friday, 8 June 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-87450158052382645122018-05-30T23:51:00.004-07:002018-05-30T23:51:58.359-07:00Watch this space<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yoyo-nama</div>
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From Friday, 1 June, I will be putting up, weekly, a serialized version of my slim book 'Yoyo-nama - the Chronicle of a Foundling turned Dictator' on my FB page <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=1766185196944353&extragetparams=%7B%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/writinggarden/?fref=mentions" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">The Writing Garden</a> and on my blog <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgouridange.blogspot.com%2F&h=ATMKzQTe7CgoLzWtmMIW3VTTRb8dNk5CxF75b00DhMt-_LXceqai-L66vIfJFE96ABN0mIFu40iapzrPieJOuGujuFI05OYdk09C1Iqyq7PRsKALB4XgXacdzNV3A5Iji1-ZLG5ckrDOShie" href="https://gouridange.blogspot.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">gouridange.blogspot.com</a> in the section called Dog sense and nonsense. Ultimately, it may become an e-book or a real book, hopefully without the involvement of publishers and their ilk. Let's see. Meanwhile, enjoy reading it. The cover photo here is by my dear, dear friend<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;"><a aria-describedby="js_5kg" aria-owns="" class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=703557810&extragetparams=%7B%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/mukherjee.nilanjan?fref=mentions" id="js_5k9" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Nilanjan Mukherjee</a><br />Back-cover note:<br />Like the Babur-nama, the Akbar-nama, the Shah-nama, this is a chronicle of the life and times, the 14-year reign, of a terrier named Yoyo, no less a Mughal in his own way. Starting out on an uncertain unwanted note, Yoyo found his real home, and quickly established himself as the quirky, sometimes charming, sometimes exasperating, but never predictable, head of this household. His sparklingly unpredictable personality, paradoxically, brought purpose and focus into his owner’s then-floundering life. Yoyo’s story is told, like a vakkra raga, in a looping narrative that is not rigidly sequential. The reader will encounter here, Yoyo, his many shenanigans, and his legion of minions, fans and victims. From the time he trickled into the owner’s life, to the time that he exited, taking away with him some of the delicious madness that he rained on us all, is an era in itself.<br />This book, like Yoyo himself, packs a large colourful tell-tail-tale in just a little space.</span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-23595432060348115972017-10-13T20:59:00.000-07:002017-10-13T21:02:27.431-07:00An air-raising tale<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">An air-raising tale! </span><br />
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I've been hearing about the Airfryer for a while now. Close friends have told me how they use it thoroughly for crispy oil-free food, for bakes, and the like. Having to work inside of a tiny cabin-like kitchen (dark, small, irredeemable....but that plaint and my heroic production of food in this anarkali-tomb like place, is a whole other story), I just don't allow thoughts and suggestions about new gizmos that will occupy any kind of fingerprint, leave alone a footprint, in my kitchen. </div>
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And then one day a friend, up until now a very enthu cutlet as they call it, about cooking, but who has begun to reduce and cutback after years of fantastic culinary feats, simply plonked one on me. She had been gifted it, and she felt she could not wrap her mind and space (enviably huge kitchen, mind you) around a whole new cooking system. </div>
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And so this autoclave-looking thing landed up. With a slim but well-written cookbook of its own. I rapidly made in this, tandoori chicken, french fries, and little lava cakes. It was an utter delight, especially since cooking times were as little as 8 to 10 minutes or less. After that, yesterday's chappatis went in in strips, and made whole-wheat lavash, bhindi and karela got 'fried', onions got roasted, kopra got browned, peanuts got beautifully roasted...the Air-fryer (a Phillips one) ruled, while micros, ovens, gas stove etc looked on, a bit miffed.<br />
It's a fantastic thing to have, take my word for it. It's safe - no funny waves...just rising and circulating hot air.<br />
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-83385800126353026682017-09-29T04:46:00.002-07:002017-09-29T04:46:46.850-07:00Thank you for the music!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/thank-you-for-the-music/article4396695.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/thank-you-for-the-music/article4396695.ece</a></div>
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For the longest time, I have taken a “musical ear” for granted. From when I was perhaps four or five years old, a varied mix of people made it a most natural part of engaging with the world around me. But in the classic human syndrome of counting what you don’t have rather than what you do, I have looked hungrily on at the prowess, exposure and astuteness of more evolved musicians and music-listeners’ ears. Only in recent years, when I see people at Indian classical music programmes or appreciation workshops, ask searchingly, earnestly, “What to listen for? How to recognise and enjoy a raga better?” have I begun to value my own abilities and how I came to have them.</div>
