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The Story of
Maggie |
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When Maggie and Violet came
into our lives, they were not having names. As a matter of fact, they were
having nothing then, but each other. It was the intensity at which they had
each other that attracted my attention towards them. Maggie now has an
enviable thick golden yellow coat on her, but she behaved like she always had
that - even when she was hopelessly rash-ridden, hairless, and the exposing
skin along the spinal code was speckled with sores. Skin on the lower part
of her body, abdomen and legs, were simply dead, and the dead skin was black
in colour. She had ‘rosy’ cheeks - that was because the skin on
her cheeks were peeling off, and her ears were hopelessly inflamed. Her tail was like a dead
stick with two or three strands of hair sticking to it, and the rest covered
with oozing wounds. She gave out an intolerable stench whenever she entered
our garden from its rear side. The smell emanated from
her body was so repulsive that we had to have all the windows opening to the
rear side closed for months. Despite her
deteriorating body, she had a strong sense of purpose - a purpose of life. She was never alone. Her
puppy, a hairless puppy covered with dirt, always accompanied her. I would see Maggie
walking past our house by the lane leading to the street. And, I would pray
quietly that the puppy did not follow her. I always wished that someone had
adopted that puppy, or simply the puppy was dead. But, a few minutes later I
would see the puppy trailing on her mother’s track. They would both run
about on the street, mother running and the puppy rolling behind. They would
feed themselves on the garbage heaps on the roadside. And, they would lie
down on the middle of the tarred road, getting up and moving to a side
whenever a motor vehicle passed by, and then returning to the middle of the
road to lie down, to lie down together. Everyone noted the pair.
Everyone noted them, particularly the tiny dot of a hairless, dirt-ridden
puppy, lying contently in the middle of the road, with distress. Everyone that visited us
during that period would make some sort of reference to the pair with a lot
of discomfort. We, neighbours, never talked about that couple among us, might
be because the pair weighed so very heavily on our consciousness. The male dogs roamed
about the street did not hurt Maggie and her puppy - rather they were very
friendly with them, and were apparently giving them protection. The puppy was
so very tiny at that time, and it would not have survived otherwise. It was during this time,
our domestic help for the last ten years bid farewell to us since her family
was well out of the economical difficulties that compelled her to work for
us. As it was not that easy to replace a decade-old domestic help, we had been
buying our lunches and dinners from a posh restaurant nearby. The lunch and dinner
packets contained so much food that I could never eat all the food. Nearly
half the cooked rice and the curries like dhal were always left over. Whenever I opened the
composting bin to dispose of the leftovers, the images of Maggie and her
puppy on the garbage heap would flash in my mind. A lump would form in my
throat, and my eyes would become moist. It became so unendurable
to dispose of the leftovers into the composting bin that, one late evening I
braved the cold wind that gives me non-stop sneezing and wheezing that
follows it, to feed the pair. I wanted to do it
without my husband’s knowledge, because I did not want to make him
aware of the pain in my heart – for I feared it might well be
contagious. As he started to do the
dishes after a dinner, I sneaked out with the leftovers. I opened the gate
noiselessly, and walked all the way to the top of the lane. I was lucky to
find Maggie, then nameless, in the would-be garage of the new house that was
being built across the street. I signalled her to come,
silently, with my hand. She appeared to have picked up the message instantly.
She got up, stood expectantly, but did not take a single step. I waited for a
while, but she did not move. I then kept the food on the side of the road,
turned, and walked towards the house. After having walked for
a while, I turned and looked. I was worried that she might not get to eat the
food. I saw that she had moved towards the food, but hesitating now –
might be because I turned to look. I did not see her puppy
anywhere close to her. There was, however, nothing much I could do about
that. I continued to walk towards my home. When I got very close to the gate
of my house, I looked back, and saw her eating the food that I had offered. With a heavy heart, I
locked the gate and walked towards the door in small steps. As I entered the
house, my husband asked if I went to feed ‘the dog’. I said
‘yes,’ and it was the first time we made any reference to Maggie,
the then nameless dog. Once you start feeding
two strays, a mother and a daughter, it is impossible to stop doing that.
