A Dog Day Afternoon
- Shashwat
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
He muzzles his way through the glass door inside the cafe, curls up and dozes off. I sense him indirectly, in reflections and heaving, in the soft thud and creak that escapes from the hinges, impact of flesh and bones on glass…
Do others notice? Good… as long as nobody complains, he may find some relief from the heat and hot winds blowing outside. The weather department has been sending alerts by the handful per day over this month; this May turning out to be crueller than April… no longer the orange yellow Sun tempered by clouds… a white Sun rivalling the moon and larger hangs above the western horizon… trees bare and tall, many branched, with dignity have braced the Indian summer for half a century in this ancient city but the heat these days seems to have escaped from fires and flames of the hell realms… no God who judges and grants eternal paradise or damnation… our deeds make and unmake the kingdom of god here and now…
Eons ago ignorant and blind in the thicket of views I would have dismissed such superstitions but now I know what instincts – sankharas – go in to fashion a dog and many admirable qualities this canine possesses that us sapiens are leaking away in trickles that pool into great lakes of virtues abandoned and forgotten, condemned to dry up and vanish, be gone from the world of man… a sense of fidelity and lack of undue callousness… a dog unless rabid only bites when kicked unlike primates ever ready to hurl a punch and throw themselves in a battle of sticks and stones for convention, foremost among them – I am, the Self, sovereign and separate from all the rest who I must subdue and bring order to…
Cows roam the streets; buffalo boys cross the Ganges, thinning down to a streak from its flooded engorgement monsoon past, to herd their flock grazing on some pastures receding farther by the months…
How many more monsoons left in stock? How many summers such as these before the mighty trees may withstand no more? How long before glass panes may no longer offer a sarai air conditioned inside while billowing flames into the atmosphere… all about the deeds today make and unmake and make again the world that makes us…
Thrown out, dragged out with mercy and joy by the cafe boys, he tries to barge in again… sure he has figured out the secret to these transparent panes that allow light but trap the cool winds except for a little that leaks from the sliver between the door and the floor… but the boys twist the steel bolt shut with a clink… muzzle strikes hard and the past serves no solution to the novelty of cruel indifferent inventions…
Doors open for new arrivals… magically letting them in, keeping me out… many such invisible doors today keeping some out, letting a few in… guarded by sentries not necessarily evil but trained to behave so by conventions and promise of dimes in a fictional circulation called the economy where man is trained on electric shocks of incentives to be a certain way and not to be another for a salary slip at the end of a month and in blind submission to an abstraction that measures the worth of a nation great or small by GDP… the gross delusional product of hallucinations sustained by pills packaged, steroids injected, intravenous drips of saline solution to keep the machine running fools’ errands…
A girl leaving forms a barrier to his entry, grabs him by the flap of skin by the collar and drags him down a feet and down the two steps to the pavement… in another context it is all play… owners play with pets, dogs especially so… and yet the dog, I know he must feel something apart from affection in this familiar gesture… he restrains… does not attack… just a small resistance… how far may we stretch before the band snaps back injuring the finger? i am sentient… he holds himself back when distracted by an intruder, runs barking away and disappears from view for a while…
Minutes later, the sentries gone… he muzzles his way quietly back in… curls up by the same spot and drops dead asleep… try sleeping on a burning pavement… are my demands so grossly unjustified?
Many ask this question many times in the screaming caverns of their mind without letting a sound escape… just look at the eyes... they speak volumes… averted gaze, barking orders, indifferent bystanders who know deep down one day it might be them… it has been them… they have been it… whatever it is… There is one sprawled on a park bench, thinning and thirsting by the day, eyes unable to stay open… lips mumbling to a hallucination… gods… demons… djinns… the mind’s inventions never pause… it is the forerunner of all states… it will invent its way to an excuse, an explanation, a comforting lullaby and avoid the truth that may liberate…
What liberation? Ha! Ha! Mara’s laughter echoes… before giving up the ghost, it may inject one last shot of adrenaline and set up a chase… arms flail and drop, intoxicated by hunger… no hallucinogen, such as lack of sleep in search of a bed, thirsting for a breeze in this hellish heat…
For now, lying sideways, his body gives a kick when the heart beats threateningly slow… I know that… in my bed… a jerk out of fear… that I may be gone… a last ditch effort… he sleeps behind the glass panes soothed by the cool circulate of ether unbearable in the heat beyond… his brothers are outside… guilt raises its fangs, its forked tongue will not let us retire into an easy recluse… the dog the man the cow the maddog madman holycow… doing rounds about samsara kicking and kicked…
I have heard the worst fears are set aside for gods when they are about to fall away from their heavenly abodes and await birth in the saha world… the attendants start to ignore the ones who were so recently honored milords, and thrones tremble… ghosts and demons peer through the well’s tunnel at the being asleep deep in its bottom…
Not so bad this samsara… nobody really wants to kick the dog out… except when forced… something about the original resting blissful in man and beings when unpoisoned by delusion to keep from injuring another, feel a little compassion… empathise with the pain and suffering of others, even dogs, more so dogs these days some would say… capacity to feel joy in the joy of others… even if it be a sleeping dog inside a café on a dog-day afternoon.
Comments