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My earliest memory of Indian classical music is not so much an aural one as a visual one. I would be sat (literally plonked) on the opposite side of a harmonium, while my mother’s music lesson would be in progress. At that time, it was not the music that made any kind of conscious impact on me, as much as the mesmeric open-close-open-close of the holes at the back of the harmonium and the pink-printed-paper bellows. I remember feeling extremely sleepy or soothed, I cannot identify which of the two. Then one day, there she was at her music exam, for which I was taken along because I was perhaps not yet in school. She kept toying with the opening <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">swaras</span> of her chosen <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>, till her examiner kindly asked her in Hindi: “Have you forgotten the opening words of your <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">khayal</span>?” She nodded gratefully and sheepishly, but before she could consult her notebook, I remember prompting her with the opening line: “ <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Kaun gat bhayii</span>.” My mother gave me a sharp, surprised and happy look, and proceeded with the exam <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> that she had been asked to perform, Bageshwari. When she was done, though, her examiner and she and my father who had come along to accompany her on the tabla, treated me like they had suddenly encountered some sort of prodigy-savant — they were not sure if they were pleased or a bit spooked, because I was perhaps not four years old and talking not a whole lot as yet.</div>
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Fortunately for me, no one marched me off to a music teacher. But my mother did begin one practice, randomly and with no pressure or overblown parental hopes: If I happened to be sitting in on her music practice, after she hummed the opening notes of some <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>, she would ask me the words of the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">khayal</span>. I often got it right, and then she would simply say, “Hmm, that’s Shankara (or Jogia, or Malkauns, etc).” And that’s how some ragas got a name and face in my head by the age of perhaps five. I still didn’t know this as music learning; it was casually told to me like when she named condiments in the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">masala</span> box while she cooked and I watched. “Hmm this is <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">rai</span>, see how it splutters… Can you smell the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">hing</span>?... Only look, but don’t touch the red chilli…”</div>
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During this time (this was the late 1960s early 70s), my elder brother and sister became <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">bhakts</span> of Binaca Geet Mala. They would have vicious verbal-duels about who gained control of the new transistor radio during the programme, who could touch the tuning button, and who could decide on the volume. From those days, I got some more casual crumbs off the music table. For instance, Mukesh’s “ <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Janey kahan gaye woh din</span>”, my brother said, was a raga called Shivaranjani. The name itself reflected the gravitas of the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>!</div>
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My brother and mother then began to ask me (the newly-discovered savant) — “what feeling does this song give?” And I would reply “sad” or “happy” to start with, and on to “like praying” or “like boyfriend-girlfriend” or “like king-and-queen” (much to my family’s amusement, because I didn’t yet know the words “devotional” or “romantic”, or “regal”, but that is what I was trying to express). And so there it was: the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> name, its identifiable face or <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">mukhda</span> in a film song, and its <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">bhaav</span> or emotional charge, all “taught” to me in a non-lesson.</div>
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As I grew, Hindi film songs of the time and older ones became a rich repository of <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> recognition. My mother would then often “staple” a <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> that she was learning with a song that we liked, providing one more approach-road to the rich farmland of classical music. Was this a thought-out strategy to transfer music knowledge to her kids? I don’t think so. There was very little that was premeditated in my mother’s personality. So it is likely that she was simply joining some dots for herself and us, in a casual, relaxed journey of discovery.</div>
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Later, she did make stabs at formally teaching me “ <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">lakshan geets</span>” — those delightful little compositions that embedded in their words and notes, all the attributes of a particular <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>, for the beginner. This was a phase during which I would be trying hard not to yawn, and felt some amount of vague resentment, but all of it seems to have wafted into a music-memory reservoir of the mind.</div>
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My father practised the tabla every day of his life to his last day. Just for fun. For the mathematical joy of it. All he ever nudged me into doing was to sit at a harmonium when I was about 10, and hold the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">lehera</span> for him, repeating the cycle of notes against which he would do his doubles and trebles and all the other mysterious maths of percussion.</div>
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When I was 14, a sitar found its way to our home in Mumbai, all the way from Bijapur. It was a modest little thing, made-to-order for a frail great-grandfather who had decided to learn in his late 70s. After his passing, it was wrapped in several old <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">razais</span> and made the journey from Karnataka to Maharashtra. From then on, a series of colourful, less-known and wonderfully good sitar teachers opened new inroads for me, to that heady field of music-marijuana. They taught me music and many other little life skills.</div>
