The doggone dog is mine!
Lessons learnt while working at Swechha, India.
Lesson 1: Please mind the Gap.
It was a hot summer afternoon in Delhi on Wednesday, the 22nd of June. I had only just learned that Wednesday is ‘chicken day’ in office. The reason I even remember the date so clearly is because it was exactly one week since 15th June 2016, the day I had started working at Swechha. I enjoyed a hearty meal of chicken curry and rice with my then new colleagues and then went upstairs to the second floor of the office to keep my plate in the kitchen sink. I walked right past a black body with his face shoved inside a silver bowl. It’s always cute to see a dog enjoying his meal so I smiled and walked right past him. I picked the chicken bones off my plate and walked towards the ‘jailed’ bin to throw them in. The bin was placed inside a wooden cage with bars through which my tiny wrists could just about squeeze through.
As the leftover pieces of chicken bone left my fingertips, I felt some wetness on my right forearm accompanied with a groar, what I imagined then to be a throaty growl and roar. The canine jaw was so tightly wrapped around my arm that the quintessential cartoon film shot of the biter being flung around from side to side, as the bitten flails his arms about wildly, came to mind. As ‘Praki da’ (our office caretaker) screamed and others around rushed to my rescue, crimson liquid flowed down my arm and dripped on to the terrace floor. I couldn’t feel pain but a little piece of white flesh was oozing out of one of the holes in my arm. Someone turned on a tap, while someone else rubbed soap and water on to my bleeding arm as I felt it getting hotter. After around twenty long minutes of this scrubbing, one very kind colleague accompanied me to the nearest hospital where a middle-aged lady doctor gave me an anti rabies shot. She also asked me to keep an eye on the dog and make sure it was still alive one week later. (If left up to my husband, I don’t think he would’ve been though!) When I got back to the office, my right arm had stopped looking like the mining site it looked like less than an hour ago.
The next day in office, a diffident pet parent brought an apathetic son to my desk to make him apologize for what he had done. My heart pounded even as an innocent face traced circles around his nose with his tongue disinterestedly. I accepted his apology as I made a mental note never to cross paths with him in the office again. To add to the adventure that week, I needed to get on a flight on the very same day of Rabipur shot number 3 which is taken exactly one week post the bite.. Since this was an early morning flight, I could not find an open pharmacy or a medical practitioner to administer the injection. Some fast-paced walking at the airport led me to the Guardian pharmacy. Staying true to his employer’s name, the man across the counter sweetly offered to give me the shot. It was either that or being pricked by a Google-advised husband. No points for guessing who I went with. After a few days, the elephantiasis in my arm and the feeling of wanting to sue the dog’s owner, had passed. Did I mention that the dog and the company I work for have the same daddy?
Meet Gap Jha, son of Vimlendu Jha and sole heir to the Swechha throne. After a few weeks, the former mental note had been scratched out as well. When he came wagging towards my desk, I held my breath. When he came drooling towards my lunch, I’d pull my limbs into my metaphorical hard shell. Telling all office walk-ins that ‘he’s temperamental’ became the normal thing to do. Many a dog lover came, saw, but did not conquer. Each one believed that they were pros with dogs, most of them had dogs at home even. So nothing would quite convince them until they were ‘once bitten’. Gap has tasted all kinds of exotic blood — Dutch, Belgian, British, American, Haitian and more.
The incredible part of all this is that even after he has sunk his teeth into you, you can look deep into his innocent brown eyes and fall silently in love with him. Today, almost a year later, Gap and I are friends. We exchange pleasantries every morning, I open the door for him whenever he knocks, and he knows he will always get the chicken bones off my plate. Today, Gap continues to make puppy dog eyes at me longing to be petted but knowing full well that we’re on talking terms only — there’s no touching in this relationship!
P.S. — Four year old Gap is a rescued Indian street dog. Having spent a considerable amount of time in close proximity with Indian pariahs, I have learnt that a lot of them have temperament issues given the traumas faced in their early days. A lot of them act out owing to fear and not aggression.
