+ The Day My Life Changed

The other day, I was flipping through the channels late in the night, which is when I usually relax with inanity on TV, when I came across a Tamil channel playing a film. I stopped for a while, and – I don’t know about this, but sometimes I think I invite things on myself – there was this absolutely mindblowing sequence.

There is this woman (Madhavi, I think) tied to a tree. She has a horse and a dog for pets/companions, and the horse unties her. She gets on the horse and rides away and the villain shoots and injures the horse. Heroine gets down from the horse, looks at the wound (let me not get too much into the details here), and then I think the villain who is following comes up and shoots the heroine.

What followed was straight out of a bloody fairy tale. The dog sniffs around, spies a visiting card on the ground, notices that it belongs to a doctor, goes to a public telephone and – you won’t believe it – dials, and barks loudly into the receiver.

It took me a while to gather my wits around me and to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. The next thing I know, the dog is walking into a house – presumably the doctor’s house. Once inside, the dog, that divine creature, goes straight to the typewriter and – I swear I’m not making this up - types out an SOS in the Tamil script. That was the fastest I’d seen a paw work on a typewriter. Hell, that was the damnest thing I ever saw a paw do. Going by hunt-and-peck standards, this dog was good enough to compete with humans – and win by a mile.

10 minutes later, after I’d recovered....

I am humble. I accept that life is strange. I concede I don’t know what could be. I know now that what I know not to be is actually what I haven’t known to be. I should believe...I should believe. I am in awe. I would like to meet these extraordinary people, the filmmakers, the story writers, that creative ocean that came up with this...this...this (please provide a suitable word – I am completely chastened and at a loss for words).

Whether I may or may not believe more in God, let me assure you, I already believe more in DOG!