Dogs of India

by Polly McGee

  Yanki accidentally tugged at a knotted tuft of fur on Paksheet’s leg, distracting him from his mental cataloguing of ways to conquer the world. Paksheet didn’t want to play. With Yanki or anyone. Ever. He had far more important things to consider. Glancing beyond the foolish monkeys below into the vast parklands of Kamla Nehru Ridge, Paksheet’s ambition for domination burned. He would conquer the park first. It was time to level up.

  In the distance, Paksheet spotted a pack of dogs on the move. From his vantage point, they were four-legged stick figures heading innocently towards the mass of monkeys swarming over the concrete pathway ringing the tower. He observed the dogs approaching, gleeful at their happenstance roaming into his plan for absolute dominion. He grabbed Yanki and strutted along Flagstaff Tower. The time had come to take back the first of the Kamla Nehru precincts. Paksheet stood on his muscular back legs and screeched at the furry louts below. The macaque foot soldiers hastily abandoned the coconut game. The younger monkeys who tried to cling to their playmates were cuffed away. Their leader had called, and they knew not to ignore the tone of his cry.

  Flagstaff Tower had been the place where the bodies of dead soldiers were taken when the sepoy uprising had raged through Old Delhi in 1857. The historic castellated tower with its pale-red sandstone block sat securely at the high point of the park – its presence a reminder of the bloodbath that had soaked the tower during its violent past.

  Paksheet knew none of the details of drama and hardship the sepoy troops had suffered in their long indenture to the British. He knew, however, that he could ride a train and climb an elevator. He could hold a coconut and break open its fibrous outer shell. He could climb and swing and leap nimbly from ground to tree to wall. He knew a dog could do none of these things.

  He also knew that humans were dumber than monkeys. They walked through the park and dropped their food, just leaving it behind, wasting precious resources without even seeming to notice. Humans moved slowly, lumbering like upright elephants, often stopping to sit, unprotected and uncaring. They slept openly on the ground with no shield from enemy attacks. No monkey would ever behave this way. He knew that humans were frightened of monkeys. He watched the women in the park, their hands shaking as they held sticks in front of them, shooing away the monkeys that gambolled in their path. Paksheet’s skill for war craft stemmed in part from his capacity to observe. He was shrewd and smart, with an eye for emotional detail. He had noticed that since he had taught the larger male monkeys to drop unexpectedly into the path of humans as part of their battle training, fewer humans had been walking through the park.

  The humans were only one component of his plan. First, he had a meal of revenge to serve the dogs. He had humiliatingly lost a food fight with a pariah dog when he was a lone operative, before he had control of the monkey pack. All dogs reminded him of his weakness and fallibility. It seemed to be an auspicious time for dog devastation. First he had witnessed the brutal dogfight, then the car hitting the dog at the metro, and now an unguarded pack was in his line of sight, ripe for the taking.

  Paksheet watched the distant dogs turn from stick figures into three-dimensional canines as they moved into range. Lakshman was trotting along in front, his four legs moving in a graceful symphony with his swinging tail.

  ***

  Unlike Paksheet, Lakshman was not consumed with strategic plots of defence and offence. He did not wish to rule the park and subordinate all in his path. His needs had always been pretty simple. In the short time since Shiva’s car accident and Lakshman’s elevation to top dog, his world had become much more complicated.

  Lakshman had no sense of urgency in his leadership. When the time came to hunt for food that day, he had been asleep. The other dogs had waited and waited, nosing round the den for some hidden cache of food. They had initially filled in time, scratching over old bones long since dry and tasteless. Eventually, some of the bitches in whelp had grumbled loudly enough (one with a strategic nip on Lakshman’s belly) to rouse him into leadership action.

  The afternoon sun was intense. Lakshman felt the pang of lost puppyhood as he struggled from his nap into resentful wakefulness. He wanted to bask in the sun until the skin on his belly felt baked. He wanted to spring to life and whirl like a dust storm with his pack mates until he fell in an exhausted heap, ready for some milk delivered fresh from a bursting nipple. Instead, he woke to a well-placed belly nip and the strange sense of twenty hungry eyes trained on him expectantly. Not really knowing what to do, he got up and started a somewhat aimless trot with the remaining pack in thrall, hoping to find dog aunty and her tasty food delivery on the way.

