by Satyajit Ray
Back in Calcutta, it occurred to Ashamanja Babu that he had to think of a name for the pup. He wanted to give it an English name, but the only one he could think of was Tom. Then, looking at the pup one day, it struck him that since it was brown in colour, Brownie would be a good name for it. A cousin of his had a camera of an English make called Brownie, so the name must be an English one. The moment he decided on the name and tried it on the pup, it jumped off a wicker stool and padded up to him wagging its tail. Ashamanja Babu said, ‘Sit down,’ and immediately the dog sat on its haunches and opened its mouth in a tiny yawn. Ashamanja Babu had a fleeting vision of Brownie winning the first prize for cleverness in a dog show.
It was lucky that his servant Bipin had also taken a fancy to the dog. While Ashamanja Babu was away at work, Bipin gladly took it upon himself to look after Brownie. Ashamanja Babu had warned Bipin against feeding the dog rubbish. ‘And see that he doesn’t go out into the street. Car drivers these days seem to wear blinkers.’ But however much he might instruct his servant, his worry would linger until he returned from work, and Brownie greeted him ecstatically, his tail wagging fast.
The incident took place three months after returning from Hashimara. It was a Saturday, and the date was November the twenty-third. Ashamanja Babu had just got back from work and sat down on the old wooden chair—the only piece of furniture in the room apart from the bed and the wicker stool—when it suddenly collapsed under him and sent him sprawling on the floor. Naturally, he was hurt and, in fact, was wondering if, like the rickety leg of the chair, his right elbow was also out of commission, when an unexpected sound made him forget all about his pain.
It had come from the bed. It was the sound of laughter or, more accurately, a giggle, the source of which was undoubtedly Brownie, who sat on the bed, his lips still curled up.
If Ashamanja Babu’s general knowledge had been wider, he would surely have known that dogs never laughed. And if he had any modicum of imagination, the incident would have robbed him of his sleep. In the absence of either, what Ashamanja Babu did was to sit down with the book All About Dogs which he had bought for two rupees from a second- hand book shop in Free School Street. He searched for an hour but found no mention in the book of laughing dogs.
And yet there wasn’t the slightest doubt that Brownie had laughed. Not only that, he had laughed because there had been cause for laughter. Ashamanja Babu could clearly recall a similar incident from his own childhood. A doctor had come on a visit to their house in Chandernagore and had sat on a chair which had collapsed under him. Ashamanja Babu had burst out in a fit of laughter, and as a result had his ears twisted by his father.
He shut the book and looked at Brownie. As their eyes met, Brownie put his front paws on the pillow and wagged his tail, which had grown an inch and a half longer in three months. There was no trace of a smile on his face now. Why should there be? To laugh without reason was a sign of madness. Ashamanja Babu felt relieved that Brownie was not a mad dog.
On two more occasions within a week of this incident, Brownie had reason to laugh. The first took place at night, at around nine-thirty. Ashamanja Babu had just spread a white sheet on the floor for Brownie to sleep on when a cockroach came fluttering into the room and settled on the wall. Ashamanja Babu picked up a slipper and flung it at the insect. The slipper missed its target, landed on the mirror hanging on the wall, and sent it crashing to the floor. This time Brownie’s laughter more than compensated for the loss of his mirror.
The second time it was not laughter, but a brief snicker. Ashamanja Babu was puzzled, nothing had happened. So why the snicker? His servant Bipin provided the answer when he came into the room. He glanced at his master and said, smiling, ‘There’s shaving soap right by your ears, sir.’ With his mirror broken, Ashamanja Babu had to use one of the window panes for shaving. He now felt with his fingers and found that Bipin was right.
That Brownie should laugh even when the reason was so trifling surprised Ashamanja Babu a great deal. Sitting at his desk in the post office, he found his thoughts turning again and again to the smile on Brownie’s face and the sound of the snicker. All About Dogs may say nothing about a dog’s laughter, but if he could get hold of something like an encyclopaedia of dogs, there was sure to be a mention of laughter in it.