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The first one, one Mrs Sinha, introduced my fingers to the pain of the string and the pleasure of finding just the right note and amplification. After the slog of the everyday <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">sargam</span>, one day she began me on a <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Kafi</span>, and I fell in love with the sophisticated new note in my life, the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">komal-nishad</span>. She also dismantled my visceral fear of the loud eunuchs who wandered her <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">galli</span>; she gave them tea and water and they dropped their aggressive act; they would sit in her little porch counting their day’s earnings, and half listen to some of us struggling students.</div>
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Then there was Rajamma, an elderly sitar teacher. She and I shared a virtually non-speaking relationship, both most comfortable in the other’s taciturnity. She lived in a small spare Chembur Mumbai flat, the aroma of <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">rasam</span> curling out of the kitchen and into the small front room where we sat. The room contained one folding metal chair on which she sat (she could not sit on the ground), one <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">chatai</span> on which I sat, and two of the best sitars that I have ever learnt on. Here I learnt how to work with the meditative notes of the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">kharaj</span> from her, and watched with awe as she produced beautiful deep-voiced <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">meends</span> from her sitar, her face and body completely impassive.</div>
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With my non-existent Tamil and her sketchy English and Hindi, she communicated to me that I should tell her on the days that I had my period, in which case she would ask me to sit in the corridor of her little flat; I would have to listen to what she played, but not touch a sitar. The prospect of volunteering info about one’s newly-operational body plumbing was so appalling that I would duck classes rather than spell out those words.</div>
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In the right-royal style of insouciant teenage, one day I simply stopped going and omitted to tell her that I was leaving for college in Pune, and we lost touch. But when I hear a musician accessing the deepest lower-octave notes, I know something about where they come from and the work involved.</div>
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In Pune, a feisty, no-nonsense teacher, Mrs Kanade, taught me a plethora of pretty <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">ragas</span>, as well as set-pieces for two people to play, the music intertwining, together and apart. She also taught me how to tune an instrument till every string sang out in joy or in empathic anguish, as you played the notes. (In later years, I found myself being able to guess what <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> was going to be played by a performer when he began to tune his instrument. In the US, this came in quite handy, as friends would wager a dollar if I got it right. But with recession, this was quickly downsized to 25 cents.) This amazing woman became old and arthritic, but her hands remained beautiful, almost girlish, the disease showing some uncommon consideration during its rampage. Her sharp manner saw to it that I learnt the difference between any musician playing well and “doing high-jinks”.</div>
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My last music teacher, Siraj Khan, taught me much music and how to make biryani from scratch (including the trick of coaxing pudina/mint to grow). He had that priceless ability to switch you on to the beauty and magic of a phrase, and yet he could teach you to stop being gob-smacked, and get down to the business of mastering it. He would play it, say a 16-note phrase, in all its glory. Then he would ask you to undrop your jaw, and would simply deconstruct it for you, clearly showing you its components; he would then reconstruct it again. In this process, you could learn the phrase piece-meal, then put it back together and play it with panache.</div>
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To employ two overused words (favourites in award-acceptance speeches), I feel blessed and humbled by this mix of men and women who have walked with me a while, providing signposts, water, and food on my music learning and listening journey, while taking little or nothing by way of toll taxes in return.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Gouri Dange is an author, columnist and family counsellor based in Mumbai and Pune.</span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5915953002287056801.post-82667161382934931912017-09-29T04:39:00.001-07:002017-09-29T04:41:48.001-07:00Thank you for the music!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/thank-you-for-the-music/article4396695.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/thank-you-for-the-music/article4396695.ece</a><br />
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For the longest time, I have taken a “musical ear” for granted. From when I was perhaps four or five years old, a varied mix of people made it a most natural part of engaging with the world around me. But in the classic human syndrome of counting what you don’t have rather than what you do, I have looked hungrily on at the prowess, exposure and astuteness of more evolved musicians and music-listeners’ ears. Only in recent years, when I see people at Indian classical music programmes or appreciation workshops, ask searchingly, earnestly, “What to listen for? How to recognise and enjoy a raga better?” have I begun to value my own abilities and how I came to have them.</div>
