Only if love could have saved him...

Charanjeet Singh Minhas

IT was 2009. I was in Bangalore. A cool breeze was bringing sweetness to the surroundings. On the phone, my wife was telling me the news from our home in Delaware. These briefings were regular since my arrival for business in India three months back. However, what she told me that day was unexpected. ‘Good news, really? You mean the American kind of good news or the Indian kind (the lady is pregnant)?’ I enquired. There was going to be an addition to our family, a boy. She and the kids had found him in New York the day before, and it was ‘love at first sight’. The piles of fur on the six-month-old Pomeranian pup, Fluffy, sealed the deal. 

In India, the attitude toward pets is not comparable to the West. Stray dogs and problems associated with them, including rabies, have plagued India for centuries and made pet ownership hard to comprehend for many in a country that has struggled with overpopulation and poverty. Things are changing slowly as disposable income rises (as per estimates over 6 lakh pets are adopted each year), but pet ownership remains a strange concept. In America, 85 million households — representing 68 per cent of the population — are pet owners. 

The idea of a pet had not occurred to me, but because the family had already made the decision, I became a dog owner. It did not take long for Fluffy to sense my reticence and inexperience. Perhaps that is why he chose me as his favourite in the family. He must have sensed that I needed training as much as he did. More likely, it was because I was the one who most often walked him. Or perhaps because I was a pushover for giving him treats. He loved to explore new paths. I discovered in time that what I thought was ‘exclusive’ attention to me, in fact, extended to other members of the family. He understood each one of us and worked politely and patiently over the years to help us understand him. 

On July 2, I learned the hardest truth about pet ownership. I was at a hotel with my family when my phone rang. It was a call from a kennel at Delaware. ‘I am terribly sorry but we wanted to call you to let you know that Fluffy is no more.’ The family was inconsolable. We were in Vancouver for my alumni reunion. My family agreed to keep our loss private. I called a friend, requesting him to visit the kennel. He sent us pictures. I called the vet to ask him to ‘store’ Fluffy till we got back. I ordered a casket online. It was early morning that we landed home and went straight to the vet. We took turns holding the body and then put it in the casket. We read from the Sikh scripture psalms. We went to a ditch we had got dug earlier and eight hands lowered him in it. After filling it, we put a stone on it: ‘If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever.’