DARK BROWN THE SANATORIUM DOG

When my brother was in Tambaram sanatorium undergoing treatment for pulmonary fibrosis, I used to take food for him from our home in Mambalam. I was fifteen. Wherever I went, I used to somehow make friends with animals.

In the sanatorium also, I made a friend from the animal world. It was a short but stout dog. I gave him the name Dark Brown because his skin was dark brown in color. Dark Brown had the light brown eyes of a lion. He became my friend on the very first day of my brother's admission.

He was very dear to the ward boys and nurses of the B Special Ward, constructed beautifully like train compartments at the foot of the sanatorium hills.

He somehow understood the pro-animal vibrations that radiated from my heart and accepted my invitation to be my friend readily. He would wait on the veranda outside my brother's room for my arrival with a tiffin carrier. He knew I would be bringing with me his favorite dog delicacy called Porai in Tamil.

Porai is a hard-baked stuff; roughly we can describe it as a small bun baked twice. Dark Brown loved it so much that his eyes would glow when I took out the stuff from my shoulder bag. Receiving it in his mouth, he would walk to his favorite spot under the peepal tree to eat. When he returned, he was a contented dog, conveying to me with his eyes the unspoken message, “May God bless you, dear."

Though he was a small dog, he displayed so much maturity on his face. When he gazed at me, he made me feel smaller and younger than him. I used to leave my brother daily at eight in the evening after the arrival of my father for a night stay.

Dark Brown would escort me up to the main gate, a distance of half a kilometer along a deserted and ill-lit private road. He would stand there at the main gate, watch me cross the trunk road, and step onto the footpath that led to the railway station, before turning to go back to the Special Ward.

He did his duty perfectly in his self-appointed job as a watchman of the Special Ward, keeping at bay petty thieves. My brother always spoke to him as if he were a human being. Whenever he did that, Dark Brown would twitch his ears this way and that way, as if he listened and understood what was said to him.

He always lay curled up in one room or other. But when the Superintendent, Late Dr. K.V. Krishnaswamy, arrived at the ward accompanied by junior doctors and nurses on his weekly round, Dark Brown would leave the ward politely, as if he understood he was not supposed to be there when the big doctor was doing his round examining patients.

There are people who love dogs, and there are also people who dislike them. A few patients and their family members kept complaining about the presence of dogs on the hospital's sprawling premises, demanding their elimination. The Superintendent, a kind gentleman, did not want to do it. After his sudden transfer, the situation changed.

A death sentence was passed on all dogs for the mere crime of roaming in the hospital, and the same was carried out immediately. Poor voiceless Dark Brown was one of them. The B Special Ward patients tried very hard to save Dark Brown, but in vain.

The worst affected were my brother Sriram. My brother was numb and speechless. He wrote an elegy for the departed Dark Brown which he concluded with the following words: "So far, only my lungs were bleeding, but now my heart is also bleeding."