They now got bread pieces soaked in milk for breakfast,
and our leftovers for lunch and dinner. Time and again, they
also got portions from the meals that we cooked separately for our pets
– two dogs resulting from a perfect mixture of a Dalmatian, a Boarder
Cooley, and a Japanese Spits, and four cats. The couple now had two
plates for them – they were the lids of the plastic buckets used in the
house, one small and one big. They also had a bowlful of fresh water. All
these were placed outside the front gate. It took weeks before
Maggie started to pay her attention to me, not only to the meals that I
provided her and her daughter. She now seemed to
realise that they were given food not just because I wanted to dispose of the
leftovers in a charitable manner, but in the lookout for something else
– something that has become very rare in the world of human. * *
* * * The pair still roamed
the street, and still lied down in the middle of the road. In addition, they
also lied down just outside our gate. Being dust covered, they
had the same colour as the un-tarred lane passing by our home. It was a
miracle that those motor vehicles using our lane did not run over the
two. One night as I was lying
down on my bed, I wished that they would use the open veranda on the rear
side of our house to lie down. If they would do so, I fancied, they could be
safe from the vehicles that might run over them. And, in the morning when
I opened the rear side door, what I saw on the veranda was nothing but the
pair - Maggie and her puppy. Maggie wagged her tail at me, still lying down.
Even though the stench her body gave out was simply intolerable, I smiled at
her, and closed the door with a lighter heart. That afternoon, I
visited the veterinary clinic ran by the University nearby. They gave me a
powder that they prepare at the clinic itself. When you dissolve the powder
in 750 ml of water, what you get is what they call the ‘skin
lotion.’ It was a miraculous fluid, and it did wonders on Maggie. The dog should be bathed
once in five days, and while the dog was still somewhat wet, the lotion should
be applied using a sponge with gloved hands, all over the body of the dog.
The difficult part of the ‘skin lotion’-treatment was to wait 30
to 45 minutes by the dog which was now covered with the lotion and thus
violet in colour, preventing the dog from licking the toxic chemicals
contained in the lotion. This meant myself taking half-day leave from work once in five days
as my husband had left for the It was not at all easy
to catch the puppy for a bath, particularly on the first time. My husband, my
animal-loving nephew, the gardener and I, all four of us, were trying to
catch the puppy. It being so tiny, and having made absolutely no connection
with anyone but its mother and her guardian angels, the other strays, it was
next to impossible to catch the puppy. When eventually my
animal-loving nephew’s gloved hands held the puppy firmly against the
floor, it turned its head nearly 180 degrees, and bit with its piercing teeth
all over the hard, extra-extra-large-sized gloves that my husband had
thoughtfully brought for the dog-catching occasion. It made such a
screeching cry that we thought Maggie might attack us. But, she stayed by the
scene a foot or two away from us, and wagged her whole body in excitement,
and whimpered – as if she was asking us not to hurt her offspring too
much whatever good we intend to do to her. She either understood
that we were doing some good to them, or she was simply too afraid to
antagonise us, who provided board and meals. Maggie consistently behaved
subservient to us and to our classy dogs. Once when the mother and
the puppy walking by the lane from the street to the rear side of our garden,
which part our two classy dogs could not access owing to the newly erected
temporary partitions to keep the pairs separated from each other, the younger
one of our classy dogs jumped at the puppy which was trailing behind the
mother. The puppy was put on the
floor and bitten all over. None of the wounds was too deep, as I found out
later with the help of the veterinary doctor, but deep enough to make them
bleed. Soon after the confrontation, all what Maggie and I saw was a bloody
puppy – that shrieked in fear or pain, or because of both. Maggie continued to walk
with the whimpering, bloody puppy trailing her footsteps, entered the rear
side of our garden, placed her bottoms on the ground, pointed her nose into
the air skywards, and howled and howled and howled. Was she lodging a complaint?
