The Tale of Topshe

'Hachiko: The Story of a Dog', a movie currently being aired on HBO, is just the kind of animal story I dislike. In a word, sad. Like Greyfriars Bobby, Hachiko lives the better part of his life devotedly (and futilely) awaiting the return of his dead master. I saw bits of the second half first and swore never to have anything to do with it. But then Srini saw the beginning and insisted I see it too. After much pleading and blackmailing I was dragged to the TV (well, where else can an old married couple whose kids have flown the nest eat dinner anyway?) and made to admire the pup Hachi. Of course I couldn’t hold out against its charms, any more than I could against the charms of our own Topshe. Which makes me think that every story of a dog adopted is a fairy tale with a happy ending.

Our old dog had died two years previously and, having sworn never to keep another, I decided to have my cake and eat it too by fostering pups for a stray-adoption agency. We were promptly delivered one number stray pup. We were bowled over by the bright-eyed, badger-faced, fuzzy little bundle, but of course thought of it as ‘paraya dhan’ – the wealth of another family, as daughters were referred to in traditional Indian families. I was sure this was no stray. It looked like a border collie. Maybe it had wandered out of someone’s house. I searched the Internet for border collie owners in Bangalore, but there didn’t even seem to be one in all of the country. Still, there was an aura of mystery and romance about the pup. Like a royal changeling in a fairy tale, whose breeding shines through the grime and rags, it bore itself well. In its jaunty tux, snowy white shirtfront and socks, it was neat, friendly and confident. It was exciting to think this was a valuable champion going incog!

Then our wealth suddenly began to multiply in leaps and bounds, yips and squeaks. A lady called up to say four pups had been orphaned in a ditch outside her house, and could we foster them? We said yes, and went armed with a cardboard box to pick them up. If we had expected four more beauties, we were doomed to disappointment. After one look at them, our daughters christened them The Aliens, later to be softened to Harpo, Groucho, Chico and Zeppo. They were incredibly ugly, incredibly cute, and amazingly individualistic. Groucho, the biggest, was calm to the point of being bucolic, but would stand no nonsense from his siblings; Harpo was macho-but-clingy and had to be sung to sleep; Chico was the quiet one who lived to eat; and Zeppo -- the only girl -- was the friendly, spunky little runt.

The Marx brothers were TINY, starved, crawling with poochies and infested with worms. Next to them the badger pup looked like an over-sized, over-privileged daughter of the aristocracy. It was intrigued by its new roommates, but oblivious to their heartrending yapping. It had a box of its own, while the Marx brothers slept in a large community box full of old clothes, piled up on each other for warmth, like tiny crocodiles. We kept the box covered with a thin sheet to keep in their warmth and the December cold out. It took the badger pup three days to discover where the others disappeared to; soon after, it learnt to yank the sheet off their box and set them yowling.
After a week of sleepless nights and days cleaning up puppy messes, we had almost had enough. Adoptive homes had been found for them and it was with great relief that we sent off four clean, healthy pups, just beginning to fill out, to their forever homes.

We were down to one pup of manageable size again. Now we focused our energies on finding it a home. The adoption agency seemed to have shot its bolt, so we forwarded photos to all and sundry, advertised on the Net and pestered friends. Meanwhile, our house had become the neighbourhood zoo – groups of kids dropped in at all hours of the day to visit the pup and play with it. Great fun, but very wearing!

A few weeks went by, and it seemed silly to keep calling it Puppy, so it acquired a name. After much debate and disagreement, it became Topshe, short for Tapesh Ranjan – after Feluda's young sidekick in Satyajit Ray’s detective stories. Actually, it only responded to ‘Mum-mum’ (food) and ‘Here, Oblivious’. It soon decided it had outgrown the cardboard box and began to colonize our beds. It also began to nip our ankles when we took it on walks. So besotted were we by this time that we decided that its behaviour harked back to its border collie ancestors with their herding instincts.

Meanwhile we kept receiving calls from strangers offering to give it a home. But this one sounded like he would abandon it when he went out of town, another said it would be kept tied in the yard all day – completely unacceptable, and that one actually wanted a cat, and could we find her one? And so on. The only suitable family (from Topshe's point of view) seemed to be ours…

And that was the end of my career as a pup fosterer and the beginning of Topshe’s life as an honest Srinivasan.