There is something about stray dogs on cold nights. They seem famished even if they have just had a stack full of crumbs for dinner. The hunger is, of course, poles apart from the tantrums of the belly.
It is 9.30 pm in Dillibazar, Kathmandu, the perceptive equivalent of 3 AM in Mumbai, even though Nepali time is only ten minutes ahead of IST. The two of us are standing at the crossroads of Pipal Bot, an oft-frequented street in the city by day. All you can see around now is the yellow flare of antiquated street lights forming patterns on the narrow winding road surfaces. Windows and doors in this Emerald Valley-city are straight out of those picturesque postcards you get with your monthly subscription of the Lonely Planet magazine. That was more or less the point I was trying to make to my friend. He looks around to see them for himself. The lights are too feeble to make out anything concrete. Instead, both of us end up following three slender dogs racing from one end of the street to the other in search of nocturnal warmth.
All of us know the inevitable. All of us know how dogs cooperate amongst members in their species to shield themselves from the tormenting cold. And frankly, I don’t blame them. We were freezing our feet out of woollen socks as we sipped diluted milk water with tea bags dipped in them in a bid to keep the lips moist. Imagining how hard it must be for our stray brethren, bereft of hooded sweatshirts, leather gloves, color-splashed scarves and flubber-like thermals, to withstand the Himalayan winter makes me gasp out a jet of precious hot air straight at my friend’s horn-rimmed spectacles.
Through the droplets on his 2.5D specs, I see his eyelashes wince in discomfort. Kathmandu was never a city of brotherly love, or so he might have thought.
Irrespective of the time of the year or weather of the time, the human epidermis yearns for some warmth at the dead of the night. Sometimes, they set the air-conditioning temperature to 16 degrees and curl themselves in a blanket to obtain that. I would like to think that this thirst can be quenched at a psychological level. Maybe, that is why little girls are the happiest when their fathers count stars in the sky to make them sleep. Or stuffed furry toys find space in many female beds where sturdy pillows would have sufficed.
I remember a neighbour in Shillong who would light a perfumed candle before retiring every night. She would incessantly tell me that it was to prevent foul odours from waking her in the middle of her sleep. Now when I ponder about it, I wonder how reasonable her explanation was. Shillong is one of the last places in India to be sullied for its odious air. The candle probably gave her solace at night in the same way that the thought of his wife and children sleeping in bliss inside the safety and security of four walls makes a soldier spend a tempestuous night at a border check post.
I like to believe that there are these nights when her eyes spring open after a particularly bad dream and scramble around in the dark for a semblance of re-assuring security. I like to believe that after a point of time those pupils rest on the blue-yellow flicker of the candle, fluttering even as the moths and beetles in the cosmos of the room huddle in its light, and go back to dreaming again. I would like to believe that. But then, fireflies would necessarily have to be broken fragments of the stars wobbling above. I would like to believe that too.
As it turns out, I do have an uncomfortable dream that night. Uncomfortable enough to make you get out of a thermal quilt in your bare boxers. I search my pockets for my perfumed candle. A captivating note written by a co-dweeb earlier in the night. Reading it once re-kindles the intent to get inside the quilt again. Perusing it somehow gets those eyelids droopy again.
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