The black dog

When I learned that his name was ‘Jire’, my thoughts wandered instantly to the majestic landscape of Jiri; a place where you can see lightening strike the hill-top, and your heart shudders as the skies rumble. Before you know it, the ubiquitous sound of waterfalls (that which you can hear from anywhere in the valley) will drown the thunder. Tranquility will be restored once again.

While Jiri, the gateway to Everest has always been a place that summons the very image of serenity in my mind, Jire was a rather rambunctious kid of around fourteen. He claimed to be seventeen though, and his entire outlook projected mischief. When I first noticed him, Jire—clad in a torn jacket and a pair of squalid trousers, was hanging on to the door of a bus, kicking a big black dog and swearing at the creature as it chased the moving vehicle.

To the horror of all the passengers, the black dog was ferocious in its retaliation. When the scuffle finally ended, Jire had lost his chappal. The conductor was spewing profanity by this time, and the two ladies in the front seat turned red with embarrassment. The driver, sensing unease among the passengers, asked Jire to shut up. “The chappal was stolen property anyway,” said the driver, snidely. “I spent a fortune on them at Lakeside only a fortnight ago,” Jire protested lightheartedly, and the animated exchange helped change the mood inside the bus. The passengers were, by now, gleefully engrossed in their playful badger; except for the two Swiss girls in the back who were busy capturing the magnificence of the Nilgiri in their DSLRs. The bus took a dangerous bend below an overarching rock just then, and it made its way along the meandering road.

Nobody knows who Jire’s parents are. Local lore has it that a decade ago, when Captain Lhakpa went to Lo Manthang to take care of usual business, he decided to make a stop at Tingkar Valley for some reason. While returning from the Valley, the captain had to take shelter in one of the few houses that lie scattered along the Namgyal Gompa area. And that is where he is supposed to have found Jire—a starving baby in a squalid cradle.

The baby’s mother had died only a few days ago and his father was in India, working as a labourer. The only adult in the house was his grandma, an old lady whose eyes had been blinded by advancing cataract. Captain Lakpha, feeling a sense of great pity come over him, is said to have brought the baby to Jomsom.

Everyone in the neighborhood had praised the captain for his kindness. But his wife Pasang had harboured reservations; she had suspicions: that the kid might be an illegitimate child of the captain’s, begotten from an illicit rendezvous with one of the several concubines he was rumoured to have in Upper Mustang.

The captain’s well-known character as a serial flirt didn’t help contain her suspicions. He was a consummate ladies man, and spent a considerable fortune in the upkeep of his various liaisons. Besides, the title ‘captain’ somehow acted as a charm that seemed to make him irresistible to the opposite sex.

The irony there was that Captain Lhakpa was no captain. He had never been in the army; neither had he ever led any sporting team. He wasn’t even a captain in the bar, let alone a class monitor. In fact the moniker had stuck to him during his school days; he used to bathe using Captain Soap—a brand no longer available in the market. His father had been a businessman who traded along the Jomsom and Beni routes, and the captain had taken control of the reins after the old man’s death.

With a bit of luck and his many shrewd strategies, the captain had expanded his trade. A road permit that he had secured by bribing the local official had given him virtual monopoly of the highway. His fleet of seven buses now traversed the Pokhara-Jomsom highway almost exclusively. With growing affluence and political clout he commandeered authority, and it was not unusual to see legion of lackeys accompanying him on his travels. There were many who didn’t like the captain though; they talked of the ‘underhand means’ the captain had employed to amass his wealth.

Despite harbouring certain misgivings, Pasang didi had indeed welcomed Jire as her son in the early days, showering him with affection, until the birth of her own child had turned her sour towards him. He was abused, made to drop out of school and (in spite of the captain’s several pleadings) finally forced to become a bus conductor.

Jire’s life changed drastically after he took up that career. He started pretending he was much older than he was, befriended all sorts of boys who roamed around the highway and took up smoking, among other things. His profession also got him in touch with tourists trekking along the Annapurna circuit, especially those who came down Ghorepani to enjoy the spring of Tatopani.

An impressionable kid, Jire soon learned English, French and German. He could identify a few words of Spanish as well. He used to frequent Pokhara and Jomsom; every fortnight, as a matter of fact, and spent whatever he had earned on cigarettes, booze and girls. He seldom showered, and was a member of a gang that was allegedly involved in trafficking stolen items along the highway.

A few years ago, on one of his many bus rides, he had met a few members of the old peace corps; individuals who hadn’t shed their

hippie life style. Jire learned about the gods of music: The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, from them. Black Dog was one of his favorite songs, although he hadn’t the slightest notion as to the content of the lyrics. It was while humming this tune that he had first encountered Shere.  

Shere was a big black Tibetan Mastiff that roamed around the Tiplang area. It lived nearby Pemba dai’s meat shop and was a bane to his customers. It was ferocious, and according to the villagers, had been certified a ‘mad dog’ since it ate fish from the Kali Gandaki River. An

alpha male, Shere was domineering, and wouldn’t allow any other male dog inside its territory. It had bitten several strangers, and people were afraid to even come close to him.  Despite its notoriety though, the villagers fed it and took care of it, as it kept thieves at bay.

It had been early morning. Jire had been taking a leak at a bush nearby, humming Black Dog all the while, when Shere had jumped at him from behind. The rabies shots Jire had had to take at a health post later that afternoon had been mortifying. Shere had become his sworn enemy.

Every time his bus commuted through Tiplang, Jire would grab a stone and aim right at the black dog. Shere recognised the honking of Jire’s bus, and leapt whenever the opportunity presented itself. Their enmity soon became the stuff of folk lore.

Even today Jire had been aiming to hurl a stone at Shere’s head, but the driver, out of mischief, had hit the brakes suddenly and Jire had stumbled on to the street. Before he’d

managed to jump into the running bus Shere had grabbed his ankle, and he’d lost his chappal in the confusion that followed.

Jire’s mood had remained foul throughout the rest of the journey. “Son of a bitch! You did that on purpose,” he would yell at the driver time and again (half joking, half serious), but the driver paid no heed to his accusation. If any of the passengers attempted to haggle about the fare, he snapped back, and made rude remarks. He had finally snapped when an old man had not given him the complete bus fare. Jire had flung the elderly man’s luggage out of the window and ran into town (leaving the other pair of his chappal behind) before any of the passengers had had the chance to grab him by the collar.

A few months later, while commuting to my office in a safa tempo I happened to run into the same driver. After striking up the conversation, I casually inquired about Jire’s whereabouts. “He’s rotting in jail. The son of a bitch was caught trafficking narcotics belonging to the captain,” the driver told me. “That jack ass nearly got me caught as well. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Several black dogs were roaming free outside as we talked; perhaps lurking for their next prey.

- Dipesh Karki