Sudhansu Mohanty - Sheru: A Story of a Loving Dog

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Copyright 2019 Sudhansu Mohanty

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts are as reported by him. They have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.

The entire proceeds from the royalty will go as donation towards charity to Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), Bangalore.

ISBN 978-93-86832-80-1
ISBN 978-93-86832-88-7 (e-book)

Printed and bound at
Rajkamal Electric Press, Kundli, Sonipat, Haryana (India)

To

The new additions to our family
Tanay, our son-in-law
and
Nandini, our daughter-in-law

Chapter I
The Doe-Eyed Little Pup

Chapter II
We Fall in Love

Chapter III
Our Home is His Home

Chapter IV
Sheru, the Loving Dog

Chapter V
Move to Bangalore

Chapter VI
Ageing Gracefully

Chapter VII
The Last Days

Chapter VIII
Life After Sheru

Chapter IX
Postscript

The book has been long in the making. I wrote the first draft in the latter half of 2010, almost within a few months of Sherus passing, and with the fervent hope that I will see through its publication by end-2011 or at the latest by 2012. But it was not to be. The reasons were many.

For one, I wasnt sure how apt it will sound to make Sherulong gone to an Elysiummy co-author. Can a dog write? Can he express his thoughts that can be understood by readers? How phantasmal will that get? I was filled with such self-doubts. But I soon consoled myself with the thought that there wouldnt have been the book but for Sheruand Sheru aloneand I wouldnt commit any blasphemy in play-writing his part. However, there was another collateral problem. How realistic and true would my narration of life through Sherus eyes would be, more particularly the contours of his thoughts that I have attempted to sketch. Were they befitting a pet who seemed to grasp human thoughts like no other we have come across. I could find no answer to this. Up against a wall in my efforts to decode a dogs psychology, I read as many books and blogs on dogs I could lay my hands on. But I drew nought when it came to understanding a dogs mind. The manuscript lay in limbo. I was dismayed.

Thereafter, early-2013, I went out on a deputation to Delhi to join the ministry of environment and forests. Of the many interesting clutch of people I came across during my official interactions, there was this dedicated set of officials and animal scientists who cared for the tiger ecosystem. After we had bonded and shared each anothers interests, one day I told them about the book I had written. I requested them to go through the manuscript keeping an eye out to understand the dogs mind and to tell me honestly if my assessment was in anyway close to the truth. They were not dog scientists, but they had a professional kinship with animals and in my mind, I thought that they could throw some light on the aspect I felt far from secure. I am grateful to them for their encouragement and endorsement of my thoughts. I cant thank them enough: Dr Rajesh Gopal, then additional director general of forest (Project Tiger) & member-secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in the Ministry of Environment & Forests, and presently, secretary general of the Global Tiger Forum; Dr S. P. Yadav, then deputy inspector general (Project Tiger) in the Ministry of Environment & Forests, and now, additional PCCF (Wildlife) UP; and Dr Yadavendradev Jhala, professor, animal ecology and conservation biology division in the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, for their unwavering support and bolstering my flagging certainties.

Of the other reasons that majorly delayed the publication of this book was the constraint on my time. As the additional secretary & financial advisor of the ministry, I was caught in a whirl of activities in the ministry which were only exacerbated from time to time with the additional responsibilities of other ministries and departments such as health & family welfare, civil aviation, new & renewable energy, electronics and telecommunication, and earth sciences. I was left with no personal time to think and work on the manuscript. It was after two and half years, when I moved over to the defence ministry on promotionfirst as the controller general of defence accounts (CGDA) and then as the financial advisor, defence services (FADS)that I found myself pushed off an edifice, from the proverbial frying pan to the fire. They were 24/7 assignments with no evenings or weekends or holidays to myself. Yet again, I was left with no time to think of anything beyond the pressing and demanding day-to-day official transactions. I was intensely distraught, but utterly helpless.

It was only on my official retirement and relocation to Bangalore in 2017 that, despite other familial and social commitments, I could make peace with time. I got back to the manuscript and read it afresh, recalling and running the whole sequence of Sherus life in my mind. I felt blessed to have benefitted from the distance in time. I could bear on the content with a greater dispassion than when I worked out the first draft. I tried once more to dredge and excavate Sherus mind, segregating the chaff from the grain, and to get more granular and focused with Sherus thoughts, especially of his last days that still kept teasing and tantalising me to no end, and to resurrect this much-neglected, much-delayed book from oblivion.

Sudhansu Mohanty
Bangalore
October 2018

If you pick up a starving dog and make him
prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the
principal difference between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain

My first memory of Sheru, though blurry, is that of a scrawny pup prancing in the front yard of our apartment block. A less indistinct portrait of a young Sheru consists of my friend, Ranjana, screaming at him in a high-pitched voice, Shoo! Shoo doggy!, as she hurried her way past a naughty and playful pup into the safety of our house. Of all the memorable moments I have of Sheru circa this period, this one unerringly stands out in my mindscape.

It was my wife, Shukla, who had discovered Sheru and who, in turn, had discovered us. Only a day before, we had moved into our new apartment on the Gurudwara Road in the Pune Camp. It was early February 1999, 7th to be precise. The date is indelibly etched in my memory and for a good reason; it was the day Anil Kumble snapped up all ten Pakistani wickets in their second innings at the Feroz Shah Kotla ground in Delhi and had won the match for India by a big margin.