When four book shops in Bhowanipore—and all the ones in New Market—failed to produce such an encyclopaedia, Ashamanja Babu wondered whether he should call on Mr Rajani Chatterji. The retired professor lived not far from his house on the same street. Ashamanja Babu didn’t know what subject Rajani Babu had taught, but he had seen through the window of his house many fat books in a bookcase in what appeared to be the professor’s study.
So, on a Sunday morning, Ashamanja Babu offered up a silent prayer to goddess Durga for help in this adventure, and made his way to Professor Chatterji’s house. He had seen him several times from a distance, and had no idea he had such thick eyebrows and a voice so grating. But since the professor didn’t turn him away from the door, Ashamanja Babu took courage and sat himself down on a sofa opposite the professor. Then he gave a short cough and waited. Professor Chatterji put aside the newspaper he was reading and turned his attention to the visitor.
‘Your face seems familiar.’
‘I live close by.’
‘I see. Well?’
‘I have seen a dog in your house; that is why . . .’
’So what? We have two dogs, not one.’
‘I see, I have one too.’
‘Are you employed to count the number of dogs in the city?’
Ashamanja Babu missed the sarcasm in the question. He said, ‘I have come to ask if you have something I’ve been looking for.’
‘What is it?’
‘I wonder if you have a dog encyclopaedia.’
‘No, I don’t. Why do you need one?’
‘You see, my dog laughs. So I wanted to find out if it was natural for dogs to laugh. Do your dogs laugh?’
Throughout the time it took the wall clock in the room took to strike eight, Professor Chatterji looked steadily at Ashamanja Babu. Then he asked, ‘Does your dog laugh at night?’
‘Well, yes—even at night.’
‘And what are your preferences in drugs? Only ganja can’t produce such symptoms. Perhaps you take charas and hashish as well?’
Ashamanja Babu meekly answered that his only vice was smoking—and even that he had had to reduce from three packets a week to two ever since the arrival of his dog.
‘And yet you say your dog laughs?’
‘I have seen and heard him laugh, with my own eyes and ears.’
‘Listen.’ Professor Chatterji took off his spectacles, cleaned them with his handkerchief, put them on again and fixed Ashamanja Babu with a hard stare. Then he declaimed in the tones of a classroom lecture:
‘I am amazed at your ignorance concerning a fundamental fact of nature. Of all the creatures created by God, only the human species is capable of laughter. This is one of the prime differences between Homo sapiens and other creatures. Don’t ask me why it should be so, because I do not know. I have heard that a marine species called the dolphin has a sense of humour. Dolphins may be the single exception. Apart from them there are none. It is not clearly understood why human beings should laugh. Great philosophers have racked their brains to find out why; but have not succeeded. Do you understand?’
Ashamanja Babu understood; he also understood that it was time for him to take his leave because the professor had once again picked up his newspaper and disappeared behind it.
Doctor Sukhomoy Bhowmick—some called him Doctor Bow-wow- mick—was a well-known vet. Hoping that a vet might listen to him even if other people didn’t, Ashamanja Babu made an appointment on the phone and took Brownie to the vet’s residence on Gokhale Road. Brownie had laughed seventeen times in the last four months. One thing Ashamanja Babu had noticed was that Brownie didn’t laugh at funny remarks; only at funny incidents. Ashamanja Babu had recited the no
nsense-rhyme ‘King of Bombardia’ to Brownie, and it had produced no effect on him. And yet when a potato from a curry slipped from Ashamanja Babu’s fingers and landed in a plate of curd, Brownie had almost choked with laughter. Professor Chatterji had lectured him about God’s creatures but here was living proof that the learned gentleman was wrong.
So Ashamanja Babu went to the vet, though he knew that he would be charged twenty rupees for the visit. But even before the vet heard of the dog’s unique trait, his eyebrows had shot up at the dog’s appearance. ‘I’ve seen mongrels, but never one like this.’
He lifted the dog and placed him on the table. Brownie sniffed at the brass paperweight at his feet.
‘What do you feed him?’
‘He eats what I eat, sir. He has no pedigree, you see . . .’ Doctor Bhowmick frowned. He was observing the dog with great interest. ‘We can tell a pedigree dog when we see one. But sometimes we are not so sure. This one, for instance. I would hesitate to call him a mongrel. I suggest that you stop feeding him rice and daal. I’ll make a diet chart for him.’
