Three Black Spots

Lori

When a couple are driving out in the ‘wilds’ and they are lost, a deafening silence descends on the car. Whoever speaks first loses. The man is usually thinking ‘Why didn’t I Mapquest or ask for directions?’ The woman is usually thinking ‘I should have listened to my father, and not married this shlub’. Redemption does come in the form of an exit sign, a gas station, or a discarded map that has been lying below the back seat waiting for its moment in the sun. All is well again, till the next time.

Mina and I found ourselves wandering up and down the lengths of rural Pennsylvania on our visits to Ayesha and her family. The first time, we all laughed. The second time, we were an hour and a half late for dinner, and walked in to a cold turkey and a very strained welcome. The third time, she bought us a GPS.

Her name is Lori, and she is the disembodied computer voice that we now hear every time we drive. Lori is the forgiving parent we all wish we had. I am capable of seeing the electronic map display in front of me, hearing her dulcet tones asking me to ‘ bear right and take the exit’, and blowing right past it. Wisdom only dawns when I see the next set of signs, headed towards somewhere we don’t want to go.

Does Lori hit me on the head? Does she scream at me ‘ You idiot’? No. She just says ‘recalculating route’, the map does its electronic whirl, and soon I have a new set of directions. No recriminations. No blame or shame. I think I detect a hint of sorrow, a tinge of disappointment in her voice, but that may just be my guilty conscience. I have let her down, I know it, and deep down, I think she does too.

Yoda is fascinated by Lori. He loves to sit up in front with me while Mina is driving, and his favorite mode is to stick his nose up against the glass, and look out of the side. I have no idea what his beady eyes are seeing, but he is completely fascinated by the scenery. The first time he heard Lori, he looked around completely startled. Who was this new person in the car? Had someone snuck in while he was not looking? The voice was obviously coming from the front of the car, and it took him some time to figure out that the little box on the windshield was the source.

We tried experimenting with other voices. There was Jane the proper little Brit, who completely lacked the enthusiasm we had come to enjoy. There was Donna who spoke ‘Southern’, and while her voice had a certain charm, I was not sure I could understand everything she said. There was Ken the Aussie, with that wonderful combination of cockney and Strine, but he seemed out of place on an American freeway.

We tried the voices in other languages – Spanish, German, French, and Puerto Rican. You must know the language to follow the instructions, and we did not want to subscribe to a Berlitz course, just to understand a GPS voice.

Yoda was also not impressed by any of the other voices. For him, Lori’s voice was like a lullaby. He now climbs into the car, sits on the back seat, waits for us to turn her on. Once she says ‘ Turn left, and follow the road for 200 yards’ he knows that we are on our way, and he can now settle down to a nice sleep.

GPS is not widely available in India, but that is never a problem. There is always some kind soul on the side of the road, even the most modern expressways, ready to tell you how to get there. You may not get precise directions, it’s more a general ‘keep going and you can’t miss it’ instruction, but it works.

Yoda has changed all that. When we stop, Yoda is usually jumping up and down by the window, adding his two bits worth to the conversation. Our guide will ask the obligatory questions about him – does he bite, how old is he, what is his breed, and where did we get him. We answer patiently, because we know that any false move might see us pointed towards Afghanistan, or Sri Lanka.

Interrogation over, we are pointed in the right direction. Thanks to Yoda, the instructions are very precise. Go past this village. Turn right at the first crossroads. Go about ten miles, and you will see a bridge…….

We bid farewell. Yoda gives him a great tail wag. He then turns to us with a triumphant look as if to say ‘Who needs Lori, when you’ve got me?’

Sweet sleeper bed

When Ayesha was a little baby, we hardened our hearts and trained her to sleep in her own bed, in her own room. We learned to ignore her heart rending screams, and displays of lung power. My mother would sit and look at us reproachfully whenever she came to visit, but we were adamant. Spock had said so.

What to do with Yoda? After his first night with us, we decided that he was going to sleep in our bed. No banishing him to the outhouse, or even to the comfortable mattress that Mina had got for him. No Ferberizing him. No tests of will power to see who would cave in first. Yoda would find a place on our bed, and I would have to acquire a contortionist’s skills and muscle tone, to keep out of his way.

There is a great conspiracy among dog lovers. Everyone has this stiff upper lip about where the dog sleeps. No one will fess up immediately to the fact that the pooch has occupied the bed. We all fear that we will be thought of as wimps, or slightly unsanitary human beings. But press on, and the truth slips out. Yes, the dog sleeps in the bed. Sometimes a spouse objects, but is careful not to make it a deal breaker. Who wants the humiliation of being superseded by a dog?

I know a couple who every night to take a wet towel to their dog’s paws, his snout, and his underbelly, before he is allowed to come to bed with them. Not our Yoda though. Mina had read somewhere that dogs are actually much cleaner than human beings. That was enough to put an end to any hygiene discussion.

