The Anatomy of Journey

by Rohit Nalluri

  *

  Xession: Speaking with Dogs

  By 2 AM, the world was dark and the world was swimming.

  It lurched at the slightest movement. Only 3 and I remained awake, or as awake as we could be. The rest of the gang had fallen asleep right where they were sitting. We were more alive than awake, really. We could hear our ragged breathing hanging like smoke in the still and silent night.

  'Let's go for a walk,' 3 says.

  I get up and follow him out of Manoj's room, closing the door behind me. Outside, the cool air wakes us up further and the world stops swimming a little. The darkness is muffled and blurred by the glowing, yellow street lamps. The sounds of the night are louder because the silence complains against them – don’t you know that the day is for noise, and the night for silence? We tiptoe across a narrow corridor to the next apartment. This apartment is owned by an ancient, one-legged uncle who owns the entire building and from whom Manoj rents his room. We walk right up to his front door where two wicker chairs are kept, and sit down, laughing silently and uncontrollably, our sides heaving with mirth.

  One side of the corridor is bordered by many doors that lead to tiny apartment rooms, usually rented by bachelors working in night shifts, and the other side a long, metal railing protects you from falling thirty feet to the ground. The railing and the corridor look out at the courtyard of a large, Hanuman temple.

  Sitting in the wicker chair owned by someone else in front of a house owned by the same ‘someone else’, we rest our legs on the railing and look at the dark night sky through the long, thin leaves of a coconut tree. Our confidence derived from the fact that we knew no one was home.

  A sudden shuffling makes me turn. I see a tiny, fluffy-white dog approaching and I raise my legs higher up the railing.

  3 laughs.

  'Why are you afraid of dogs?'

  'I am not,' I say, defensively.

  'You are. You are afraid of a lot of things, buddy.'

  'I guess I am. I don't know why I am afraid of dogs. They don't seem to like me.'

  'Yeah, I've noticed that - I think they are afraid of you; they think you are weird. They're like - why is this tall, thin, stick-like thing coming near me!' He said this in a thin, sing-song voice, trying to mimic a tiny dog.

  I laughed at the way he said it and there was no ego now.

  ‘Come buddy, I'll teach you how to speak with dogs.'

  Something in that sentence triggers an old memory, but I push it aside for now, focusing on what 3 is doing.

  He takes my hand and rubs it against Snowy's forehead. She snaps at my fingers but can’t get to them.

  When I start scratching her forehead and ears, she snuggles into my hands. I stop, just to see how she'd react, and she looks up at me with wide, wet eyes. I don't know if it is the reflection of the yellow lamps on her watery eyes, but I understand what that expression means.

  So I continue scratching her ears and she settles into my hands once again, eyes closed. 'See? There's nothing to be afraid of.'

  'Yeah,' I say, still a little nervous.

  The memory comes back again now so I say, “When we were in high school, I used to cycle to school every day. Every Saturday, I'd make it a point to take a different route. One particular Saturday, this large cow suddenly turned on a narrow street and blocked my way. I could only see one of its eyes and I could see it was looking right at me; at least, it felt that way. With a little exuberance, I said to the cow, 'Move, Mr. Cow'. And it did; it moved! It just turned and walked away.

  All the way to school all I could think of was how amazing it would be if we could talk with animals and if animals could talk back, you know? And they'd have names too - because language would make it necessary for all animals to have separate, individual names; individual identities. So instead of calling the cow ‘Mr. Cow’ I would have called it by a proper name. And if it could talk back to me on the street that day it would have told me, “Hey! It’s not 'Mr. Cow' - its 'Mrs. Cow'!”

  We both explode at that and our laughter ricochets across the corridor. Silence disappears completely for few, brief seconds. Snowy looks up at the racket we’re making, but I comfort her and she goes back to sleep in my hand.

  3 takes out the half-smoked joint and lights it - the last of the evening. As the joint shortens breath by breath the silence creeps back in. We sit in it for a long time, not needing to speak at all.

  Finally, 3 asks, 'What's your biggest fear?'

  'That I'll turn into my father. That I'll waste what potential has been gifted to me.'

  For the first time since we’ve been sitting there that evening, 3 turns and looks at me. I can’t meet his eyes and I avoid them by inspecting Snowy's ears.

  Again we fall silent, thinking the same thoughts in different perspectives - he trying to solve the problem, me trying to avoid it.

  The silence of the night absorbs us like a giant sponge, making us feel distinctly uncomfortable if we dared to make the slightest of sounds to disturb her presence. A group of bats fly by, screeching into the night unheard. The moon climbs over a building and casts a beam of chalky, white light at two dark figures sitting in someone else’s wicker chairs.

  'There is only one way I know to get rid of fears, bub. You have to stand outside of them and look back at them. Inside the fear, you are a part of it. But outside of it, you can see its dimensions, its strength and weakness. You see its irrationality.'

  I nod silently and continue scratching Snowy.