From Being Afraid of Dogs to Being Adopted by One!
An unexpected journey from Delhi's street dogs to Furry, Hachiko, and a very possessive husky in Australia.
If you had told me in my childhood that one day I would be writing an affectionate piece about dogs, I would probably have laughed at you. Dogs and I had a perfectly straightforward relationship: they stayed on their side of the road, and I made sure I stayed on mine. Particularly if they happened to be street dogs in Delhi!
I was never particularly fond of dogs. In fact, I would rather avoid them than risk a close encounter. I had no objection to their existence, provided they maintained a respectable distance from me.
My youngest brother Budu ( chandan), however, once had a rather more intimate experience with one.
He was still at school and was returning home one day when a street dog decided to chase him. My brother came running into our flat, completely breathless and apparently speechless. He couldn't explain what had happened. He simply pointed towards the staircase.
And there was the culprit!
The dog had followed him right up to our first-floor flat. But instead of displaying any signs of aggression, it was standing there wagging its tail, looking perfectly pleased with itself.
I burst out laughing.
My poor brother had nearly lost his voice, while the dog appeared to have made a new friend. That day, I discovered that a dog's interpretation of a successful social encounter could be rather different from a human being's!
Little did I know that I would eventually become one of their greatest admirers.
### My first encounter with an Alsatian
After graduating from IIT Kharagpur, I joined Indian Oil Corporation at Gauhati Refinery in 1965. I was a young engineer, full of enthusiasm and technical knowledge, and ready to begin my professional career.
Unfortunately, the world outside the classroom contained certain hazards that no engineering textbook had prepared me for.
One of them was the Excise Commissioner, Mr G. D. Chatterjee, who owned a large and rather ferocious-looking Alsatian.
Mr Chatterjee had two daughters, Rupa and Shova. Occasionally, they would invite Gandhi, Marwah and me for dinner. The invitations were most welcome, of course. The only complication was that the route to the washbasin sometimes required us to pass within alarming proximity of the family dog.
I would approach that section of the house with the sort of caution normally associated with entering a dangerous industrial zone.
The girls would notice my discomfort and laugh.
“Don't worry! He's a nice boy!”
A nice boy!
I had encountered many strange descriptions in my life, but this was the first time I had heard a formidable Alsatian described as a boy.
Apparently, he was perfectly harmless. I was less convinced. After all, the girls knew him personally; I was merely an engineer who wanted to wash his hands and return to his dinner without becoming part of the menu.
Still, those encounters were my first small lessons in the possibility that dogs might be friendlier than they looked.
The decisive lesson, however, was yet to come.
### Enter Furry, the real boss of our household
Years later, when I was posted at NTPC Farakka, my wife Madhuri brought home a tiny Spitz puppy.
He was barely a month old and looked like a little ball of fur. There was really only one possible name for him.
Furry!
At that time, I had no idea that this little bundle of fluff would eventually take over our household with the authority of a chief executive who had acquired the company without consulting the existing management.
Furry did not merely become our pet. He adopted the three of us—Madhuri, our only son Anish, and me.
And once the adoption was complete, he made it abundantly clear who was in charge.
When I returned from work, he would often settle down beneath my chair. It was his favourite position, and I suspect he considered it an excellent location from which to supervise the head of the household.
The rest of the time, he would follow Madhuri around the house. Wherever she went, there he was, maintaining a discreet but continuous watch.
When she entered the kitchen, he would sit patiently at the kitchen door.
My late father, observing this arrangement, came up with a wonderful explanation.
Furry was supervising the cooking!
I could hardly disagree. In any well-run establishment, somebody has to monitor production, and apparently Madhuri's kitchen was no exception. Whether Furry was checking the quality of the ingredients or waiting for something to fall on the floor was a question best left to the auditors.
He had another favourite pastime. We would give him a play bone, which he would grip enthusiastically between his teeth. He would bite and chew it with such determination that one might have thought he was trying to extract some closely guarded industrial secret from it.
For a man who had once regarded dogs with considerable suspicion, I was now living with one who considered my chair his personal property and our kitchen his department.
Furry had accomplished what neither the Alsatian in Gauhati nor the street dogs of Delhi had managed to do.
He had made me comfortable in the company of dogs.
And then, in 2005, he left us.
It is remarkable how an animal that enters your life as a tiny ball of fur can leave behind such a large space when it is gone.
### A movie that brought it all back
Recently, I watched The Friend, starring Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, with a Great Dane named Apollo at the centre of the story. Apollo is played by a real dog named Bing.
In the film, Bill Murray's character is a writer who dies, leaving Apollo behind. Naomi Watts's character, who lives in a small New York apartment where dogs are not allowed, finds herself having to accommodate this enormous canine presence in her life.
It is not an arrangement either of them seems particularly enthusiastic about at first.
