by M Krishnan
1945
45
The Pariah
The Indian pariah dog, according to the professors, is nearest the greyhound-type in the way it is made. It is all a question of the relative girths and lengths of the bones, the nice adjustment between skull and jaw. Incidentally the pundits write with far greater certainty when writing of the pariah dogs of countries other than India, Turkey or Java for instance. They are less sure of their grounds, their bones, I mean, when on the subject of the Indian pariah, which is perfectly natural and understandable when one thinks over the matter. It is extremely hard to write with precision or authority on anything Indian. There are always varieties, too many varieties. It is so with our foods and languages, our costumes and castes. It is so with our pariah dogs. And so the dogologists have been content with saying that these dogs, generally speaking, more or less approximate to the greyhoundtype, generally speaking, that is.
I have always felt a certain native reluctance to enter into disputes with colonels and professors, and men who can quote massive Latin names in support of their views, but I just cannot accept the theory that the Indian pariah, taken by and large, is greyhoundy in any way. Mind, I do not deny the existence of races and colonies—these dogs live in colonies—that are greyhoundy. The ‘Pariahs’ of cities and cantonments are often so, long-limbed, deep-chested, with hungry tucked-in bellies and lean faces. You find them furtively reconnoitring the purlieus of garbage heaps and bins, or haunting railway stations. I have a powerful suspicion that this is the dog that the dogologists have taken for their type—this is the only way I can reconcile expert opinion, for which I have great respect, with facts, for which also I have respect. And the fact is that these muddled mongrels are no more pariahs than they are blue-blooded Salikis. A great variety of breeds, modern and ancient, have gone to make them. Perhaps they are greyhoundy because among dogs, as in pigeons, when breeding is promiscuous and uncontrolled there is an atavistic tendency towards the old type, and the greyhound-type is undoubtedly a very old one. I do not put this forward as a complete explanation—only as a suggestion. What I do say is that the city-and-station pariahs are no pariahs at all. For one thing they run much to whites, piebalds and black-and-tans and these colours are foreign to the true breed. I admit that I would not know the jaw bones of a jackal from those of a champion Fox Terrier, and that my ignorance of the canine cranium is profound, quite profound. But I have played with the pariah dogs of our country when I was a child and still have esteemed friends among them. I have seen and known them in all sorts of places, on sweltering plains and cold hills. And my point is that they are, in no way, like a greyhound.
I take the pariah of the Bellary district, the herd-dog of these parts, as the type. I would like to reiterate the fact that type varies, even locally, but on the whole this dog is representative, having had few chances of getting mixed up with other breeds. It starts life as a remarkably solid puppy, very like a drop-eared Chow in miniature, except that it is less hairy and heavily boned. The Chow, by the way, can be fairly described as the Chinese pariah, standardized and improved in England. The puppy quickly outgrows the resemblance, developing a snipy muzzle and thin straight limbs. The adult dog has a short-coupled, thick body, wide across the chest rather than deep, a massive neck and a head notable for its wide, domed skull and thin muzzle. The ears are pricked and the tail usually carried gaily. Tail-carriage, however, depends much on the mood of the moment and the pariah is a dog of many moods. The coat is moderately smooth, longer on the neck, and the tail has, at times, just the suspicion of feathering. The colour ranges from yellow to deep brown and some dogs are brindled, but it is very likely that the brindled coat (which usually goes with heavier jaws and a taller stature than usual) is the result of an outcross. White as a dominant colour is the hallmark of mongrel blood, in my opinion, and I view black-and-tan or even black with suspicion. White streaks or a white splash over the chest do occur specially in brindle dogs, and fawn and red dogs may have black masks. The dog stands about as tall as a Bull Terrier but is lighter built, and would stand no chance with the latter in a fight. Bitches are not much shorter, but are noticeably slighter, with a longer body and much finer head.
