Three Black Spots

King of the world

When I was ten years old and living in Trivandrum, my favorite hang-out was the USIS Library. The USIS was the American bulwark against the forces of communism- the perfect product of the Cold War. None of that mattered to me. The Library was my entrée into another world, where the streets were paved with gold, buildings rose out of the ground like rockets, and neon filled the night sky.

Every once in a while, they would organize a cultural evening, to share with us how the real America lived. It’s where I first learned the word hootenanny. We were given sheets with the words, and one song that I learned has stayed with me all my life - ‘ Home on the Range’.

Give me a home, where the buffaloes roam……each of us needs our one place on earth, where we feel free. Its more than Lebensraum, it’s the place where we know that all will be well, and our entire being can flourish, unchallenged. Yoda’s spiritual home is at Nandgaon, our beach house down the coast from Bombay.

As we drive down there, we can feel our own city stress ebb, and Yoda’s excitement rise. We come down the last curve, make our bumpy way across the dirt road leading onto the beach, and Yoda is up against the window, doing his jig, jumping from one side of the car to the other.

Yoda is home, and this is the one place on earth where he is King and Alpha Dog all rolled into one. He will not listen to anyone, or anything. He is more Master of the Universe than any Wall Street bond trader. We have to do his bidding. Sleep when he wants to, rise when he does, go walkabout when he scrabbles at the door, and settle down when he is sunning himself. One day I’m going to hand out ‘I’m in a Nandgaon state of mind’ T shirts with Yoda’s picture. Billy Joel would understand.

It’s the only place we live in that is traffic free, so he can roam the garden to his heart’s content. Every plant must be sniffed, every blade of grass inspected, every tree scratched, as he slips into gentleman farmer mode, and walks the grounds. He goes up to the gardeners and circles them as they do their work. As he walks off, you sense that he has mentally evaluated them, and will tell us what their next raise should be.

We take him with us to the fishing village, where Mina buys fresh fish from the market. She has her preferred ‘fish-wali’ whose daughter also lives in the US, and they discuss the challenges of long distance relationships, and the cost of phone calls. Yoda is careful not to go up to the fish basket – no fishy smells for our boy. The fish-wali is ever delighted to see him, and when he is there, we either get a special discount, or some extra fish.

For a while we used to run sprinklers in the garden. It’s a wonderful sight, standing up on the deck, watching the water whirl around and catch the sun. Yoda once ran into the garden at sprinkler time, chased the water round and round, had a ball, and came back to us wet and brown. It took Mina over an hour to dry him, and then comb out all the mud. It was the first time I have heard Mina swear at him, but no worries mate, he was at Nandgaon and home on the range. Nothing was about to faze him, and no one could rain on his parade.

Over the last fourteen years, Yoda has become a well known and well loved figure in the village. We venture into the village to visit the Ganapati temple, he sits in the car with the driver while we go in, and we bring out some Prasad for him to eat, and kum-kum to put on his forehead. I suspect that the priests would not mind if we took him in to get blessed by the Gods, but we also know not to push our luck.

The owner of the nearest gas station is a lovely Parsi gentleman, who once refused to give Jayanand gas until he went back home and brought Yoda back for a bit of loving. No one has ever denied me gas unless I showed them my pretty face. Au contraire.

Our deck runs all around the house, and we can see down to the boundary wall and the sea beyond. We often joke that it is a bit like the Papal balcony, and we have mimed in a non-blasphemous manner John Paul raising his hands in benediction gently murmuring ‘ Bene, Bene’.

After we saw Titanic, a different image comes to mind. Yoda standing on the deck, windswept, handsome, yelling ‘I’m King of the World’. All it needs to complete the picture is a canine Kate Winslet, hanging on to his neutered soul. One day, Yoda, one day.