by David Michie
Catching each other’s eyes, they both laughed.
Then Sam came down the steps, hand extended. “A great honor to have you in the store,” he said. “If I’d known …”
“I just happened to be walking past,” the biologist told him in his clipped English accent. “I didn’t know about this place.”
“I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I’m a big fan of your work!” Sam told him. “I’ve been following you for years. We have all your books.” He gestured to the shelves behind him. “Would you mind signing a few?”
“Delighted,” the visitor said.
Sam led him to the counter, grabbing a handful of books on the way and offering him a pen. “If I’d known you were coming to Dharamsala, I would have invited you to speak to our book club.”
“Just a flying visit,” said the scientist.
Sam pressed on. “So many people here would be fascinated to meet you.” As the author worked his way through the pile of books, a thought struck Sam. “I don’t suppose you’re free at lunchtime today, are you? I could invite a few people.”
“I have a meeting at eleven that I expect won’t last much more than an hour or so,” the biologist said. “After that, as it happens, I’m free for a little while.”
By the time the scientist returned there were ten people seated at a table near the bookstore, waiting to have lunch with him. Along with Serena and Bronnie, the group included Ludo and some of his yoga students, Lobsang from Jokhang, and a couple of others I recognized from the book club. As usual, the mood in the café was lively and upbeat; and when the guest arrived, he was welcomed as a much-honored friend. Meals were ordered, drinks poured, and as everyone waited for their food, Sam turned to the biologist and asked, “Are you able to share with us what you’re working on at the moment?”
“Certainly,” he said. “An avenue of research I’ve been exploring for many years is the sentience of animals—what consciousness means in nonhuman beings and how it differs from ours.”
“Like the way dogs can hear pitches that we can’t?” asked one of the book-club members.
“Differences in perception are part of it,” offered the guest. “And it’s interesting how animals are increasingly being used for their perceptive skills. We’re all quite used to guide dogs for the blind, but now we’re seeing much broader applications—for example, diabetes service dogs that alert people to hypoglycemia by detecting odor changes in their breath.
“And then,” he continued, “there are the marked improvements that have been reported in patients with cerebral palsy, autism, and Down syndrome after direct encounters with dolphins. What is it about these particular creatures that can create such dramatic changes? It has been established that the perceptual consciousness of dolphins is in some ways greatly superior to that of humans. What’s more, cetaceans are the only mammals other than humans that clearly demonstrate vocal learning. By better understanding the perceptual and communication powers of dolphins could we develop different treatment modalities for patients with cerebral palsy?”
Sukie from the yoga studio couldn’t contain herself. “I heard a story of a woman who had an experience swimming with dolphins. A dolphin kept nudging her in the abdomen, then without warning it flipped her so that she landed on her back on the surface of the water. She was winded but okay, though she was taken to the ER as a precaution. When they did a scan they found a tumor in her stomach exactly where the dolphin had nudged her. Fortunately, it was treatable.”
The biologist nodded. “There are many such stories, and part of my work is collecting these in a database and having them properly investigated. As you’re suggesting, there are many aspects of nonhuman sentience that go beyond our current understanding but could be extraordinarily useful.
“Animal precognition is well established,” the scientist pointed out. “Since the earliest times, people have recorded unusual animal behavior before earthquakes. Wild and domesticated animals become fearful or anxious, dogs howl, birds take flight. A fascinating example was recorded by a biologist studying the mating behavior of toads in San Ruffino Lake in central Italy. He found that the number of male toads in a breeding group fell from more than 90 to almost none within just a few days. Then there was a 6.4 magnitude earthquake followed by aftershocks. The toads didn’t return for another 10 days. It appears that days in advance they had detected what was about to happen.”
“Earth tremors. Maybe the toads have especially sensitive feet?” someone suggested.
“If so, you would think that seismologists would pick up the same thing,” said the scientist. “Maybe there was some subtle change in the electrical field that they picked up. But you know, it’s not just toads who have this ability. The big tsunami that hit Asia in December 2004 was anticipated by many different species. There were reports of elephants in Sri Lanka and Sumatra moving to higher ground long before the waves struck, and buffalo doing something similar. Dog owners found that their dogs didn’t want to go near the beach for their usual morning walk.”
“A tsunami alert system could be created using animals,” proposed Ludo.
“I’ve suggested that myself,” the biologist said.
“What if the ability to anticipate earthquakes isn’t about seismology or electrical fields?” asked Bronnie. “What if it’s some kind of consciousness that animals have?”
“You mean, a survival thing?” chimed in Ludo.
The biologist turned to them both. “You may well be right,” he said. “There’s evidence that animals have the ability to pick up on things in ways that other people would describe as paranormal. Like the phenomenon of dogs that know when their owners are coming home.”
“You wrote a book about that,” observed Sam.
