These days I’ve taken to staying inside during the day; it is April in Mumbai and the sun beats down mercilessly on everything. I venture outside only after the sun sets. With the draft sent to my supervisor, I decided that I would stay away from it for a few days and spend time reading other stuff. I read Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human and tried getting back to watching movies on Mubi; Dazai reminded me of Mishima and sunk me into melancholy for a few days, and I could not bring myself to watching movies.
After sunset, around 7pm, I get out of bed and head to the showers. I run water through my hair and let it permeate the coarse strands and smoothen it with conditioner. It takes forever to dry, so I forego the headphones while cycling to the lab. This is the first time I see quite a number of people in the day; people walking and cycling and talking and running and petting. I while away time in the lab, reading and writing and deleting and thinking. On my way back, in the stretch that goes downhill, I see a dog with a black and white coat running uphill on three legs; one of the forelegs is missing. I have been seeing it for the past two days.
This is a sight that takes the joy out of the downhill stretch. That is not really true. It does not take the joy out of the downhill stretch. It makes me slow down, and I promise myself that I will forget this by the time I reach my hostel. It is not a sight to lose sleep over—at least whatever those seven hours of tossing and turning are called. But on the day of my therapy, the dog invariably comes up. I tell my therapist that it is a saddening sight. I lack enough words to truly tell her what it makes me feel, so I just tell her that it is a saddening sight.
I must stop and think. Think really hard. What does the three-legged dog mean to me? Fundamentally, it is an odd sight—pun not intended. A dog with three legs stands out like a crooked chair, like a bottle without a lid. Perhaps it is the slight variation in its gait that gives this oddness away. But then you realise that the gait isn’t really odd. It is the missing leg, the empty space that has cut in that makes it an odd sight. Despite the missing leg, the dog trots away much like any other dog. Functionally, it is still very much a dog.
Maybe, you think, it reminds you of the invalidity of your existence. Like the dog, the city has chopped off your feelers. It does not affect your executive functions that people stare at you as an oddity. It only give away your oddness when you try to move the stumps of the feelers and realise that they are missing. Despite the missing feelers, you have learned to mask the absence well. Maybe what you feel when you see the three-legged dog is not pity or sadness, but subliminal fraternity. Perhaps that is why you slow down; you are seeing yourself after a long time.