My Host and the Dogs

“If there’s one thing I hate,” my host told me, as we sat in an outdoor café, for that was what it was, if not in the Parisian meaning of the term. There were four tables arranged in a rectangle outside the opening of a shallow block of concrete. The block of concrete was lined with shelves, had a stove in one corner and a collection of everything most people visiting Landour wouldn’t need, hoping to sell them. It sold food for the most part, and hence the epithet of being an outdoor café. No the café itself had no such pretensions, though there was a garden umbrella open above one of the tables…

It was a small shop, in a line of four, which had given the town center its now famous name, char dukan, literally four shops. If only more places were named which such clarity! but then they’d be too many rip off’s and keeping rip off drive, rip off avenue and rip off well whatever, would be too much to ask… so I suppose nomenclature is a luxury only few can afford, however, my host was still speaking to me, “it's stray dogs.”

Now this was a bit of a revelation to me, because he loves dogs, quite obviously, and had actually spent the better of an hour petting one of the stray variety on our way to chaar dukan. Before I could question him, he continued, “oh no, I mean I love them, but what I don’t like is this.” He pointed to a dog, a particularly shaggy black specimen.

The dog was black all over, as though to prove it was a pure blood black dog, and serious about it, with none of that pretty little trim for stockings, or a beautiful patch of white on the forehead, the more adventurous would say, looked like a horse, a horseshoe, or even something more ambitious, like a T52 tank, or perhaps the left hand of Barack O Bama… which would be kind of hard, given that he is black, and the spot white. But well, the abstract, is just that: abstract.

This dog, the absence of interesting stains on its black coat not with standing was itself standing pretty close to our table. The dogs was shaggy, and took being shaggy pretty seriously too. Perhaps it had taken classes from a hippy passing through, they’re quite a few of those in the Shivailks these days. Its long hair was matted, and no one would really have called it a coat, it was more of a collection of badly patched wigs. It hadn’t lost all its winter hair yet, which probably excuses its appearance, though it didn’t seem concerned by it too much, and neither were we very bothered, so long as it stayed a respectable distance from us, so that we could continue to stolidly ignore it.

This of course was a losing battle with my host, who as I said, loves dogs. Though he hates them, and he was explaining why, “see, the way it just stares at us? Just watch pretty son it’ll droop its eyes,” and on cue it did, “and then watch it’ll pull its ears back a little,” once more it did. Though it had the ears of the floppy variety, the change was still perceptible. “And now wait till our food arrives, then it’ll enter into act 2 of this play. I’ve seen them do this a million times. Damn them. They keep up what he’s doing, and towards the end of a meal, they’ll look so miserable, that you just melt… it’s hard to resist these damn critters… but its amazing to watch them, they’re masters at this game.”

“They’re really not half as stupid or cute as they look, its just their front, and its better than having a hungry child with you when begging. Just watch.”

Our food arrived, well his did, I was just having a cup of tea, he however had ordered chocolate waffles, and they were duly placed in a plate before him.

Without even looking at the dog, which was smart of him, as he explained, he carried on his story “see right now, I can tell, its got its eyes open wide, and they look like melting chocolate.” He was right, “and now It’ll droop some more, and then lift its nose up, and its joules a little, and look as miserable as it is possible to look? Am I right?”

“Yes,” I replied, “Perfectly, the dog does look like, well, if it doesn’t get something to eat in the next 5 minutes it might die.”

“Aha, and now watch,” continued my host, “As I eat, it’ll follow my fork like it was a hypnotist’s pendulum, licking its jaws at appropriate moments, but never really losing that expression.” And he was right, the dog kept watching him eat, with the rapt attention one musters when trying to impress on a lady that what she says actually does matter to you. And even though it sat still, unmoving literally below the neck, there was a desperate energy emanating from its person, or dog, I should say.

It responded with a quickness to every sudden movement of my host. When his fork slipped on his waffle, and made a clunk and a shleeck on the china of the plate, the quitest yelp escaped that dog… he was salivating with the same desperation you might imagine on a hungry, well anything really really hungry! Miniature snaps in the air at imaginary crumbs punctuated every bite, and I thin you could actually see the drool falling from its mouth.

My host continued, “Now see that’s why I didn’t look at him, it makes you feel bad almost to enjoy your food while they watch you like that. And even though I know he’s been at it the whole day, and got God only knows how many scraps to eat for his trick, I’ll still feel miserable about not feeding him, so I will. Even though I know perfectly well that he’s just made a fool of me.”

Of course his statement was made even funnier by the fact that as he said all this he picked up his waffles and quietly placed them before the dog. And signaled to the shopowner to put it on his tab, and then “Shall we conintue?” said to me.

“So I suppose its clear why I hate them now? I cant ever enjoy my waffles, well all of my waffles I should say, thanks to them.”

I sympathized with him. I also thought of pointing out that he’d fed the dog a chocolate waffle, and chocolate is supposed to be bad for them, but somehow I think the guilt of taking a revenge so heinous on a dog, would probably sour all the waffles he’d ever planned to eat, and also those he’d already eaten. I let it go, I did quite enjoy the walk, and after all, my host did have a running tab at the shop!