  Ears were pricked and senses were on high alert as the smell of monkeys, food, cars, humans and squirrels amplified the scent-life of the park. At least some of those things were edible. Partway along the path, Lakshman’s nose picked up the fermenting tang of rotting mangoes and the yeasty hint of abandoned chapatis. This could be a bag of rubbish or someone’s leftovers, it didn’t really matter; getting it back to the hide and the waiting dogs was his only concern. The rest of the pack caught the tantalising drift of food on the wind and picked up their pace. Lakshman breathed in deeply. The smell was getting stronger. Just get the food and he could return to his lazy ways.

  ***

  Paksheet nodded to his henchmonkeys as the dogs approached. The macaques spilled stealthily down the ancient brick façade of the Flagstaff Tower, taking their places on lower branches of trees and the tops of short walls. Their positioning had been practised in the strategic training Paksheet had instigated day after sweltering day – all in preparation for this moment. The monkeys had thought it was kind of like play but without the fun. But Paksheet was their leader; and when he commanded, they followed.

  The macaque rank-and-file females and children continued to mill around beneath the poised combatants. The coconut game had resumed, engrossing the players. As the coconut rolled back and forth, the monkeys on the ground saw the approaching dogs without concern. Dogs were no particular threat to monkeys.

  Paksheet sat on the middle of a long, thin branch of a jamun tree. The anticipation was excruciating. He could see his victory unfurling. The first draught of future power went to his head. Paksheet inched out further along the branch, feeling the pliable wood supple and yielding. He balanced on it precisely, like a high-board diver about to take the gold.

  Yanki was clinging to his arm. He could feel her tiny fingers as they dug in, and her excited breathing at the prospect of a game she didn’t know. Paksheet looked down on the top of her pomegranate-sized head. He imagined it splitting open, the brains spilling onto the ground. The group of guerilla macaque transmitted waves of tension and pheromones between the branches, waiting for the command. Paksheet reached up and put his hand round Yanki’s arm, a gesture that seemed to be gentle reassurance. The dogs reached the fringe of the monkeys. Paksheet’s fingers gripped Yanki and he brutally tore her loose, hurling her into the monkey pack capering below.

  Yanki’s fall was fortuitously broken as she landed on one of the other monkeys before she bounced onto the pathway, knocking herself out on impact. The unexpected monkey missile from above coincided with the dogs traversing through the monkey troop, intent on finding their elusive dinner. Yanki’s explosive arrival sent the monkeys into a chattering, shrieking frenzy, the pack swirling and circling like a school of fish – legs, fur and tails flashing as they tried to regroup. Lakshman and the other dogs seemed confused and unsure. They stopped in the middle, unable to navigate the eddying monkey current.

  Paksheet’s ploy had worked – it was time to strike. He gave the signal from above, triggering his henchmonkeys to spring from their posts onto the dogs. Paksheet set the tone of the attack by sinking his teeth into the throat of the first dog he landed on, terminally tearing its jugular before moving on. A viral savagery was unleashed. The monkeys turned on the dogs, working alone and in pairs, teeth tearing through their fur.

  As the dogs tried to fight back,
twisting and snarling, the monkeys came from underneath, biting into the pariahs’ soft underbellies and opening new wounds. The dog pack was completely unprepared. Once the devastation was done, the monkeys withdrew, following their leader by scrambling up tree and tower to safety. The pale-grey fur of their macaque faces was stained with fresh blood, giving the monkeys the façade of battle-weary soldiers full of pride and ebbing adrenaline.

  ***

  The injured and dying dogs yelped and howled, immobilised with pain. Lakshman, now free of his attackers, looked around in horror. His first expedition for food had ended in an ambush, with his pack annihilated. The earlier dreams of carefree puppyhood had yielded to an adult nightmare. There was blood dripping from his belly, and a painful bite on the joint of his front leg where the monkey leader had sunk his teeth deep into the tendon as a parting salvo.

