The Woman and The Dog

In an upside-down world, a human and an animal ramble on, propelled by ego, but lost to history

- Shanta Gokhale

Twenty-six, Dog. One upon us. We have only twenty-four, twelve to a side, seven pairs of real ones.

Dog! I wish you could talk. Simple yes or no. You only whimper. The wind rushes in from somewhere. A silent wind, unhindered by trees. The sand rises in clouds. It blocks the blazing sun and the air grows yellow. When the wind drops, the sand settles, the air clears and the sun blazes in the sky again, she sees the tree in the distance. Not the whole tree, just its emerald green head of fronds etched against the topaz dome of the sky. Between her and the tree, the sand stretches golden, spiked with mica.

Dog, you must keep walking ahead. It helps me lift one foot, then the other. I was never heavy-footed. Mother would always ask, what's the hurry? Why run? And I would say I am not running. And run.

The hurry was to get to school. I loved teaching the girls. Loved their morning faces, bright-eyed and eager. They loved the stories I told them, from places and times so remote they seemed mythical. I was going off-course, breaking rules.

Nobody noticed. The girls knew how to keep their heads down, look meek and stay mum about the things they were learning. I told them about the Kon-Tiki expedition. I told them about Don Quixote. One sad day I told them about the Polish Jewish doctor who ran a children's orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto and travelled with them on a crammed train to the killing centre in Treblinka, telling them stories all the way. The girls had to know there was good and there was evil in the world and sometimes those who had suffered cruelly, turned cruel themselves.

Did you know, Dog, that in some jungles, there are plants that trap, eat and digest insects? The girls said that was bad. I said it was not. They only ate what they needed. It is bad only when you kill on a full stomach, out of greed for power, for land. How much land does a man need? I told the girls Tolstoy's story. And the girls grew pensive.