Dogs of India Read online

  This book is dedicated to Jyoti Singh

  1989–2012

  Bhagwan aapki aatma ko shanti de

  Polly McGee is one part writer, and many parts assorted thinker, doer, broadcaster, talker, eater, drinker, explorer and dog wrangler. She has worked in kitchens, bars and restaurants, managed multimillion-dollar innovation-grants programs, worked with hundreds of start-ups, and championed causes from a variety of soapboxes, lecterns and stages.

  Gender studies and women’s rights feature strongly in her academic work, as does the expression of identity through story and narrative. She is a passionate believer in philanthropy and the power of giving, and strongly advocates a collective community approach to wealth and skills distribution. Polly is a bowerbird for technology and innovation, and a founder of entrepreneur-support organisation Start-up Tasmania. She loves crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing, and has been known to crowd-surf like no one is watching.

  She emphatically believes that the answer to most of life’s questions can be solved with meditation, barrel-aged Negronis and patting retired greyhounds, in no particular order.

  Polly lives in Tasmania with her partner and three dogs. Dogs of India is her first work of fiction.

  Contents

  Chapter One: Pariahs

  Chapter Two: Un-civil Lines

  Chapter Three: The Acting Director

  Chapter Four: Kamla Nehru Ridge

  Chapter Five: Hastinapuri Estate

  Chapter Six: Flagstaff Tower

  Chapter Seven: Casualties of War

  Chapter Eight: Death of an Ear

  Chapter Nine: Ghosts of New Arrivals

  Chapter Ten: The Last Act

  Chapter Eleven: Mortal Panics

  Chapter Twelve: The Briefing

  Chapter Thirteen: Chandni Chowk

  Chapter Fourteen: Rocky’s Road

  Chapter Fifteen: When Rocky Met Yanki

  Chapter Sixteen: What Happens in Mumbai …

  Chapter Seventeen: The Pashmina and Dash

  Chapter Eighteen: Seeking Solidol

  Chapter Nineteen: Old Foes

  Chapter Twenty: Once Bitten

  Chapter Twenty-one: MasterChef

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Slap

  Chapter Twenty-three: The Scoop

  Chapter Twenty-four: Somebody That You Used to Know

  Chapter Twenty-five: In the Doghouse

  Chapter Twenty-six: Hidden in Plain Sight

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Monkey Business

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Choti Diwali

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Mahabrata Weddings

  Chapter Thirty: Lord Rama Returns

  Glossary of Indian Words

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Pariahs

  At the mouth of the Civil Lines metro station, the human resources of New Delhi flowed into the economy. They stepped over and through the swamp of humanity, embarking on another day rich with the scent of life. Sleepy drivers roused awkwardly from rickshaw beds, their skinny legs regaining blood after a night of circumstantial yoga.

  Chai wallahs plied their hot, sweet wares with the relentless calls of ‘One chai! Two chai!’ as small, steaming disposable clay cups were grabbed by thirsty hands. Once empty, the cups rained onto the ground in a discarded carpet, joining the previous night’s waste. Stationed next to the glass entry of the metro, alongside the chai cart, a momo vendor filled bags with dumplings from his battered aluminium steamer with a precision borne from repetition. Next to his silent steaming and serving sat the flashy, colourful food cart of a snack-vendor rival. A pile of fried samosas stacked on the cart’s shelf behind greasy glass wafted the tantalising scent of fried ajwan seed across peak-hour appetites. The samosa vendor was all theatrics – a showman of snacks, a pea-and-potato carney coaxing sales out of the commuter masses.

  ‘Oh, so delicious! Ganesh himself would dance for these,’ he declared, kicking up a bare foot in a partial demonstration of the said dance.

  The watchful eyes and pricked ears of a group of pariah dogs lay in wait a safe distance from the entrance and exit to the metro. The languid canine clusters were hopeful of stray snacks. One lone dog sat by the entrance. His name was Rocky, inspired by a bootleg version of the American action film. Rocky was a pin-up example of a pariah dog. His tail unfurled like a fern. His fur was short, the golden colour of fresh ghee. With a proud forehead, fine muzzle, elegant neck and high-set ears, his body was neatly perched on top of long, agile legs.

