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MR Anand
OUR street has a lone dog. A black dog with white patches. He is not attached to any particular house, but he and our street’s iron-wallah Muthu have a soft corner for one another. Muthu is carrying on his ironing job under a pavement tree. The lone ranger loves to curl up and have his morning nap under his improvised ironing desk. After 11 pm, this lone ranger won’t allow any stranger to set foot in our street. He just has to go and stand before any of the 15-odd houses of our street. He will be fed by willing hands.
Four years ago, when we moved in, he came up to our gate and introduced himself with his liquid eyes and wagging welcoming tail. ‘He is the only dog in our street. He is a bachelor boy. He takes breakfast at one house, lunch at another and dinner at yet another,’ said the house owner. ‘Does he have any name?’ I asked. ‘The iron-wallah calls him Mani,’ he replied. In Tamil Nadu more dogs are given the name Mani than humans. I wonder why. But I did not like that name. I chose to call him B&W (black and white).
B&W’s best friend Muthu will not take his lunch without offering a handful to him. B&W equally loves the curd rice from the Iyengar family opposite our house and biryani from the Muslim family next door.
My brother used to offer him cookies which he simply relished. He is a dutiful night watchman. He remains wide awake throughout the night. Sometimes he would seem to bark at objects or people not visible to us. The iron-wallah is sure that B&W can see spirits.
One day, last year, dog catchers from the corporation came, caught him, threw him into their van and drove away. Muthu went in hot pursuit of them in his cycle and brought him back within an hour of his abduction. We heaved a sigh of relief when we saw Muthu riding his cycle down the street with B&W seated on the bar like a child.
When it rained cats and dogs during the 2015 monsoon, B&W, the handsome dog, became a lithesome cat and climbed onto the roof of a half-submerged car and remained there until Muthu rescued him.
Few months back my brother Satyanarayan, who became B&W’s thick friend, passed away suddenly in Vrindavan during a visit to the holy place. B&W visibly missed my brother. He declined to take politely the cookies I offered him on behalf of my late brother.
After my brother’s demise we lost interest in Chennai and decided to move to Vrindavan. On the day we shifted, he came to see us off with those same liquid eyes as he did when we moved in four years ago. This time he did not wag his tail, may be due to it turning heavy with sadness on seeing us leave.
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