For Minister Ajay Mishra Teni, a lesson on dogs and kindness

Farmers, of course, are not quite so easy to brush off, as the government of India discovered when the 16-month-long protest against the three farm Acts passed in September 2020 finally ended only with the rollback of the laws. Dogs, however, not constituting a vote bank for any election, are perhaps easier to disregard.

But should they be? Consider this tale from the Mahabharata: When the Pandavas and Draupadi were journeying to heaven, they were accompanied by a dog. The way was long and arduous and one by one, Draupadi and all of the brothers, save Yudhishthira, fell off. Finally, Indra appeared and informed the eldest Pandava that he would take him to heaven, where his brothers and wife were waiting for him, and invited him to get onto his chariot. Yudhishthira, like anyone who has had the joy of a dog’s company on the frequently lonely journey that is life, turned to his dog and asked him to get on, much to Indra’s chagrin. The god protested that dogs couldn’t go to heaven, to which Yudhishthira said that he wouldn’t go if his loyal companion couldn’t go. The story ends with the reveal that the dog was actually Dharma in disguise and that the whole thing had been a test to see whether Yudhishthira was a good human being deserving of a place in heaven.

The moral of the story, it would appear, is that even the meanest of creatures — a dog, in this case — deserves not to be abandoned and ignored. Read another way, it shows that the true worth of a human being is measured in kindness — to everyone, irrespective of species.

But coming back to Minister Teni and that one part of his comment: Why do dogs bark? Is it because, as the implication seems to be, they are bloody-minded animals who simply don’t know when to shut up? As any animal behaviourist would point out, every dog, unless it has severe behavioural issues, will bark only to communicate something, either to a human being or another dog. Research has in fact shown that when dogs are alone, their vocalisations are markedly different from the barking that we usually hear. They bark, in other words, to draw attention to themselves and their existence, to express something — love, sorrow, anger, bewilderment. They want to show us how happy they are to see us or they want to complain about the cat that sneaks in through the kitchen window everyday.

The dog who accompanied the Pandavas on their final journey must have barked too — perhaps to alert the oldest brother as one by one his siblings and wife fell off. Or perhaps simply to reassure him of his presence. Whatever he communicated, it is unlikely that Yudhishthira ignored the only companion he had left at the end of the journey.

pooja.pillai@expressindia.com