Ashamanja Babu now made an attempt to come out with the real reason for his visit. ‘I—er, my dog has a speciality—which is why I have brought him to you.’
‘Speciality?’
‘The dog laughs.’
‘Laughs—?’
‘Yes, laughs, like you and me.’
‘You don’t say! Well, can you make him laugh now, so I can see?’
Now Ashamanja Babu was stumped. By nature a shy person, he was quite unable to make faces at Brownie to make him laugh, nor was it likely that something funny should happen here at this very moment. So he had to tell the doctor that Brownie didn’t laugh when asked to, but only when he saw something funny happening.
After this Doctor Bhowmick didn’t have much time left for Ashamanja Babu. He said, ‘Your dog looks distinctive enough; don’t try to make him more so by claiming that he laughs. I can tell you from my twenty- two years’ experience that dogs cry, dogs feel afraid, dogs show anger, hatred, distrust and jealousy. Dogs even dream, but dogs don’t laugh.’
After this encounter, Ashamanja Babu decided that he would never tell anyone about Brownie’s laughter again. Why court embarrassment when he could not prove his story? What did it matter if others never knew? He himself knew. Brownie was his dog, his own property. Why drag outsiders into their private world?
But things don’t always go according to plans. One day, Brownie’s laughter was revealed to an outsider.
For some time, Ashamanja Babu had developed the habit of taking Brownie for a walk in the afternoon near the Victoria Memorial. One April day, in the middle of their walk, a big storm came up suddenly. Ashamanja Babu glanced at the sky and decided that it wasn’t safe to try to get back home as the rain would start pelting down any minute. So he ran with Brownie and took shelter below the marble arch with the black equestrian statue on it.
Meanwhile, huge drops of rain had started to fall and people were looking for shelter. A stout man in a white bush shirt and trousers, twenty paces away from the arch, opened his umbrella and held it over his head when a sudden strong gust of wind turned the umbrella inside out with a loud snap.
To tell the truth, Ashamanja Babu himself was about to burst out laughing, but Brownie beat him to it with a loud canine guffaw the sound of which rose above the cacophony of the storm and reached the ear of the hapless gentleman. The man stopped trying to bring the umbrella back to its original shape and stared at Brownie in utter amazement. Brownie was now quite helpless with laughter. Ashamanja Babu had tried frantically to suppress it by clapping his hand over the dog’s mouth, but had given up.
The dumbfounded gentleman walked over to Ashamanja Babu as if he had seen a ghost. Brownie’s paroxysm was now subsiding, but it was still enough to make the gentleman’s eyes pop out of his head.
‘A laughing dog!’
‘Yes, a laughing dog,’ said Ashamanja Babu.
‘But how extraordinary!’
Ashamanja Babu could make out that the man was not a Bengali. Perhaps he was a Gujarati or a Parsi. Ashamanja Babu braced himself to answer in English the questions he knew he would soon be bombarded with.
The rain had turned into a heavy shower. The gentleman took shelter alongside Ashamanja Babu, and in ten minutes had found out all there was to know about Brownie. He also took down Ashamanja Babu’s address. He said his name was Piloo Pochkanwalla, that he knew a lot about dogs and wrote about them occasionally, and that his experience today had surpassed anything that had ever happened to him, or was likely to happen in the future. He felt something had to be done about it, since Ashamanja Babu himself was obviously unaware of what a priceless treasure he owned.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Brownie was responsible for Mr Pochkanwalla being knocked down by a minibus while crossing Chowringhee Road soon after the rain had stopped—it was the thought of the laughing dog running through his head which made him a little unmindful of the traffic. After spending two and half months in hospital, Pochkanwalla went off to Nainital to recuperate. He came back to Calcutta after a month in the hills, and the same evening, he made his way to the Bengal Club and described the incident of the laughing dog to his friends Mr Balaporia and Mr Biswas. Within half an hour, the story had reached the ears of twenty-seven other members and three bearers of the club. By next morning, the incident was known to at least a thousand citizens of Calcutta.
