Short Story: Pammi's Dog

Nikhil Pandey shares a touching tale of a dog that explores the cultural interpretations of mental illness and the heavy weight of communal responsibility.

Editor’s Pick

This piece is available for free reading this week

Pammi lives in our neighbourhood. She is 40-something-years-old and mentally ill – but not violent; although sometimes when she is in one of her moods, she doesn’t hesitate to hit her mother – but, you know, like she would suddenly stop talking and start staring; or turn away without ceremony any guests that come calling; or once made a bonfire of all her good clothes; like that.

She was not always like this. My sister who went to high school with her remembers a shy, but soft-spoken girl, who was also the brightest in her class. “To look at her then, no one could have believed that she would one day come to this,” my sister is wont to say. Her mother agrees. “She was so very gentle!” she remembers. “She would never even raise her voice, let alone hit anyone!” But fate, it seems, had other plans.

Some say it is psychological. Others speak about a fever that mounted to her brain. Her own family thinks she is haunted. According to them, it is the ghost of a dead Muslim that haunts her; which, according to them, explains why she has not been getting better despite their best efforts, as Muslim ghosts are said to be very clingy, besides making the case that love jihad is real and the honour of the Hindu women isn’t safe even after they are dead.

According to them, it came about like this. It was right after her 16th birthday. The entire family was visiting her great grandmother’s place in Ranikhet, and it was there while crossing a mountain stream that she gave a start. Now whether this means that she gave a start and therefore she was possessed, or whether she was possessed and therefore she gave a start, I do not know. At any rate, it was right after this that she started acting weird. Mountain streams are infamous in this context, incidentally.

So naturally she has never been to see a doctor, only to the holy men. To one in particular, a tantrik. His name is Helicopter Baba, on account of his having been a helicopter pilot before he turned a holy man. His ashram is nearby, less than an hour’s drive by car on the Ranikhet route. There is a 50 ft. high statue of Lord Hanuman, the monkey God, standing guard at its entrance, visible from afar; inside, there are other, smaller statues of other gods and goddesses, so that it looks more like a museum than an ashram. The family goes there every Sunday. However, if these visits have done her any good, it is hard for me to say. If anything, she seems to me to have become worse with time.

Anyhow, Pammi has a dog. Not an assistance dog, but a big, black brute named Rhino; a hound from hell. If she is mad, it is even madder; so that more than once the thought has crossed my mind that it must be the dog that is haunted. To watch them together, it is like watching a vaudeville double-act. Like Laurel and Hardy. Gogo and Didi. Only it is not funny; or only tragic-funny, even dangerous.

As it is her dog, no one else is allowed near it. From bathing to feeding to walking it, she does it all. And it is during the last of these activities that their resemblance to a vaudeville double-act becomes most pronounced.

Come rain or sunshine, twice they go out daily: once in the morning and once in the evening. It is on a leash but only for name, as it drags her along: be it into knee-deep waters of some canal, relics of the Raj that crisscross our city; or into some vacant lot, overgrown with weeds, where nobody would dare enter for fear of snakes; there she follows it without murmur; and there she remains until such time as his lordship is ready to come out; only a mad woman can be so brave. And if she shows any resistance, the brute easily overpowers her. Finally, having exhausted every smell in the place and smeared itself in every kind of excrement and filth when it moves on, it is only to stop again moments later. Thus, stopping and sniffing, sniffing and stopping, do they return home after several hours. There are times when search-parties have to be organised for these two. I have myself been a party to them on more than one occasion.

However, all bets are off when they trespass on private property, vandalise driveways, cars, lawns, as it relieves itself on them, even makes number two, while she does nothing, just stands there and looks helpless. Not everybody knows her, or about her, to know that she has no conception of private property herself. The world isn’t the nice place that it used to be. People kill each other for much less.

One day her mother was venting to me on the subject like this, when I asked her: “Why don’t you put it down then? The best thing to do under the circumstances.”

She looked at me strangely for a moment, like I had said something indecent, before replying: “Can you do it? Can you kill one of your own?”

True. Then even Pammi is one of our own.