  As Lakshman tried to coordinate his injured limbs to struggle home, he tripped over a small, soft lump. It appeared to be a dead baby monkey. He grabbed it in his mouth, instinct reminding him of the unmet need to eat. Holding his quarry, he summoned all his remaining strength and hobbled alone in the direction of the den.

  Chapter Seven

  Casualties of War

  Sita Unival stood open-mouthed at the destruction the macaque had wreaked. She continued to film on her phone after the dust settled around the dying and the dead. She captured the triumphant moment when what seemed to be the monkeys’ leader shimmied back down the jamun tree and stood atop a dog’s body, crowing and posing like a hunter with his trophy. Amidst the present horror, she could see the dream journalist confluence of the right place at the right time that was unfolding in front of her.

  Sita was in the park, following a tipoff from an animal-rights activist about the council workers dumping dogs at the park today. Godboley and his sneaky groping at her back earlier that week had flicked an angry little switch inside her. Something about that man was still bothering her. She had started to dig for dirt last night, beginning with the dog-relocation program. The acting director had so much misplaced pride in that program it was due for a fall, she reasoned. Sita’s journalistic guns were trained on Godboley to make her next scoop, and she intended for this one to get the front page.

  Sita had been loitering in the park for a couple of hours, waiting for concrete evidence of dogs being tipped holus-bolus out of council vans. Sitting on a park bench, watching the monkeys roll and wrestle with their coconut, reminded her of the years she’d spent as a student at nearby New Delhi University.

  She had sat in the park every afternoon for the best part of her final year of study, watching her beloved sweaty jock boyfriend, Kuldeep, run laps around the Ridge while she’d read her textbooks and scribbled away at mock stories. Deep had wanted so badly to be a sports reporter, fighting the pressure from his parents to be some kind of prestige career son rather than work in the perceived frivolity of the media. At the end of their journalism degree, Deep had taken off to Australia – a country he believed to be inhabited by free-and-easy sports lovers and a long way from his parents. He had pleaded with her to go with him, to follow their dreams and hang out on the golden beaches together. His parents had forbidden it. Deep still went. Sita’s parents would have had an apoplexy at the idea of her going, too. She had yielded to tradition and taken a cadetship at the New Delhi Times.

  Some nights she replayed the dummy TV show reels they had made together. There he was, reporting on a fictional hockey match, then calling a cricket game, his face alight with sincerity and passion. He was a girl chumbak, and she often wished with a pang of regret that she had boarded that plane and stopped being the perfect daughter. If Sita had defied the expectations of her parents and taken that flight, she wouldn’t have gross civil servants pawing at her. She would be lying on a towel for two at Bondi Beach, body modestly exposed in a stylish swimsuit; Deep running towards her from the surf, his stomach beaded with salty droplets from the ocean. The low ferns opposite the park bench swished and swayed to the romance of her thoughts, bringing her back to her stakeout in the park. The beach scene faded, and there she was: alone on the bench, an empty lunchbox for company.

  ‘Glamorous journalist life, na, you ethnu cutlet,’ Sita addressed herself and the lunchbox.

  Sita’s mind wasn’t done reminiscing, though, and she slipped back to her uni days. She remembered Deep throwing himself down next to her after what seemed like his hundredth lap of the park. He was always drenched in sweat, teasing her and trying to mess up her hair as she squealed and pretended to struggle away from his hold. Deep liked to respectfully push against the lines of propriety, and, as a traditional girl with a modern outlook, she’d indulged him, but not too far or too often. During one of their sweaty exchanges in the park, they had even been cautioned by a council officer trying to extract a bribe to prevent a charge of public indecency.

  ‘Shit!’ Sita said, blindsided mid-memory.

  The park. Fooling round with Kuldeep. Being threatened by a chamcha council worker who claimed he would report them to the police if they didn’t pay up. Her brave Deep rising up to his impressive full height in defence and the officer backing off, grumbling threats and curses on their future children. That’s where she had seen Godboley before!