“Indeed. There’s little doubt that some animals can intuitively detect such things as when their owners are leaving work to come home. There’s closed-circuit TV footage showing the dogs getting up and sitting near the front door or a window at exactly the moment their owners leave the office, no matter what time that is. In some cases, dogs have gotten excited about the imminent arrival of someone who had been away from home for days or weeks at a time. There was a merchant marine who would never tell his wife when he was coming home in case he got delayed, but she always knew anyway, because the dog told her.”
“I always thought dogs were special that way,” announced one of the book-club members.
Lying on the shelf, I bristled. Then I remembered my dream and didn’t bristle quite so much.
“As it happens, there are also reports of cats doing the same thing,” said the scientist. “There’s a wonderful story of a couple who went on a sailing trip for several months, leaving their neighbor to feed the cat. Not even they knew exactly when they’d be returning. But when they came home, they found a loaf of fresh bread and pint of milk waiting for them in their fridge. The neighbors expected them back because for the first time since they’d gone, their cat had gone out to the parking lot in front of their building and spent all day looking up the road.”
There were smiles all around the table.
“You could argue that knowing where your next meal is coming from is an important element of survival,” the scientist said, glancing at Ludo. “And similarly, there’s a lot of data showing that many animals, especially those most at risk from predators, can sense when they’re being stared at, which could be critically important to their survival.”
“He wrote a book on that, too,” announced Sam.
The author laughed.
“There are other elements of animal sentience that go even further. Like the work by Dr. Irene Pepperberg with an African gray parrot called Alex, described in a book I didn’t write”—he smiled at Sam—“but which inspired other researchers. It’s well understood that parrots have the capacity not only to learn words but also to use them meaningfully. They know the difference between red and green, square and circle, and so on. They also understand, and can communicate, the dif
ference between present and absent.
“Another researcher who had an African gray discovered that the bird seemed to pick up on her thoughts. Once when she picked up the phone to dial her friend Rob, the parrot spontaneously said, ‘Hi, Rob.’ Another time, she was looking at a picture of a purple car, and the bird, which was upstairs at the time, called out, ‘Look at the pretty purple.’ Most intriguing of all was the time the bird owner had a dream in which she was using an audio tape deck. The parrot, which slept near her, said out loud, ‘You gotta push the button,’ as she was about to do that in her dream. He woke her up!”
“Mind reader?” asked Bronnie.
“The parrot was rigorously tested on that. I’m oversimplifying, but basically the bird’s responses were recorded as he tried to identify images his owner was looking at in another room. The images were of things like a bottle, a flower, a book, even a naked body. The bird got the naked body right, by the way. In seventy-one trials he averaged twenty-three hits, way more than chance.
“What all of this tells us,” the biologist said, “is that nonhuman beings not only share many elements of consciousness with us but also have different perceptual skills that in some cases may be even more subtle than ours.”
“More sophisticated,” suggested someone.
“That’s a value judgment,” said the biologist with a smile. “But some would agree. We shouldn’t forget, however, that there’s much we don’t know about human consciousness.”
All the while the biologist was speaking, Lobsang had been listening carefully, a serene presence in his red robes. Finally he asked, “Is human consciousness what brings you to McLeod Ganj?”
The scientist nodded. “Buddhism has much to teach the world about the nature of mind: what it is, what it is not, and how theories create divisions in our understanding of consciousness that don’t actually exist.”
“Mind transcends the world of thought,” said Lobsang.
The biologist met his eye with a look of deep recognition. “Quite so. And that simple but profound truth is something that we humans find hard to grasp.”
That evening I went to yoga class with Serena. During the past couple of weeks I’d become something of a regular. Rather than sitting alone in an empty apartment, I much preferred to perch on the wooden bench at the studio, listening to Ludo and watching his students work through the sequence of asanas that was becoming more familiar to me. In particular I liked the postclass discussions on the balcony and the warm companionship I felt while sitting on the rug as Serena and the others sipped their green tea, while the mountains enacted their own nightly ritual, their icy caps slowly deepening from white to burnished gold to cerise with the setting sun performing its own salutation.
This evening’s class was proceeding in the usual way, the students having worked through standing asanas before taking to their mats for seated twists. In his loose pants and T-shirt, Ludo was walking barefoot around the room, making an adjustment here and a suggestion there as he scrutinized every student’s posture in forensic detail.
It was as Ludo was standing with his back to the balcony, talking the class through Marichyasana III, the Sage’s Pose, that I caught the sudden movement. Behind him on the balcony rail a huge rat appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and paused on Serena’s scarf, which as usual she had draped over the rail before coming in to class.
I won’t pretend it was the precise location of the rat that made me react the way I did, although I knew how much the scarf meant to Serena. Though faded and worn, the yellow scarf with its embroidered hibiscus blooms was of great sentimental value, being the only gift from her father that she still possessed. I had heard her tell the story of his giving it to her one evening on their balcony at home when she was 12.
The unwelcome sight of a rodent outside provoked a sound I hadn’t even known I was capable of. Low and loud, it was a warning of such terrible foreboding that I could see the chill in Ludo’s eyes as he looked at me before turning to look outside. By the time he did, the rat had gone. Ludo went out on the balcony, pausing for only a moment before returning swiftly to the room.