It should be obvious from the above description that the Indian pariah has few claims to looks. There are authentic accounts of the use of packs of pariahs to worry and hold a leopard by aboriginal hunters and I myself have known these dogs being used for hunting wild pig. But I would not call the pariah a courageous dog. It may do great things in packs but a single dog will never face odds if it can help it. However it has other and rarer virtues which should outweigh its lack of looks and ‘conspicuous gallantry in action’. It is tractable, clever, even sagacious, self-reliant and absolutely incorruptible. It has an extremely hardy constitution and costs next to nothing to feed. There is no better house-dog. It is so clever and willing, you can teach it practically anything, it never makes friends with strangers whatever the bait, and will wake and give voice at the slightest suspicion of anything wrong. It does not keep howling all night, nullifying all attempts at sleep, but barks only when there is good reason. It is this quality, rather than the desire and ability to maul, that is wanted in a watchdog and the pariah has it.
As a shepherd’s dog the pariah does its job neatly and well. The flocks are small, a couple of hundred at the most, and the dog is not required to do anything spectacular, as the Collie and Kelpie are. However it can and will do all that it is called upon to do. I suppose the pariah can be stabilized as a breed and improved in appearance—it cannot be improved in brain—but frankly, I see no future for this dog. In a country where the Poligar and Mahratta hounds have been allowed to die down, practically, is it likely that the pariah will succeed in attracting notice or support?
1944
46
Chocki
Chocki came to me from 500 miles away, over road and rail. I had wanted a Poligar puppy that I could raise for the show bench—the intercession of a friend and the generosity of a southern landlord, known for his strain of Poligar hounds, had brought me Chocki. I still remember my disappointment on seeing her first, a runty, dirty puppy with no promise of size or power, yapping at me from a bamboo basket. Only in the dark, bold eyes, and the exquisite feel of the skin, were there any signs of blood. I said to myself that no eastern hound puppy looked its best at six weeks of age, and that if I had any breeding in me I would see at once to the comfort of the poor little thing that had come all that way in that basket. I lifted her out and set her down beside a bowl of egg-flip. She bit my hand.
Nine months of care and nourishing, and bone-building food saw a very different dog. Chocki was almost full-grown now—she stood twenty-two inches at the shoulder and weighed fortytwo lbs. There was power and quick grace in her build, and refinement in her narrow, chiselled features; she looked an obvious thoroughbred. But I had given up all idea of showing her, for she was undersized in spite of her symmetry; I wrote a guarded letter to the landlord who had bred her, telling him that the puppy he had so kindly sent me was now a grown dog, and lacked size; and that while he was perhaps the one man who possessed and understood the true, old-type Poligar hound, I sometimes wondered if my dog’s sire, or dam, was somewhat on the small side. His reply, received months later, was brief and just to the point. It said that some men were just five-foot tall, but were men all the same.
Early in our acquaintance, I gave up Chocki’s education as well. When she was old enough to learn I began to teach her the many and useful accomplishments that a house-dog should own. It was soon apparent that she had a stubborn, fierce will, but I, too, do not lack the quality, and the obedience-lessons progressed at a crawl. When my slow patience had prevailed on her to sit and lie down at the command, follow to heel, and come up when called, I began to feel a violent revulsion towards her further education. Chocki had the simple dignity and poise of truly ancient races, and expressive brown eyes. There was a look of infinite resignation in her eyes w
hen she sat down at my word, and if I kept her at heel too long, out walking, she would sigh audibly. I stopped her lessons, and somehow we felt closer to each other thereafter.
Except when kept to heel with frequent admonitions, Chocki would run ahead or loiter behind, though she would never let me go out of sight. Returning home belated, one night, I noticed that she kept close to me of her own accord. Later I noticed that whenever I took her for a walk at night she kept by my side—she would come closer still, with a low warning growl if anybody passed us on the road. I put this down to a young dog’s misgivings of the dark, and desire for support. One pitch-black night, with my flashlight dead and the dog practically guiding me over the road, the truth dawned slowly on me—she was escorting me, alive somehow to the decreased self-confidence of a man in the dark. Her nearness to me at nights had all along been protective!