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My earliest memory of Indian classical music is not so much an aural one as a visual one. I would be sat (literally plonked) on the opposite side of a harmonium, while my mother’s music lesson would be in progress. At that time, it was not the music that made any kind of conscious impact on me, as much as the mesmeric open-close-open-close of the holes at the back of the harmonium and the pink-printed-paper bellows. I remember feeling extremely sleepy or soothed, I cannot identify which of the two. Then one day, there she was at her music exam, for which I was taken along because I was perhaps not yet in school. She kept toying with the opening <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">swaras</span> of her chosen <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>, till her examiner kindly asked her in Hindi: “Have you forgotten the opening words of your <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">khayal</span>?” She nodded gratefully and sheepishly, but before she could consult her notebook, I remember prompting her with the opening line: “ <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Kaun gat bhayii</span>.” My mother gave me a sharp, surprised and happy look, and proceeded with the exam <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> that she had been asked to perform, Bageshwari. When she was done, though, her examiner and she and my father who had come along to accompany her on the tabla, treated me like they had suddenly encountered some sort of prodigy-savant — they were not sure if they were pleased or a bit spooked, because I was perhaps not four years old and talking not a whole lot as yet.</div>
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Fortunately for me, no one marched me off to a music teacher. But my mother did begin one practice, randomly and with no pressure or overblown parental hopes: If I happened to be sitting in on her music practice, after she hummed the opening notes of some <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>, she would ask me the words of the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">khayal</span>. I often got it right, and then she would simply say, “Hmm, that’s Shankara (or Jogia, or Malkauns, etc).” And that’s how some ragas got a name and face in my head by the age of perhaps five. I still didn’t know this as music learning; it was casually told to me like when she named condiments in the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">masala</span> box while she cooked and I watched. “Hmm this is <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">rai</span>, see how it splutters… Can you smell the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">hing</span>?... Only look, but don’t touch the red chilli…”</div>
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During this time (this was the late 1960s early 70s), my elder brother and sister became <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">bhakts</span> of Binaca Geet Mala. They would have vicious verbal-duels about who gained control of the new transistor radio during the programme, who could touch the tuning button, and who could decide on the volume. From those days, I got some more casual crumbs off the music table. For instance, Mukesh’s “ <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Janey kahan gaye woh din</span>”, my brother said, was a raga called Shivaranjani. The name itself reflected the gravitas of the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>!</div>
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My brother and mother then began to ask me (the newly-discovered savant) — “what feeling does this song give?” And I would reply “sad” or “happy” to start with, and on to “like praying” or “like boyfriend-girlfriend” or “like king-and-queen” (much to my family’s amusement, because I didn’t yet know the words “devotional” or “romantic”, or “regal”, but that is what I was trying to express). And so there it was: the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> name, its identifiable face or <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">mukhda</span> in a film song, and its <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">bhaav</span> or emotional charge, all “taught” to me in a non-lesson.</div>
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As I grew, Hindi film songs of the time and older ones became a rich repository of <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> recognition. My mother would then often “staple” a <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> that she was learning with a song that we liked, providing one more approach-road to the rich farmland of classical music. Was this a thought-out strategy to transfer music knowledge to her kids? I don’t think so. There was very little that was premeditated in my mother’s personality. So it is likely that she was simply joining some dots for herself and us, in a casual, relaxed journey of discovery.</div>
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Later, she did make stabs at formally teaching me “ <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">lakshan geets</span>” — those delightful little compositions that embedded in their words and notes, all the attributes of a particular <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span>, for the beginner. This was a phase during which I would be trying hard not to yawn, and felt some amount of vague resentment, but all of it seems to have wafted into a music-memory reservoir of the mind.</div>