  Pariah dogs shared an ancestry as old as sacred memory. In every town and settlement throughout Indian history, they have cohabited with their human neighbours. Recently, however, the more righteous urban citizens of New Delhi, fed up with vermin of all sizes, demanded their removal by the council, ignorantly calling them strays. These dogs were no more strays than elephants or monkeys, but their reputation was somewhat less fortunate. Unlike the celebrity of creatures that had gods bearing their likeness, dogs in the theology of India had always been eclipsed by showier animals.

  A half-eaten samosa shoved back in its bag was dropped at the entrance to the metro. Rocky snapped it up, swallowing paper and pastry as one. It was not as satisfying as lingering over a meaty mutton bone, but food was food, and Rocky’s hunger dictated an opportunistic menu. Momentarily sated, he took his spot back at the opening of the station, scrutinising people as they passed in the chaotic, colourful peak-hour crush.

  This was Rocky’s second day at the metro looking for a rolling suitcase. His dog logic in maintaining this vigil was impeccable: this was where the rolling bags come and this was, therefore, where he would find his owner, last seen rolling a bag out the door of the house they shared.

  He had been somewhat surprised when he’d discovered the always-locked gate open. The outdoor smells had been glorious. Nose to pavement, nose to tree, leg cocked, scent marked, his bladder had pumped in a rapid-fire frenzy. The raised voices of his human pack became softer as he put a few metres between himself and their vocal marriage disappointments. Rocky could still taste the clenched hand he had bitten as he dived in to protect his mistress from another intimate attack, and feel the bruise where a foot connected with his hind quarter, propelling him onto the street.

  From where he joyfully sniffed and pissed behind a large tree, he heard a final barrage of insults and the noise of scraping wheels as the suitcase rolled down the street and was hauled into a taxi. Then she was gone.

  Rocky followed the vehicle a little way, then hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to do next. There were many cars, trucks and auto-rickshaws on the road, whooshing by his nose. Nothing smelled familiar. He waited and watched for a sign of his mistress returning. None came. Rocky turned back, following his own fresh trail to the house. The gate was shut. He sat outside it obediently, waiting for it to open.

  As the sun rose high in the sky, becoming hot and then hotter still, he slumped lower. The house remained behind the locked gate. Rocky wanted to be on the other side, lapping at his water bowl. He wanted to lie down under his favourite palm and feel its flat leaves stroke his fur in the breeze. He wanted to do nothing before rousing himself to eat, and do nothing some more. He wanted to hear his mistress singing a song, followed by pats and the smell of her hair in his face as she scratched his belly.

  Time passed in dog years. As Rocky sat, doggedly waiting outside the gate, a cycle-rickshaw rolled along the road. The driver strained his way around the chain ring, pushing the pedals up and down against the full midday heat. A sweat river streamed down the back of the driver’s knees, cascading around ropey leg muscles and bony shins and finally onto leathery feet. Despite his efforts, progress was slow. The rickshaw’s rear passenger bellowed into the bluetooth device jammed in his ear. He was gesturing
expressively, barking commands to an invisible subordinate. Squeezed in beside him was a suitcase with wheels.

  The cycle rickshaw was moving at about the pace of a dog, making passageway near the curb, out of the fast-flowing traffic. Rocky looked at the gate again and double-checked it was still shut. It was. He set off at a trot alongside the rickshaw, determined to find out where rolling suitcases and their owners go.

  And here, at the entrance to the Civil Lines metro station, was where the rickshaw stopped, and where Rocky was now stationed.

  His dog-level eyes searched the flow of feet. In between the elegant ankles with glittering sandal buckles, the waddling aloo-paratha-stuffed dowager aunties, the bunions and overgrown toenails in scuffed slides, and the spit-shined aspirational black Batas, he spotted a pair of wheels attached to some kind of case. The owner of the suitcase was awkwardly trying to heft it up the steps to the metro.

  Rocky sniffed the air sharply. Could it be her? Crossing the threshold of the station was not the business of a dog, or so it would seem from the invisible line behind which the other pariah dogs loitered. Rocky moved a tentative paw, as if he were practising stepping out. He sniffed again, unsure what to do. Thunk, thunk – the wheels finally mounted the steps.

