Man's Best Friend by Sundaram Venkatesh

“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is gold, the other is silver.” or something similar, is what I recollect having jotted down on the back cover of my matriculation english textbook. Decades later, I am reminded of that when I met Max, the new addition to our son’s family in the US – the first ever in our expanded family.

Max’s arrival into the family was not planned. It was an impulsive decision on the part of Sunita, our daughter-in-law. One fine morning her colleague brought half a dozen puppies to the office by prior arrangement and distributed one each to pre-determined colleagues. One was still left, god knows for what reason. And Sunita happened to be the lone staff not holding one. He was handed to her.

To her, it was a blessing in disguise. As a child, while walking along the road in Delhi, she had often asked her dad if she could pick “that brown puppy”, the street dog, and nurture him at home, only to be put off by him. Now here is her dream come true day. “But,” she said to herself, “will the other members of the family welcome him?” Regardless, she carried him home, stopping on the way at an animal shop to buy half a dozen items for his day-to-day care. Bravo.

On seeing a new member, the younger son was overjoyed. Even during visits to stores for shopping, he would detach himself and be with the pets of other owners. He immediately held the puppy onto him. And the puppy was only too eager to join the younger playful age group.

The older brother was a bit sceptical. His main worry was if, in the midst of his preparation for the board exam, he would be assigned the dog-walk duty at least once a day. More importantly, in adolescence, a dog was the last companion he wanted to be seen with.

The head of the family— my son, that is— welcomed the guest with an all-in-the-game equanimity.

The following friday evening at a post-dinner meet lasting an hour and a half, the family christened him Max. Other names that figured in included Tiger, Johnny, Caesar, Jimmy… But the unanimous verdict was the name should be monosyllabic.

My nature is such that caution takes precedence over anything else. So, the day I booked our tickets to the US, I had a face-time chat with my son to ask him to keep Max, now fully grown, on a leash when we were about to reach home from the airport. From what we see of him during our video chats he appears ferocious. “If someone can take him for a walk coinciding with our arrival, that is the best we could ask for.” I went a step further.

Two miles before arriving home from the airport, I saw my son ring up Sunita and tell her that we would be home in ten minutes. I wondered if they were planning a Mangala Aarati in our honour at the doorstep. No, it was a hint for her to take Max out for a walk. And she did.

Now it is been a week. Max is as close to both of us as we are to him. Now anything else is secondary. We get up early, and there he is rushing from upstairs to be by our side wagging his tail, to watch us do our morning exercises. And when we go for a walk, he follows us up to the door. He knows he is not allowed to join us. He wears a concerned look at us as though wanting to reassure us, “I will behave well thatha, why don’t you take me along.”