At a year and a half Chocki was no longer rowdy, and had acquired a certain indefinable fineness without loss of strength, as if her lineaments had changed to tempered steel. Her ivorycoloured coat wrinkled in a delicate network over her sides when she bent them, and her limbs seemed slimmer and harder. She retained her stormy vivacity, and could be self-willed, or idle, or full of animal spirits, as the mood took her. A bath was still a thing she would suffer only at my hands, and she would allow no one else to groom her. She had learned, unfortunately, that a menacing display of teeth, or a snarl, was sufficient to restrain the zeal of most people. However, she had developed a surprising tolerance towards the very young. There was no love lost between Chocki and my goats, and she would snap at them if they disputed the way with her, but she was uncommonly gentle to the optimistic kids that sought milk from her, being content to take herself away if they bothered her too much. My six-year-old son and Chocki spent quite a lot of time together, and it was most amusing to watch her enticing him to resume a game of hide-and-seek that he had grown tired of. However, he used to try her patience sorely in spite of our warnings, and at times she would growl at him—my wife and I felt that sooner or later the dog would bite him, in self-defence, and she could bite wickedly. One evening, returning home from work, I was confronted with a strange sight. Chocki, vividly marked all over in blues and greens and reds with primitive representations of motor cars, stood on my front verandah, looking like no dog on earth; and my son sat on the floor beside her, his tongue between his lips, absorbed in decorating her stern with my pastels. Seeing me, the dog advanced to greet me, and vexed by this sudden departure of his surface, the artist jumped up and kicked her in the stomach. The long-suffering animal spun round with a yelp of pain and rage. Taking my son by the shoulders I shook him and spoke angrily to him—may be I was rougher than I need have been in my anxiety for him. Chocki turned on me in a flash, and tore the sleeve of my coat with a slashing bite. I know enough about roused dogs to know that only the instant removal of my hands from the person of her playmate saved further developments. She transferred her loyalties to my son that day, and till he left the place, years later, I remained only second-best in her affections.
Even when a sober matron, Chocki retained her fierce individuality and whims. At times she was a source of acute embarrassment to us. It was only with great difficulty that I cured her of the habit of greeting my wife’s friends by circling all around them, and snapping playfully at the hems of their sarees. When I was there, she would behave herself, but she was not the dog to resist fun in earnest. Once she jumped straight for the magnificent turban of a gentleman who had called on me, lifted it deftly off his head, and ran round and round the house in sheer devilment, with eight yards of orange, unwound mull trailing in her wake. After retrieving the turban and handling it back to my guest, with my most voluble apologies, I took Chocki aside and lectured her on the enormity of her conduct. On such occasion I would speak severely to her, taking good care not to relax the reproach in my voice—the words themselves, usually the Latin names of plants, mattered nothing. Chocki dreaded the ordeal even more than a beating. She would lift her head and howl in a thin, melancholy voice, and when this failed to stem the unrelenting flow of nomenclature, she would grovel on the floor; if this too did not move me to forgiveness, she would sit up and get quite lost in frantic search for an imaginary flea. Diplomatic relations, severed after these lectures, would be resumed after an hour or two, and I always took her out for a romp to mark the close of the episode. I must say that Chocki never repeated an offence after being spoken to sternly—but then, why should a versatile dog repeat herself?
As years went by a deeper understanding grew between us, till I felt that I could read her every mood—no easy thing with such a temperamental creature—and I dare say she felt the same way about me! When Chocki was six years old, in her prime, she took to ranging the scrub and hillsides on her own, getting back in time to give me a tempestuous welcome on my return from work. Sometimes, in the excitement of pursuit, she would forget herself, but she was home by nightfall invariably. Twice she brought in hares she had hunted down by herself, tributes to her speed and woodcraft.
