From Dad’s Childhood Journal…

It’s not every day that my dad speaks a lot but when he does, he is either lecturing me or recommending a good book. On one such recent occasion, I don’t know how we drifted down his memory lane seated in a quiet Sanjeev Kapoor restaurant in Kolhapur, but it brought out tales of a crazy pet dog he owned as a child. Although it sounded like one ferocious beast, his story gained a shocking end…only to draw me closer to a canine who lived in 1960s.

A trained military dog gets rejected from the services due to hyper energy and hilarious doggy disobedience deeds! Mistaking those emotive pair of eyes my grandfather, an officer in the 61^st Cavalry (the largest Indian horse-mounted unit in the world), gets the wild child home perhaps confident to tame the animal. Little does he know that Rana, the dog would turn out to be a stigma in the name of silence and a whirlwind uprooting the basis of serenity.

Introduced to the family, Rana immediately befriended the young boy (my dad) and was constantly around him. He occupied major part of the bed, stretched his legs against the side wall and caused my dad to drop down on the floor! Civilised humans who came home, went back minus their dhotis while the post man delivered letters from the top of a tree, never daring to set foot in the house.

 Rana in a still moment of history

No amount of scolding or screaming would calm his nerves, and Rana would go wild on the poor village cattle. Mounted on their backs, he would take free rides across the village, a truly rare sight, balancing himself on the four legs like a monarch donning an invisible crown. When a cat accidently found its way home, Rana chased her in and out of the house, sending every object flying helter-skelter that came his way. The living room, the kitchen, the bedrooms resembled a hurricane-hit area than a house. The brutal chase had caused a few more hurricanes and colossal damages in a row of houses with no place for the proud Shringares to hide. And of course, the cat escaped.

Deep inside Rana, dwelled a loving heart and when the house help gently touched my grandmother to say something, the dog mistook it for an attack and left the poor lady with a violent bite! Imagine that. When left alone at a friend’s house for a couple of days, Rana was heartbroken. He swallowed his first sip of water only when his favourite young boy (my dad again!) left the holiday and came over to get him back home. He jumped with joy each summer as the young boy came home for vacations from boarding school and he bid a gloomy farewell at the beginning of new academic year.

One summer when the young boy came home, Rana did not appear at lightning speed. He didn’t bark through the corridors or chase butterflies. My grandfather had to shoot him in the head, an instant and a painless farewell to the little soul. Rana was getting way too out of control, violent and causing harm in terrible ways. When my grandpa did it, Rana simply knew, he stood there as though in acceptance of the final punishment. He had a small cloth covering his eyes and the gun was placed close to his skull. And within a second he was gone, leaving the old man with remorse and tears.

I hated this memory and argued in defence of the dog, but so were the old, a generation so brave to let go a part of themselves and a mystical wagging tail, courageous and loving till the end.