It took Mina and me a while to get used to the fact that we had a new person on the bed with us. I have woken up at nights with breath hot and heavy against my cheek, and to my disappointment discovered that it is his furry face. He usually starts off the night sleeping at our feet, and by the morning, he has moved his little torso onto one of our pillows. We have learned to make way for him. It is incredibly comforting to feel his body breathing gently against my head. Even his snoring is soothing - enough to put me straight into another REM cycle.

Yoda sees the world in black and white. Mina is the alpha dog in his life. I am not. So, if Mina is asleep, he will lie in bed, waiting patiently for her to wake up. ‘If Mommy is asleep, then everyone can sleep’. If she is up, and I am asleep, he gives me a few minutes, and then climbs on my chest and barks into my face. He slaps me on the cheeks, and scratches my forehead till I am fully awake. I am transported back to my boarding school days, with the prefect shaking me awake at 5.30 in the morning yelling ‘ Come on, it’s time for PE’.

He has his favorite night time rituals. His internal body clock tells him when it is 10.30 in the evening. He has decided that its time for us to retire. He comes and nudges us with his paw. ‘Night, night….it’s time to go to bed’. He is quite insistent, and will not be denied. He also wants to round up the flock. It is not enough if either Mina or I go to bed. We must all go, and he will not be satisfied till we have all packed up, and turned the lights off. He is quite the tyrant.

Yoda also slips into watchdog mode, anytime I am out of town. He sleeps at the corner of the bed, alert to every rustle and whisper, ears cocked, and face turned towards the door. He does not sleep a wink, as he stands guard over Mina. I get an ecstatic greeting on my return, mainly because he can now catch up on his sleep.

He is a great connoisseur of beds. He has five mattresses of his own, strewn in various parts of the house and office, and sleeps well in all of them. But he is very fussy with hotel beds. His favorite ones are the Sheraton sweet sleeper beds. The moment we check into the room, he demands to be placed on the bed, and we have to shake him awake when its time to go. It’s great to see Room Service people do a double take when they see him on the bed. They go up to him to play, and we have to cough and gently remind them to set out the tray for us.

But like us, Yoda sleeps best when he is at home. When we return from a trip, he has trained us to put him on the bed as soon as we back. For once, he is content to sleep even if we are busy unpacking or just pottering around. All’s well with the world and Yoda’s back on his own stomping ground.

The bears didn’t come out to play

Distance is not measured by miles, or time. New York is closer to London or Tokyo than it is to a small town called Cornwall on Hudson- a ninety minute bus ride from the Port Authority. We had been there to visit Ayesha’s pen pal in the early 80s.

The family had heard that all Indians were vegetarians, so they had made us a wonderful fish meal that we wolfed down. They had lost a nephew in the Vietnam War, Maya Lin’s memorial had just been installed, and they were unsure if they could muster up the logistics or emotions to visit D.C. Vietnam, the Domino theory, and McNamara’s genius were concepts that did not compute.

We had a similar sense of time travel, driving up to Honesdale, three and half hours from Manhattan, and home to Highlights Magazine. We sell the magazine in India, and this was our first visit to their Editorial offices. We stayed at the founders’ home that has been maintained as it was when they lived there, over fifty years ago.

Yoda was in his element. We walked him mercilessly outside the home, till we were sure that his bladder did not have a drop left. We did not want him marking territory inside. He enjoyed being off the leash, and had his first frolic in rural America.

The house is incredibly comfortable, and we walked through the rooms with respect and care. We papered the floors with Yoda’s mats, and had a long chat with him. He got it. This was a piece of American publishing history, and dog-like behavior was not allowed. No scratching, no scrabbling, it was time to be regal and dignified.

We read the visitor’s book with great excitement. Who else had stayed there, before us? What was their take? We were perhaps the first non-creative types, mere commercial sellers of books, and Yoda was definitely the first dog who had stayed there. Everyone else was a writer, illustrator, or some kind of publishing eminence.

They wrote in beautiful script and splendid prose. Most of them mentioned the deer that they had seen, and some of them referred to the bears that came up to the front porch. We immediately set up an animal watch. We have a very special relationship with bears, from reading too much John Irving. On our first visit to Vienna, we earnestly asked the taxi driver on the way in from the airport where we could see the bears, and he treated us to a lecture about what a modern and bear-free city Vienna was.

That evening over dinner, our hosts Kent and Jody agreed that yes there were bears in the neighborhood, and no, they did not rate highly our chances of seeing them. Not on this trip anyway.

Yoda had taken to darting out the front door every chance he got. We did not want to curb his natural enthusiasm, and yet, what if a bear lurked outside? Are bears vegetarian? They do attack people when provoked, but do they eat them? Would they eat a dog, or would they invite him out to play with them? It was late at night, there was no encyclopedia or internet available, and we did not think Kent would be amused being woken up with a query about the dietary habits of bears.