When finally, I had to leave the jungle-clad hills amidst which my dog and I had spent eight happy years, Chocki was a major problem. I could not take her with me to the cities for which I was bound—it was unthinkable that a dog who had never seen a chain, except round a goat’s neck, should live tied up, or cooped in a kennel, the best part of the day; and given her freedom she could never have survived metropolitan traffic. What I wanted for her was a home in the countryside, where a dog with an independent nature, and a will of her own, would be really welcome. This was not easy to find. In the end a friend came to the rescue, as friends will. He was frank about it. He did not like Chocki’s manners, and doubted her intelligence, but he did not like to see me worrying either, and offered to ship her to his estate in the country, to which he was retiring shortly, and give her a home. The parting was brief, and hurried. Chocki’s reactions to her new home were typical: she broke away and lived in the surrounding scrub jungle for a week before she would return to it, but is now firmly established there. I hear that she is very happy in her unrestricted life, and new loyalties, but has grown fat and less active. And I believe my friend no longer thinks that parlour tricks and the domestic manner are the best indications of canine intelligence or charm.
1950
O
Oryx and Okapi
The oryx is both swift and strong,
with sabre horns a metre long,
and it is wild and wary.
It is a desert antelope
that loves in little herds to lope
across the Kalahari.
Okapis, on the other hand,
are forest beasts that cannot stand
the open sands and sunlight.
They live within the humid, dark
Ituri, and their limbs are starkly
banded black-and white.
Nature Desecrated
47
Captive-bred Mugger
Iwas a member of the Indian Board for Wildlife for three decades. Soon after its inception, M.D. Chaturvedi and I were asked to draft the pledge that members should take, a pledge of commitment to our wildlife. Chaturvedi was high up in the north and I low down in the south, so that we had to draft the pledge by correspondence. I felt it should be short, simple and sincere—it is so easy to be solemnly pompous over a pledge of commitment—and as I was writing to communicate this view to my masterful colleague I received a letter from him containing the pledge fully drafted and already sent in to the IBWL, thanking me politely for my cooperation! It was a fulsome pledge, and I cannot remember its precise wording, but recall its first part—‘Born in the Land of the Buddha and Mahavira, I solemnly pledge myself to …’. In due course it was replaced by a shorter pledge (on a Western model) free from pious sentiment, but three years ago I was reminded, irresistibly, of the old pledge.
The IBWL is an advisory body with no executive powers. Its recommendations are implemented, or not, by diverse governme
nts. It is a large and colourful body, with a preponderance of the top brass of governments, but also with a sprinkling of representatives of institutions and members of the public. Its sessions are lengthy and decorous, and usually culminate in a substantial lunch. Perhaps because of all this, the minutes of its widely spaced meetings are brief and usually omit the opinions expressed by members.
Early in the 1970s, when Dr Karan Singh was in the chair, the precarious position of our crocodilians came up at a meeting. We have three kinds of crocodiles. Much the commonest is the mugger, for some reason also called the marsh crocodile though it inhabits, not marshes, but rivers and deep waterspreads. The second is the estuarine crocodile that favours saline waters along the coast and is much the most powerful and aggressive of the three, alarmingly dwindled in India by the 1970s, but still there in Malaysia and Australia. The third is the uniquely Indian gharial, the fish-eating crocodile, which had almost reached the brink of extinction by the 1970s.
At this meeting I said that while the gharial could probably be saved only by captive breeding, and possibly also the estuarine crocodile in our country, all that the mugger needed was stricter protection, and that where human sentiment guarded it, it was still there in the south, safe from the crocodile-skin trade and its predatory poachers. Naturally, neither what I said nor what others did figured in the minutes, but immediately on coming home I wrote to the secretary of the IBWL to say that if captive breeding of muggers was permitted, it would be disastrous, for the public would oppose the release of the teeming hatchlings into rivers. Perhaps that letter is still there in some file of the IBWL—my own copy was lost long ago when my house was flooded.