The Eastern Dog

Have you noticed the prevalence of cats over dogs in a mediocre Bangladeshi house hold? I did. Having house pets (not dairy or farm animals and those are not house pets anyway) is not a very popular convention in an average Bangladeshi household. Still in exceptions where there is a pet it is invariably a cat and not a dog; if it is a dog it is almost always treated as a farm animal that lives outside the household, barks incessantly and eventually bores itself to silence, does not produce milk or any other edibles for that matter and wags its tail violently in an outburst of glee when the master does so much as call it by its "western" name. The post colonial dog does not have the permission to enter a Bengali house hold. Its fate is like that of colonial India, which is reflected in a mock rhetoric dedication of Nirad C. Chowdhury's " The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian" which read, 'To the memory of the British Empire in India ,Which conferred subject hood upon us ,But withheld citizenship.' The dogs that are there not really pets you see, they are just animals that add to the master's elegance and fine taste. They are turned beautifully bovine, while their feline counterparts are given a virtual membership of the household.

      Here, dogs are considered impure. But why is that? What is the actual reason for this animosity towards dogs? Why do we persist in saying dogs are impure, and cleaning and purifying our homes from top to bottom if a dog happens to enter? Why do we believe that those who touch them spoil their ablutions? If our dresses brush against their damp fur, why do we insist on washing that dress seven times like a frenzied woman? Only the fanatics could be responsible for the slander that a pot licked by a dog must be thrown away or re-tinned. Or perhaps, yes, cats…….