  Rocky entered the fray, and, to his surprise, he was suddenly floating, his paws suspended in mid-air. A passing metro guard had grabbed the errant dog, and held Rocky’s ruff of fur in a gnarled fist.

  The guard shook his head. ‘Badmash kutta,’ he said, flinging Rocky back across the concrete entry of the station into the realm of dogs and other undesirables.

  Rocky scrambled for some traction in the loose-dried filth outside the metro station and skidded into the middle of the local dog pack, his arrival breaking open the torpor of the afternoon. They circled Rocky menacingly, their scents cloaking the air. The leader, named Shiva by locals, was a fierce, battle-worn five-year-old male with a dirty-brown mangy coat.

  Shiva pulled back his lips, displaying his snaggle-teeth. Rocky stood rigid, his neck fur cresting. He was in big trouble and felt a long way from the domestic safety of his home behind the locked fence. He was, in fact, a relatively short distance from home as the crow or cycle rickshaw flies. Surrounded by hostile dogs, the irony was lost on him. He looked from muzzle to maw, trying to find a gap he could push through. The raw hostility of the pack swirled around him, ready to erupt.

  Shiva attacked. Rocky’s instincts, despite domestication, were still intact. He dropped his head low and fast. His programmed reflexes prevented Shiva from locking on to his throat and delivering almost-certain death. Instead, Rocky’s ear was captured in the teeth of the larger dog. He could feel the slow ripping motion as it peeled away from his scalp. The smell of fresh blood triggered a collective primal switch in the pack of dogs. The injured intruder was about to be dealt with using centuries of pack law. But before the brutal, fang-filled skirmish could begin in earnest, a shiny black Lexus sedan pulled up close by. As the car stopped outside the metro, it, too, skidded with a flourish, straight into Shiva’s ribcage, which gave way to the larger vehicle. Rocky, unexpectedly released, bolted, his dirt-and-blood-stained fur melting into the city’s palette as he fled. The cars and roads and carts and snack vendors morphed into Mysore figs and softly scented flowering chamrods as Rocky reached the haven of a park.

  Bounded by New Delhi University on one side and Civil Lines on the other, Kamla Nehru Ridge was as much thoroughfare as destination. Pedestrian traffic picked up in the afternoon. Students emerged from class and snuck into secluded parts of the park for unsupervised romance. There were the university jocks jogging through the heat of the afternoon, drowning in the humidity of their muscular exertions. And then there were the certain-aged ladies of New Delhi, colourful flocks of social butterflies taking their daily constitutional in an attempt to neutralise the effects of endless burfi and halwa accompanying their tea and gossip. Joining the daily transit of the sexual, the sporting and the social at Kamla Nehru Ridge, Rocky staggered along. His torn ear flapped against his muzzle as he searched for somewhere private to lie down after his traumatic afternoon.

  Chapter Two

  Un-civil Lines

  Lola Wedd could have never adequately prepared for her first day in India, so it was lucky she hadn’t thought beyond her journey’s romance–revenge motif. The cool and relative order of Indira Gandhi International Airport disappeared behind the automatic doors as Lola stepped outside, and the introduction to New Delhi assaulted each of her senses. The front of the airport was swarming with touts shouting a cacophony of ‘Madam, madam’ at her. Lola stood still, paralysed and overwhelmed. Her Sydney contacts had promised her a driver to transport her to Hastinapuri Estate. She searched the crowd in vain for a sign with her name on it as she hugged her backpack to her front to evade the theft that was, in her mind, inevitable.

  What seemed like hundreds of faces stared intently as she passed. Lola had never felt so female, white and alone. As the first notes of hysteria began to rise in her chest, a middle-aged man with a confronting case of vitiligo shuffled up to her. Below a bright-orange turban was a patchy white beard barely restrained by a snood. His shirt had a faded logo stitched to it, proclaiming a prestigious coach-and-limousine service. Lower still, an ill-fitting pair of pants hung loose, longing for a belt. In his hands was a torn piece of cardboard with the name Lowly Weed scrawled on it.

  Lola pointed at the sign and nodded. He made a disinterested attempt to take her bag, which she quickly refused, and motioned for her to follow him. Given the precarious position of his pants, he shuffled ahead at a surprising pace, with Lola struggling along behind.