Or, what was she doing? I never figured that out. But, it was the first
and the last time, I witnessed an animal lamenting, lamenting helplessly, for
the injustice done to another. I never forget that cry – because I
never could forget that however much I wanted to. The puppy needed only
about a couple of baths with the skin-lotion. She started to look okay even
though she continued to be hairless for months to come. Regular meals with
sprats and fish and milk had already improved her condition. Her predominantly
white-skin with large brown blotches turned violet every time she got the
skin-lotion bath. We named her Violet, therefore. Maggie continued to give
out the stench, though it was less in intensity now than it was before. The
skin on her abdomen area and legs continued to be black in colour, though not
as bad as it used to be. The tail was still a twig, but violet in colour
– with the constant application of Gentian Violet. Well, in short, she
continued to be the ‘ugliest dog in the world’ – in our
eyes. Maggie, of course,
blessed was she, neither understood the word ‘ugly’, let alone
the superlative ‘ugliest’, nor grasp the purpose of a
hierarchical placement. They two had, and still
have, only one purpose in this world – that is to live, which they did
in every second of their lives with such an intensity that the human is,
alas, not blessed with. Now, Maggie and Violet
are proud additions to our animal empire. Maggie is so beautiful and so
charming and so perfect a dog that everyone who sees
her instantly fall in love with her. Some of our neighbours
have not really figured out what happened to that rash-ridden dog that I was
feeding. One even asked me, and was dumbfounded, though delighted, to hear
that the posh-looking Maggie was the same as that rash-ridden dog with the
repulsive stench. * *
* * * Any details about
Maggie’s past remained a mystery until one afternoon I saw her
dedicatedly following a lady with two kids, who lived in the house at the far
end of our lane, and they did not associate much with anyone of us living
along the lane. I now followed
Maggie’s movements closely. I found a consistent pattern in her
behaviour. She would follow each walking member of that family – which
was a joint family – to the top of the lane in the mornings. Two kids with their
mother, in particular, she followed up to the bus stand nearby in the mornings, and down to their house at the end of the lane
in late afternoons. Violet would simply trail her mother’s track, having
made absolutely no relationship with any human yet. Through discrete
inquiries with several people living along the lane, and friendly chats with
the servants of the house down the lane, I figured out that Maggie and the
puppy did indeed belonged to the house at the far end of the lane. After Maggie had given
birth to two puppies and got rash-ridden, her owners had banished her and her
puppies from their home. Whenever, they tried to enter their former home,
they were chased out. At times they had also been beaten up, I was told. A kind, god-fearing
neighbour of ours, who lived between our house and the house of the former
owners of Maggie, had let all three of them, the rash-ridden mother and the dirt-ridden
puppies, stay in her unused garage, without the knowledge of her family, and
fed them intermittently with leftovers. She also had somehow
managed to give away one of the puppies, who was a male puppy and was in a
relatively better condition, to someone. When I started to notice the mother
and the puppy, they were walking up and down between the street and the
unused garage of my kind neighbour. It was simply puzzling
to me why Maggie still retained any relationship with such heartless people
as her former owners who chased her out when she needed them
most. At times, I would shout at her to come back when she went behind them.
But, she would not listen. Does she want to be
friendly with everyone possible so that if I happen to chase her out, as her
former owners did, she could find a home in the heart of one of those people?
Or, is it simply that she does not hold in her heart bad memories, as we
human do? Or, is she all forgiving as the Mighty Lord is? * *
* * * At times I look at the
mother and the daughter duo, and wonder why in the world I took all that
trouble. It was a Herculean task to recover Maggie’s health, to make a
connection with Violet breaking her apathy for human, to appease our classy
dogs to accept the new comers, and so on and so on. Why did I do it? I ask
myself several times, and find no answer to that question, yet. But, whenever I recall
how close the pair was to death, and see how so lively they are now, there is
a very unique and beautiful feeling fills my heart – that is worth all
that trouble, I guess. - May
2002 |
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Uploaded on January
01, 2007 |
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