An Encounter with a Dog by Padma Prasad Devkota
Summary
The narrator is always proud of his father’s achievements. He loves to hear the stories about father from his contemporaries. He relishes his works too. He has recently retained some doubts about certain names and dates that appears in the essay.
The narrator is familiar with the name of ‘the great Raja of Salyan’ in Nepal. However, he does not know that the grandson of the great Raja of Salyan was my father’s classmate until he read ‘Pleasure in Humiliation’. In this essay, his father recalls the last -minute preparations for the I. Sc. Examination. When the result was published, two of his aristocratic classmates, visited him and told him that their grandfather, the great Raja of Salyan, wanted to see him. Their grandpa had his father’s English answer book re-examined by their Bengali tutor. He could not believe that despite his father’s lower socio-economic rank, he outdid them.
His father humiliated the great Raja of Salyan saying that his grand sons were the greatest germs of genius born under the luckiest star. When he was questioned by his classmates about his study hours, he sarcastically replied that he was in the habit of keeping his books under his pillow and of reading the lines in his dream.
The narrator wants to learn more about the Raja of Salyan whose name was Shumsher Bahadur Shah and his family of the days when my father used to tutor in their house. He, therefore gets an appointment with Birendra Bahadur Shah, one of the five grandsons of the Raja of Salyan, at his residence. Mr. Shah approaches the gate hoping the narrator’s arrival. He does not invite the narrator into his house as he has expected. He chooses to stand on a sunny spot near the gate. He looks ruddy and robust.
The narrator anticipates the comfort of a chair to sit down and jot notes in my copybook when he speaks. Understanding the futility of such an expectation, he pulls out his notebook and started writing. Mr. Shah is happy to recall his father who had tutored him and others in his ancestral home at Pipalko Bot. The narrator learns from him that Gehendra B. Shah had five sons. His father’s classmates were Jitendra and their cousin, Padam Bahadur.
Unfortunately, the interview is disturbed by a sight of black dog galloping towards them. Mr. Shah looks at the dog with an octogenarian equanimity and even continued saying something. The dog holds his scrotum in its fangs. He cries in pain. Mr. Shah soothes him that the dog has been given the anti-rabies injection. His ballpoint and notebook fall to the ground, his leg hurts. He is terribly frightened. He waits for someone to come to his rescue.
Mr. Shah finally calls for help. From the servants’ quarter, a man comes walking with a leisurely as if nothing uncommon has happened. He says that the dog bites everyone and it has bitten me so many times. The dog is not obeying these people. The narrator considers that it is a fault of master as he doesn’t leash it properly or lock it up in the kennel before receiving me into his compound.
Nobody asks him if I am bleeding. He does not want to expose his wounds to them. Mr. Shah simply stands there watching his as if he is used to giving special appointments to visitors who are then unfailingly bitten by his healthy dog. Humiliated, hurt, but not defeated by such atrocious culture he picks up his notebook, put it in his bag, limped towards the main gate without a farewell, and stands hailing a taxi to go home.
The narrator finally learns that human beings always disappoint us by their pretensions at superiority. He opts for the five shots of anti-rabies at Himal Nursing Home and is delighted in rereading ‘Pleasure in Humiliation’ several more times.
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