Dogs and Drains

This entry belongs to last weekend, and has been lying around waiting to be posted for sometime now... So here it comes:

"I got mauled by a dog today. Okay, so it wasn’t as violent as that sounds, but I’m almost convinced that this dog was drunk. First, it had a crazily waggerly tail (Remember the song: “How much is that doggy in the window, / The one with the waggerly tail?”). Second, there was no need for it to come after me. I was walking quite happily, all in my own world, mentally whistling at the monsoon breeze, pleased by the clean green trees.

Despite my obvious nonchalance, he came after me, wagging his tail behind him. I returned the smile in his twinkling eyes. Of course that was not enough. He wanted to be petted. I did that too. But this was the give-him-an-inch-and-he-takes-a-mile kind of a dog. He now wanted to jump on me with his muddy paws and play his own version of ring-a-ring-a-roses. I had no pockets full of posies, but I held his paws and walked with him for three steps. My friendly neighbourhood canine however, wanted to play... whether I liked it or not.

Paws muddy with red mud jumped up and stained my denims (and I was planning to wear them another day before sending them for a wash). My arms and palms were already mucked up with my attempts at indulging ol’ four legs. The nearest haven was the movie rental store less than two minutes away.

Summoning up all my past experience of ignoring annoying guys who proclaimed so-called “unconditional love” for me, I walked on without looking at this over-friendly mutt. He nearly followed me into the shop, but the door was slammed politely on his snout. I took my movie (some crappy flick called The Covenant) and with my nose in the air, so that I would not make eye contact with him, I hurried home.

A car full of boys laughed at my state as I walked back. I did not care. I came home, washed out the mud, put the denims for a wash, and sat down to write about the dog that “mauled” me on the first day of the monsoons in Mumbai, 2007.

Manu has the encounter on video on her cell phone. And when the car full of boys laughed at us, she was seemingly taking a picture of the drain. However, she was actually trying to take a photograph of the brilliantly blue kingfisher that we saw flying by the drain.

The drain is actually like a moat around a castle, except that it is much narrower and shallower. I like to imagine that there are crocodiles in there waiting to eat the first hapless victim that falls in at night when the power goes off. Perhaps when the people of the buildings of Polaris and Princeton (not the university... and yes, even housing complexes in India like such names) have altercations, the losing party gets thrown to the crocodiles, like in the days of the long-nosed Cleopatra."
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