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My father practised the tabla every day of his life to his last day. Just for fun. For the mathematical joy of it. All he ever nudged me into doing was to sit at a harmonium when I was about 10, and hold the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">lehera</span> for him, repeating the cycle of notes against which he would do his doubles and trebles and all the other mysterious maths of percussion.</div>
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When I was 14, a sitar found its way to our home in Mumbai, all the way from Bijapur. It was a modest little thing, made-to-order for a frail great-grandfather who had decided to learn in his late 70s. After his passing, it was wrapped in several old <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">razais</span> and made the journey from Karnataka to Maharashtra. From then on, a series of colourful, less-known and wonderfully good sitar teachers opened new inroads for me, to that heady field of music-marijuana. They taught me music and many other little life skills.</div>
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The first one, one Mrs Sinha, introduced my fingers to the pain of the string and the pleasure of finding just the right note and amplification. After the slog of the everyday <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">sargam</span>, one day she began me on a <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Kafi</span>, and I fell in love with the sophisticated new note in my life, the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">komal-nishad</span>. She also dismantled my visceral fear of the loud eunuchs who wandered her <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">galli</span>; she gave them tea and water and they dropped their aggressive act; they would sit in her little porch counting their day’s earnings, and half listen to some of us struggling students.</div>
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Then there was Rajamma, an elderly sitar teacher. She and I shared a virtually non-speaking relationship, both most comfortable in the other’s taciturnity. She lived in a small spare Chembur Mumbai flat, the aroma of <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">rasam</span> curling out of the kitchen and into the small front room where we sat. The room contained one folding metal chair on which she sat (she could not sit on the ground), one <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">chatai</span> on which I sat, and two of the best sitars that I have ever learnt on. Here I learnt how to work with the meditative notes of the <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">kharaj</span> from her, and watched with awe as she produced beautiful deep-voiced <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">meends</span> from her sitar, her face and body completely impassive.</div>
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With my non-existent Tamil and her sketchy English and Hindi, she communicated to me that I should tell her on the days that I had my period, in which case she would ask me to sit in the corridor of her little flat; I would have to listen to what she played, but not touch a sitar. The prospect of volunteering info about one’s newly-operational body plumbing was so appalling that I would duck classes rather than spell out those words.</div>
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In the right-royal style of insouciant teenage, one day I simply stopped going and omitted to tell her that I was leaving for college in Pune, and we lost touch. But when I hear a musician accessing the deepest lower-octave notes, I know something about where they come from and the work involved.</div>
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In Pune, a feisty, no-nonsense teacher, Mrs Kanade, taught me a plethora of pretty <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">ragas</span>, as well as set-pieces for two people to play, the music intertwining, together and apart. She also taught me how to tune an instrument till every string sang out in joy or in empathic anguish, as you played the notes. (In later years, I found myself being able to guess what <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">raga</span> was going to be played by a performer when he began to tune his instrument. In the US, this came in quite handy, as friends would wager a dollar if I got it right. But with recession, this was quickly downsized to 25 cents.) This amazing woman became old and arthritic, but her hands remained beautiful, almost girlish, the disease showing some uncommon consideration during its rampage. Her sharp manner saw to it that I learnt the difference between any musician playing well and “doing high-jinks”.</div>
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My last music teacher, Siraj Khan, taught me much music and how to make biryani from scratch (including the trick of coaxing pudina/mint to grow). He had that priceless ability to switch you on to the beauty and magic of a phrase, and yet he could teach you to stop being gob-smacked, and get down to the business of mastering it. He would play it, say a 16-note phrase, in all its glory. Then he would ask you to undrop your jaw, and would simply deconstruct it for you, clearly showing you its components; he would then reconstruct it again. In this process, you could learn the phrase piece-meal, then put it back together and play it with panache.</div>
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To employ two overused words (favourites in award-acceptance speeches), I feel blessed and humbled by this mix of men and women who have walked with me a while, providing signposts, water, and food on my music learning and listening journey, while taking little or nothing by way of toll taxes in return.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TundraWeb-Italic; outline: 0px !important;">Gouri Dange is an author, columnist and family counsellor based in Mumbai and Pune.</span></div>
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Gouri Dangehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15564085761036259907noreply@blogger.com0