“Please, all of you, get up calmly, collect your shoes, and leave the house. There’s a fire next door!”
Looking at the tall, youthful Indian man in the second row, Ludo asked, “Sid, could you use that extinguisher from the balcony?”
Sid nodded.
“I’ll get another one from the kitchen and come around from the back.”
Everyone else rushed to put on their shoes and get out the door. Serena grabbed me on the way. Within moments we were clustered in a group across the road from Ludo’s house, stunned by what was happening next door.
Flames were leaping from a window at the front of the house. Dark smoke billowed out, along with the smell of oil. The eaves were already alight. The gap between them and the eaves of Ludo’s house was very narrow.
Holding me tightly with one hand, Serena dialed the Dharamsala Fire Department with the other. Several other students hurried into the neighboring house to see what could be done from within. Still others dispersed in search of hoses and buckets of water.
From the corner of the balcony, Sid blasted Ludo’s eaves with the fire extinguisher before aiming it at the flames issuing from the kitchen window next door. Ludo raced out the front door of his house with a second extinguisher, just as a fireball exploded through the neighbor’s kitchen roof. Ludo focused his spray on the roof, unleashing a forceful blast of foam that made the flames retreat completely, only to burst out, moments later, a short distance away.
Sukie and Merrilee appeared, carrying the end of a garden hose from a house along the road.
“Don’t get that anywhere near the kitchen!” Ludo shouted over his shoulder. “This is probably an oil fire. Use the hose to dampen the house walls!” The woman and three children who lived next door were huddled helplessly on the side of the road. With her permission, Ludo headed into her house, seeking the source of the fire. The windows were glowing smoky orange. After two blasts from the fire extinguisher, the orange turned to black.
Out on the balcony, a smoke-smeared Sid was battling the fire on the eaves. The flames were blazing dangerously close to Ludo’s roof, and he would no sooner spray them into submission than they would leap back to life. The longer he fought, the weaker the spray coming from the extinguisher. Then it cut out completely. The flames shot up, gaining ground on the neighboring eaves, then leapt effortlessly across to Ludo’s house.
Cries of alarm rose from all who had gathered outside. Serena had been told a fire engine would be there in 20 minutes. But by then Ludo’s home and the yoga studio would be completely engulfed in flames.
Sid disappeared from the balcony, then emerged from the front door. “We need more extinguishers!” he shouted, looking down the road.
“The others are asking the neighbors,” Serena called back. “Two people are driving to the hardware store.”
A thunderous explosion inside the neighbor’s house was followed moments later by a fireball roaring out the kitchen window and up the side of Ludo’s house. Ludo’s efforts inside appeared to be failing, too. He came through the front door waving his extinguisher.
“Empty!” he yelled, quickly crossing the road.
For a moment Ludo and Sid stood staring at the fire. It had firm hold of the neighbors’ eaves and roof and had crossed to Ludo’s balcony. The students spraying water on the walls of both properties were struggling in vain. In no time the entire roof of the neighboring property would be ablaze, and Ludo’s would quickly follow.
A crowd of onlookers had formed, neighbors and passersby who were stunned, anxious, and mesmerized by the conflagration. It felt like an age later but it was probably only minutes before an ancient white Mercedes appeared, tearing up the street toward us, then braking sharply in front of the blazing house. Before the car had come to a halt, men in immaculate white livery and maroon caps leapt from both back doors. They were holding fire extinguishe
rs that were significantly larger than the two used by Ludo and Sid.
The driver’s door opened and out stepped a recognizable figure in a dark jacket and gray cap. It was none other than the Maharajah himself. Sid and Ludo rushed over to where he was opening the trunk of the car and pulled out two more large extinguishers. Brandishing the new tank, Ludo led the Maharajah’s staff into the neighbor’s house, while Sid and the Maharajah went into Ludo’s. Two students grabbed the remaining extinguishers and followed them inside.
In less than a minute, all that remained of the fire were streams of dark, foamy liquid pouring down the sides of both houses and into the street, and the acrid smell of smoke and chemical fumes. In the distance we could hear a siren as the fire engine drew closer.
After the Maharajah and his two attendants left, the fire department surveyed the damage. Several support posts had been badly burned, and until they were replaced the balcony would be unsafe. The furniture had slid to one side, where the floor looked as if it might give way at any moment. Looking around the building that had been both his home and yoga studio for several decades, Ludo seemed relieved that it hadn’t been completely destroyed. Despite the damage, he said things could have been much, much worse.
“If it hadn’t been for the Maharajah,” observed Serena, adjusting her favorite scarf around her shoulders, “who knows how things could have ended?”
There were murmurs of assent. Ludo and Sid exchanged a meaningful glance.
The students filtered back into the building, gathering as on evenings past, but on this occasion inside. Serena had ordered takeaway from the Himalaya Book Café, and large cardboard boxes of pizza were being passed around, along with a nerve-steadying carafe of red wine.