The dog is grieving the loss of his master, while Naomi's character is struggling with the practical and emotional complications of taking him in.
But gradually, something changes.
Apollo begins to occupy a place in her life that she had never intended to give him. The dog's grief, his quiet presence and his need for companionship begin to affect her in ways she cannot easily explain.
One scene particularly touched me. Whenever Naomi reads something written by Bill Murray's character, Apollo sits and listens. He seems almost to understand the words, as though the voice of his departed master has somehow returned to him through the pages.
Of course, we cannot know precisely what a dog understands in such circumstances. But we can recognise the comfort of a familiar voice, the power of memory and the extraordinary attachment that can develop between a human being and an animal.
Watching Apollo reminded me of Furry.
I began thinking about how dogs become part of our lives without asking permission, and how, before we realise it, we have become emotionally dependent on their presence.
Sometimes a film does that to you. You sit down intending to watch a story, and before long, you find yourself revisiting chapters of your own life.
Apollo had opened a door to Furry.
And Furry led me to another dog whose story has touched millions of people.
Hachiko: the dog who never gave up waiting
The Japanese film Hachi: A Dog's Tale, based on the true story of Hachiko, is one of those films that can reduce even the most determinedly unemotional person to silence.
Hachiko was an Akita puppy adopted by Professor Hidesaburo Ueno of Tokyo. Every morning, the dog would accompany his master to Shibuya Station and wait for him to return from work.
It became a daily ritual. The professor would leave, and Hachiko would return to the station in the evening to welcome him home.
People began to notice this faithful little routine.
Then, in 1925, Professor Ueno died suddenly while at work. He never returned to the station.
But Hachiko did.
Every afternoon, around five o'clock, the dog would appear at Shibuya Station and wait for his master. The train would arrive, passengers would emerge, and people would disperse towards their homes.
And Hachiko would keep waiting.
Tomorrow, perhaps.
Or the day after.
Or surely the next day.
For nearly ten years, he continued to return to the station, waiting for a man who would never come home again. Hachiko died in 1935, after years of this extraordinary devotion.
A statue commemorates him outside Shibuya Station, where his story continues to attract visitors from all over the world.
What moves me most about Hachiko's story is that he was not making a philosophical statement about loyalty. He was not trying to teach humanity a lesson. He was simply doing what he had always done, guided by a bond he could not explain to us in words.
Perhaps that is what makes the story so powerful.
We humans have a remarkable ability to complicate love with expectations, arguments, disappointments and conditions. Hachiko's devotion seems to have had none of those complications.
His master had always returned.
So he waited.
And waited.
There is something almost unbearable about that simple faith.
### Our Labrador neighbour who moved into our drawing room
But you don't have to travel to Tokyo or watch a Hollywood film to discover the emotional world of dogs. Sometimes, the evidence is sitting right below your ceiling fan.
During one of our stays in Delhi, we had a neighbour who owned a large Labrador. We would occasionally give the dog biscuits, which he accepted with the enthusiasm of a man who had discovered an unexpectedly generous pension scheme.
Soon, he became very friendly with us.
In fact, he became so friendly that he began spending a considerable amount of time in our drawing room, comfortably stretched out beneath the fan.
One might have assumed that the dog had made an innocent mistake about the address of his residence.
But no. He had made a decision.
Our neighbour, unfortunately, did not treat him particularly well. Perhaps the Labrador found our home more welcoming, or perhaps he simply preferred our company. Whatever the reason, he began treating our flat as a second home.
Then came a family wedding.
My nephew was getting married, and a shamiana had been erected behind their flat in the same residential complex at Pashchim Vihar. The extended family gathered there for practically everything, from breakfast to dinner. In a Bengali family, a wedding is not merely a ceremony; it is a temporary institution providing employment to relatives, unlimited tea to visitors and food to anyone who happens to be within walking distance.
Our Labrador friend soon discovered this arrangement.
He would follow us to the shamiana and join the gathering as though he had received a formal invitation.
Nobody seemed to object. After all, he was a regular member of the extended household by then, even if his name was missing from the guest list.
When the time came for us to leave Delhi and return to Kolkata, we thought little of what would happen next.
Later, my brother told me that, for several days after our departure, the Labrador continued to visit our flat, apparently looking for us.
Just imagine that.
He had no way of knowing that we had moved away. Nobody had explained the relocation arrangements to him. There had been no farewell speech, no change-of-address card and certainly no WhatsApp message.
He simply came looking for the people who had been kind to him.
Eventually, his owner gave him away.
I have often wondered what became of that Labrador. Did he find another family? Did he discover another drawing room with a comfortable fan? Did he continue looking for familiar faces?
I will never know.
But I remember him, and I hope he found the affection he deserved.
### From Azlan and Silly to Akira in Australia
Our son Anish, who lives in Australia, has also had his share of canine companions.