  As the concrete façade of the recently revamped airport ended, the reality of fast-growth New Delhi stretched out ahead. Lola sacrificed the tight grip on her bag to cover her mouth and nose with one hand. The smell was overpowering, like someone had fragranced everything with human waste. Rubbish was ubiquitous. It lay in piles, planned and unplanned: a source of fascination to the birds, rats, dogs and u-shaped rag-pickers lugging bags bigger than themselves. The walk to the limousine seemed interminable, not the short stroll the loping driver indicated.

  ‘Close, madam,’ he would curtly respond when she asked about the length of the journey.

  Eventually she stopped asking.

  When they finally arrived, the foreshadowed limousine was a silver Suzuki Mighty Boy from the mid-1980s – missing its windscreen. A couple of spent workers perched in the back of the truncated utility. Their crumbling jute bags, stuffed to capacity with who knows what, were strapped to the tiny roof. Declining the opportunity to cram her bag in the back with the other limousine passengers, Lola climbed into the front seat.

  The Mighty Boy’s gears ground painfully as the car pulled into the thick stream of vehicles and joined the lurching, inching column towards New Delhi. There were clear lanes for traffic marked on the roads from Indira Gandhi Airport, painted white lines, road signs in English and Hindi. The highways in India – despite their illusion of regulation – had only one real law: that of size. The bigger the vehicle, the more likely it would get right of way. Unless the vehicle was a cow, of course – which instantly got right of way, and right of stop, and right of chew if a selection of weeds caught its fancy. The agonisingly slow trip allowed her to see in graphic detail the kaleidoscope of vehicles jostling dangerously for position: enormous, ancient trucks with gallery-worthy murals painted on the back; open-top buses full of commuters; carts, cars, motorbikes, auto and cycle rickshaws and bicycles. Around the machines with motors and wheels, the road swarmed with pedestrians, cows, pigs, dogs and monkeys, all making their way somewhere.

  Unlike Lola’s hometown of Sydney, New Delhi drivers favoured blasting their horn over using an indicator to change lanes or overtake. The horns were aural torture, relentlessly tooting day and night. There was a silent reprieve when the population rested briefly as night changed shift with day, but the quiet was fleeting, and almost eerie as if
someone had turned off the city’s life support.

  Partway through Lola’s journey to Hastinapuri Estate, the Mighty Boy pulled over suddenly. The driver got out and opened Lola’s door, impatiently gesturing for her and her backpack to alight from the vehicle. They were clearly still on the edge of a motorway, and nowhere near any kind of civilisation, let alone the luxurious mansion she was destined for.

  Bright-blue tarpaulins hung on frayed ropes along the side of the road. Tribes of people and animals coexisted on the width of a footpath. There was a full lifecycle in the residents’ slim strip of existence: shopping, selling, washing, cooking, playing, praying, mating, loving, hating, birthing and dying, all carried out with a formidable spirit.

  Lola stood on the edge of her new reality. She stared at the display of naked life in shock, as if the skin had been unexpectedly taken off a body right in front of her, revealing its intricate ecosystem of organs and veins. The bystanders to Lola’s cultural autopsy observed her foreignness with equal curiosity. Lola implored the driver to tell her what was happening.

  ‘Change car,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ she questioned.

  ‘Change car.’ This time it was emphatic, punctuated with a phlegmy cough, signalling that Lola’s lack of trust, faith, patience or whatever was actually causing him physical harm.

  Along the road putt-putted an auto-rickshaw, pimped up with mirrors, horns and jewel-encrusted pictures of a variety of deities. A faded vinyl sticker across its windscreen proudly proclaimed in fuchsia glitter Above Mother There is No Other. The driver was obviously hedging his bets between Mother India and his actual mother, both of whom wielded a similarly omniscient power on the subcontinent. He was in a different class to the shuffly, turbaned Mighty Boy chauffeur. This driver beamed a wide smile from below mirrored aviator sunglasses, radiating all the way down to his gold-chain-laden chest. His vehicle pumped out a cheerful Bhangra beat from tinny-sounding speakers, which kept playing as the vehicle pulled to a standstill in front of Lola.