Brownie hadn’t laughed once during these three and a half months. One good reason was that he had seen no funny incidents. Ashamanja Babu didn’t see it as cause for alarm; it had never crossed his mind to cash in on Brownie’s unique gift. He was happy with the way Brownie had filled a yawning gap in his life, and felt more drawn to him than he had to any human being.
Among those who got the news of the laughing dog was an executive in the office of the Statesman. He sent for reporter Rajat Chowdhury and suggested that he should interview the owner of this laughing dog.
Ashamanja Babu was greatly surprised that a reporter should think of calling on him. It was when Rajat Chowdhury mentioned Pochkanwalla that the reason for the visit became clear. He asked the reporter into his bedroom. The wooden chair had been fitted with a new leg, and Ashamanja Babu offered it to the reporter while he himself sat on the bed. Brownie had been observing a line of ants crawling up the wall; he now jumped up on the bed and sat beside Ashamanja Babu.
Rajat Chowdhury was about to press the recording switch on his tape recorder when it suddenly occurred to Ashamanja Babu that a word of warning was needed. ‘By the way, sir, my dog used to laugh quite frequently, but in the last few months he hasn’t laughed at all. So you may be disappointed if you are expecting to see him laugh.’
Like many a young energetic reporter, Rajat Chowdhury exuded a cheerful confidence in the presence of a good story. Although he was slightly disappointed, he was careful not to show it. He said, ‘That’s all right. I just want to get some details from you. To start with, his name. What do you call your dog?’
Ashamanja Babu bent down to speak closer to the mike. ‘Brownie.’
‘Brownie . . .’
The watchful eye of the reporter had noted that the dog had wagged his tail at the mention of his name. ‘How old is he?’
‘Thirteen months.’
‘Where did you f-f-find the dog?’
This had happened before. Rajat Chowdhury’s greatest handicap often showed itself in the middle of interviews, causing him no end of embarrassment. Here, too, the same thing might have happened had it not, unexpectedly, helped in drawing out Brownie’s special characteristic. Thus Rajat Chowdhury was the second outsider after Pochkanwalla to see with his own eyes a dog laughing like a human being.
The morning of the following Sunday, sitting in his air-conditioned room in the Grand Hotel, Mr William P. Moody of Cincinnati, USA, read in the papers about the laughing dog and at once asked the hotel operator to put him through to Mr Nandy of the Indian Tourist B
ureau. That Mr Nandy knew his way about the city had been made abundantly clear in the last couple of days when Mr Moody had occasion to use his services. The Statesman had printed the name and address of the owner of the laughing dog and Mr Moody was very anxious to meet this character.
Ashamanja Babu didn’t read the Statesman. Besides, Rajat Chowdhury hadn’t told him when the interview would appear in print, or he might have bought a copy. It was in the fish market that his neighbour Kalikrishna Dutt told him about it.
‘You’re a fine man,’ said Mr Dutt. ‘You’ve been guarding such a treasure in your house for over a year, and you haven’t breathed a word to anybody about it? I must drop in at your place some time this evening and say hello to your dog.’
Ashamanja Babu’s heart sank. He could see there was trouble ahead. There were many more like Mr Dutt in and around his neighbourhood who read the Statesman and who would want to ‘drop in and say hello’ to his dog. It was a most unnerving prospect.
Ashamanja Babu quickly made up his mind. He would spend the day away from home. So, with Brownie under his arm, for the first time in his life, he called a taxi and headed to the Ballygunge station where he boarded a train to Port Canning. Halfway there, the train pulled up at a station called Palsit. Ashamanja Babu liked the look of the place and got off. He spent the whole day roaming in the quiet bamboo groves and mango orchards and felt greatly refreshed. Brownie, too, seemed to enjoy himself. The gentle smile that played around his lips was something Ashamanja Babu had never noticed before. This was a benign smile, a smile of peace and contentment, a smile of inner happiness. He had read somewhere that a year in the life of a dog equalled seven years in the life of a human being. And yet he could scarcely imagine such tranquil behaviour in such surroundings from a seven-year-old human child.