At one stage, he had two large dogs, Azlan and Silly.
Azlan was a magnificent Rottweiler, majestic in appearance and impressive enough to make visitors reconsider their plans before entering the house.
Silly, on the other hand, was a cattle dog, and she was exceptionally clever.
I once tried hiding her rag doll in every conceivable place I could think of. I was determined to outwit her. I selected hiding places that, in my opinion, would have defeated any ordinary dog.
Silly found the doll every single time.
I began to suspect that I was not playing hide-and-seek with a dog at all, but conducting an intelligence test in which the examiner had already seen the question paper.
Then there is Akira, Anish's present companion, a beautiful Husky who came into the family as a puppy.
She has been with him for more than a decade now.
Whenever Madhuri and I visit Australia, Akira makes it abundantly clear that I am one of her favourite people.
I find this rather gratifying, particularly when I remember the young man who used to avoid street dogs in Delhi.
However, Akira has one weakness.
Jealousy!
If I spend too much time with my granddaughter Isha, Akira is not at all pleased. She wants my attention, and she is quite capable of making her feelings known.
Apparently, at my age, I have acquired a new set of domestic responsibilities. In Australia, I must divide my affection fairly between a granddaughter and a Husky, making sure that neither feels neglected.
Nobody had mentioned this in my retirement plan.
I had expected to spend my later years reading, writing, painting and playing golf. I had not anticipated having to manage canine jealousy across generations!
Still, if a dog wants your company after more than ten years, there are worse problems to have.
### The curious thing about dogs
Looking back, I find the transformation rather amusing.
The boy who was frightened of street dogs grew into a young engineer who cautiously navigated past an Alsatian. The engineer then became the reluctant householder who was adopted by a Spitz named Furry. Eventually, he became the grandfather who is adored by a Husky in Australia.
Somewhere along the way, my fear disappeared.
I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. There was no dramatic incident, no sudden revelation, no bolt of lightning.
Perhaps it was simply Furry lying beneath my chair after a long day at work. Perhaps it was his patient vigil outside Madhuri's kitchen. Perhaps it was the way he followed us everywhere, quietly making himself indispensable.
Or perhaps it was the gradual realisation that a dog does not need to speak your language to understand that you have returned home, that you are feeling low, or that you could do with a little company.
Dogs do not read our books, although Apollo seemed particularly interested in his master's writing. They do not understand our professional designations, our engineering qualifications or the importance we attach to our achievements.
Furry certainly did not care whether I had successfully completed a complicated project at Farakka. As far as he was concerned, my most important achievement of the day was coming home and occupying my chair so that he could settle beneath it.
That was his idea of a successful evening.
And perhaps he had a point.
We spend much of our lives trying to establish our importance in the world. We acquire qualifications, pursue careers, shoulder responsibilities and worry about what the future holds. We become accustomed to being needed for what we can do.
A dog, however, seems to be interested in something much simpler.
It wants to be with you.
Not because you are an IIT graduate, a senior executive, a successful author or a retired engineer. Not because you can solve its problems or offer it wise advice.
It wants you because you are you.
And when you are away, it may wait for you. When you return, it may follow you from room to room. When you sit down, it may lie beneath your chair. And when you spend too much time with somebody else, it may become thoroughly jealous.
There is no management textbook that quite captures this kind of relationship.
Though, come to think of it, I could probably write a chapter about Furry and Akira for my next book on management!
### From fear to affection
Furry left us in 2005, but he changed something in me permanently.
I am no longer afraid of dogs.
That does not mean I have become foolish enough to approach every unfamiliar dog and start patting its head. A little common sense is always advisable, particularly when dealing with an animal whose history and temperament you do not know.
But the old instinct to avoid dogs simply because they were dogs has disappeared.
I now think of them differently.
I think of Furry, the little ball of fur who became the boss of our household. I think of Hachiko waiting patiently at Shibuya Station. I think of Apollo listening to the words of a dead writer. I think of Silly finding her rag doll, Azlan standing majestically in Australia, Akira demanding my attention, and the nameless Labrador who continued to look for us after we had left Delhi.
Each of them has a different story. Yet, in each story, there is something recognisable: attachment, trust, companionship and the need to belong.
Perhaps that is why The Friend touched me so deeply. It reminded me that the relationship between a human being and a dog is not simply about ownership. Sometimes, we believe we have brought an animal into our home, when in reality the animal has quietly entered our lives and rearranged the furniture of our hearts.
Furry certainly did that to us.
And if you ask me who adopted whom in Farakka, I would say, without the slightest hesitation, that Furry adopted three human beings and spent the rest of his life training us to behave properly.
We were reasonably obedient pupils.
Though I suspect Madhuri was his favourite student, and I was merely the man who provided the chair!