We sat at the dining table, looked out of the French windows on to the slope that led down to the trees. We saw a bear in every shadow, and our wine fuelled imagination allowed us to get a sense of the height, coloration, and even claw length. We felt like the Scots villagers who have had a wee dram too many and come back with tales of the Loch Ness monster. The next morning, we woke up bright and fresh. The house was bear free, and so were the slopes, trees and roads that we drove on. I wanted to ‘beat the grounds’ and go looking for signs of bear – poop, claw marks, crushed grass, but it was time to go off to our meetings.

On our way back to New York, we stopped at an army surplus store and decided to check out what was on sale. Afghanistan was about to be invaded, the Taliban was due to be routed, and we were in a slightly martial frame of mind. We bought the full range of camouflage T shirts - sand, snow, and forest. We could find nothing remotely relevant to Yoda. I guess Marines don’t wear leashes, or bows in their hair.

We barreled into Manhattan, ready to get into the groove. Bears would have to wait, the smell of fresh grass was now a distant memory, we were set to battle the bridge traffic, and embark on the greatest hunt known to mankind – street side parking on the Upper West Side.

Doggles

I love reading about the British Raj. The Brits conquered and ruled India, but India also managed a reverse conquest of a sort. It captured the English language, and set it free. It’s not just the infusion of curry into English. It’s also the words that came into being, in the day to day process of ruling an Empire.

I have always used the word Posh and it was in my late thirties that I discovered what it really meant. Port Outward, Starboard Home. Pick a cabin on the left when you sailed East, and one on the right when you sailed west. It’s the only way to avoid the blazing sun in the morning hours, heating up your cabin. If you were traveling POSH, you were either up on the totem pole, or had made your reservations well in advance.

Our travel agent looked at me like I had lost my mind, when I said that henceforth we would only travel POSH. From Bombay, flying west, we wanted seats on the far right, and flying back we wanted them on the far left. She made the mistake of asking why, and I made the mistake of telling her. With a ‘whatever floats your boat’ attitude, she made her notes and we got our seats.

I explained this to an attendant on British Airways, and he very painstakingly told me that I could lower the ‘little window, sir’ and block the sun out altogether. He was speaking very slowly trying to use words of one syllable. He had no sense of the history of his forebears. I was just another passenger with a bee in his bonnet.

Yoda loves the sun. He lives mostly in air conditioning, but he will always seek out the one spot in the room where the sun is shining. No POSH for him, at least not when the air is on. We wondered about this? Was he trying to get a tan? Did he feel cold in the air conditioning? Wasn’t his lush coat of hair enough to keep him warm? We are talking India here, where the weather is mostly hot, or wet.

As dogs get older, and Yoda is now 14, you get concerned about the same health issues as adults- Bones, heart, kidneys, and especially eyes. He had begun to blink a lot in the sunlight, and his eyes were watery, even a little cloudy. We took him to a swank new Animal Hospital on the West Side, and Dr Welzer put his eyes through their paces.

Yoda sat patiently as she shined lights in, and took measurements with some kind of meter. I think all doctors are greatly relieved with an animal that offers no resistance, and actually licks their hand as they are doing investigating. Patients too need to have a good bedside manner.

‘He’s doing fine, for someone his age’. I had just heard these words from my own doctor, before she whipped out her pad and wrote me four prescriptions. So, I waited for the other shoe to drop. Mercifully there was none. She gave us some drops for his eyes, and then stepped back and looked at Yoda.

‘I think you should get him some glasses’. I had visions of us traipsing off to the nearest Lenscrafters and having Yoda fitted out with the latest in Armani Occhiale. Nothing but the best for this dog. She whipped out a pair of motor cycle goggles with an elastic headband, and put them on Yodie. Mina and I were very careful not to laugh, or even snicker. He is very sensitive to being mocked.

‘You can get them anywhere on the Internet. They’re called Doggles’. I was consumed with envy. When I was eight years old, and my doctor told me that I needed glasses, I was in shock. I did not want to join the ‘four eyes’ brigade, and get taunted mercilessly at school. So, I decided that the only way to be cool was to get one of these goggles. My father was not amused when I told him. I got thwacked on the head for my pains, and was frog marched to the opticians to get fitted out in the least expensive tortoise shell frames they could find.

Now, 48 years later, our dog was about to get his Doggles. If you want something hard enough, and pray for it long enough, someone else will get it. We went on the net, and were swamped by the range of choice. They were all the same basic design, but enough style variations to satisfy the most exacting dog lover.

Too Dame Edna. Too pink. Too fussy. Finally we had it. A sleek, minimalist set of Doggles with blue lenses.

Yoda is now all set for the Riviera. We’re still flying POSH, but we have learned not to explain why.