My tears for Tiger had dried up fast, licked away by Bagha’s
frequent ‘kisses’. Clumsily I would pick him up only to be smothered with
kisses all over my face. In an effort to save my face, I would drop him on the
floor and a sharp yelp would denote a hurt little puppy. No sooner though, he
would forget his hurt leg and jump behind me wherever I went.
Again, in traditional houses like ours, dogs were not
allowed inside the house. They had their own kennel. Bagha and I sat on the
steps leading down from the main house, with him brushing hard against my side
to engage in talks that only children and dogs do.
“Tomorrow is my birthday, Mamoni said. You must have heard
the many things I wanted for my birthday.”
He wagged his tail and stretched his neck to kiss me.
“I am getting a new dress and you a new collar around your
neck. Shunu is getting one from Barabazar. It is brown in colour Mamoni said,
because, you are shining black.”
Indeed, Bagha was jet black with a wet black nose. Despite
the many warnings, including instilling the fear of being sent away to boarding
school for kissing his nose, I would always, always kiss his soft black nose,
hiding away from elders in the house.
Bagha grew very fast and in a matter of two months, he was a
strong big dog who turned out to be possessive and jealous of anyone else who
took the attention away from him. Such as the chicken.
We had over fifty white leghorns in our house which lived
inside a very large hen pen. Around 9.30 every morning, my mama would go place food
in their feeding long dish. You should have seen them at that time. The whole
hen pen was full of birds flying and landing up on my mama’s shoulders and
head. There was so much sound with all of them calling out at one and the same
time that the pandemonium could be heard from the streets way above our house.
Bagha was forever alert at these times. He monitored them
from far and in the afternoon when they were let out of the pen to roam around
to pick up worms and such things, he chased them endlessly. While the hen and
cock scraped the ground with their feet to look for worms, Bagha prepared for
the prowl. Slowly and stealthily he approached them like a tiger on his bait
and as soon as he was close enough, the hen was alarmed and he began the chase.
Mostly, he got one of them by the throat! But he never ate them, he just left
them on the floor, his anger and jealousy avenged.
The next day was a day of tomb-like silence in the house,
when my angry mama bit his teeth planning for the punishment to be doled out to
Bagha.
At last, when I was away at school, my mama did the worst
thing any man can do to an animal. It was an act that proved that man is worse
than dog, because when dog kill he does it from his natural instinct to prepare
for his meal; when man kills an animal, he does it to prove that he is the Lord
of the human jungle, which is bereft of all love, loyalty and fellow-feeling.
The day, Bagha was shot dead by my mama’s rifle, Bagha could
not rush back to attack my mama – he had been tied to the pomegranate tree by
the side of the ‘toilet’ in our traditional home in Shillong.
Bagha died but the guilt of killing his own pet never left my
mama, not even after he took sannyas and lived for twenty-five years at the
Ramakrishna Mission at Luxa, Banaras, till he died.
I was told by those who were at his bed-side when he was
passing on, that he craved to say something, nobody could understand because he
was delirious and I wondered if it was a confession he was making to someone.
I also wondered if Bagha was at his bedside, like a true and
loyal friend, come to take his Master home?
I would never know, because, I was not there to hear His
Mater’s Voice at his dying hour.
Stories from childhood in anticipation of Terry
and His Little Brothers
Picture credit: http://cdn.cutestpaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cute-Black-Dogs-l.jpg
.JPG)