  Sita scrolled through and looked at the image of him on her phone from yesterday. He was fatter, older and smugger, with less hair, but she remembered the flash of gold on his front tooth and the pocked skin on his cheeks as he’d leered at her threateningly that day. That porki had crawled up the ranks of the corrupt and obsequious quickly.

  She searched the online archives of the New Delhi Times for reports of threats on couples at the time. She seemed to recall a scam that had been running, the ringleader never caught. The screen on her phone was irritatingly small. She squinted into it, feeling the adrenaline of a story lead fire up. That dirty little civil servant – she was going to enjoy seeing him unravel in the most public of ways.

  Sita found a link. An article on a team of tricksters that were taking bribes from students and straying husbands in the nooks of Kamla Nehru Park. It appeared police and council workers were in it together.

  Her breakthrough was abandoned when the screeching and howling of the monkeys’ assault on the dogs started. And now the young reporter stood, phone in hand, collecting first-on-the-scene photographic evidence in an interspecies war zone. Sita was unsure what to do next: whether to call her editor and risk losing her exclusive by-line, or risk losing the front page to a rival news outlet. Then there were the bodies of the dogs; she couldn’t just leave them there.

  A crow floated down from the Flagstaff Tower and landed near a dog carcass. It stepped along a furry leg, over a hip and stopped at an open wound. The crow’s black beak dipped in and pulled out a puce sausage of entrails through the ragged hole in the animal’s gut. It cocked its head as it tugged and twisted, its beak turning a dark, shiny red. Sita leaned on the bench for support, and holding her hair to the side, vomited on the concrete path.

  ***

  Paksheet looked down at the human. He was very pleased with the scene of carnage he had created and wondered if he should capitalise on the moment and attack her as well. He imagined scampering along the ground, grabbing her hair like a rope and swinging it up to her shoulders before sinking his teeth into her scalp. Paksheet could still feel the tearing of the dogs’ fur in his mouth and hear the terrified howls. He imagined what her head would feel like.

  Paksheet felt for the weight of Yanki under his arm. He was momentarily surprised she wasn’t there, the empty space occupied by a dried smear of blood. Then he remembered her body, spinning into the monkeys below like a ball into skittles. Paksheet raised his arms above his head and rocked on his heels, lips revealing red-pigmented gums drawn back over teeth in what passed for laughter. The air in his mouth tasted sour like fermenting fruit. Paksheet became instantly ravenous, the extreme physical exertions of the day causing an intense hunger. He swung down the jamun branches an
d set out for the rotting mangoes he had hidden for himself behind the Flagstaff Tower earlier in the day.

  ***

  Gajrup pulled the car into the parking bay. Lola tried to keep her balance without losing grip and covering herself with the dog food that lay precariously in bags on her lap with the container of paneer cubes now spiked with antibiotic tablets.

  Poona was in control and command of the mission, and Lola waited for her direction.

  ‘Gajrup, we’ll drop the food in the usual spot. Lola, you head towards the temple to find Rocky.’

  Lola watched in fascination as a monkey tore viciously into a mango; the sight of monkeys roaming the streets still entertained her. The animals of India were much less contained than the regulated and domesticated creatures of Sydney. Monkeys, stray cats, cows, the pariah dogs – all mixed in with the citizens – and not a fence between them. Lola had found watching the endless nervous sprinting of Indian squirrels around the palm trees at Hastinapuri Estate a meditation in itself, their hectic behaviour strangely calming her own monkey mind.

  Poona strode off, swinging her monkey stick in front as she led the way. Lola and Gajrup brought up the rear, bags slopping dangerously. Lola could hear the sound of Poona’s puppy song getting inquisitive.

  ‘Puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy, puppy, where are you today, my puppies?’

  Poona had said the dogs were usually milling around the car park at this time of day, their hunger more accurate than any clock. The place was deserted. Lola heard Poona’s chanting grow softer as she disappeared around a thicket of trees. The soft singsong was replaced by a sharp scream that cut straight through the park.

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  Lola and Gajrup rounded the corner at speed.

  There were Poona’s puppies, lying in broken and bloodied heaps around the park, all clearly and viciously killed. Poona was on her knees next to the bodies, slumped between prayer and despair.