A Waltz with Lolo the Dog

In the Andamans I was scared out of my wits not by foot long centipedes or the deadly snakes but by a dog. Yes, a dog called Lolo. If you are into Bollywood then you’d know that Lolo is the pet name of Karisma Kapoor. Karisma (aka Lolo) is svelte, fair and cute. Whereas this Lolo was just the opposite, a dark deadly beast that weighed nearly a ton, and had canines sharp as shark teeth and just as long. I know all this because I did a waltz with Lolo with my face just millimeters away from the fangs.

I neither love dogs nor hate them, it’s just that I am terrified of them. It is rather difficult to like something you are afraid of. In my case it happens to be dogs. I go to great lengths to avoid coming face to face with them whether it is a pet or a stray. If at any time it comes to 'dog vs Vinod', I hand over the trophy to dog. Though I go misty eyed when reading moving stories of loyal dogs rescuing their masters from monstrous fires or extricating them from under rubble or going to great distances to reunite with them, when it comes to dogs in real life I like to keep a healthy distance from them. What happened to me at Port Blair is one example why I like to do so.

The office of the NGO in Port Blair where I worked was located on the upper floor of a rather nice house which had a large courtyard with several plants. The first day at the office my colleague paused at the gate to look around. When I asked him why, he said there was a dog inside and told me to enter only making sure it was chained. When we hurried up the stairs I noticed that it wasn’t a dog but a beast, a jet black silent dog that would tear you up in shreds in seconds. It was a daily terror we faced when we opened the gates. We had to enter only when it was chained. Nobody told me what would happen if we entered when it was not chained. I got the answer only a week into the job.

One day, accompanied by two of my colleagues I opened the gate to find Lolo was in the garden and had its great paws on the shoulders of a girl who worked in the NGO.along with us. Now, I may be scared of dogs but when it comes to finding damsels in distress I don’t let anything come in my way. So thinking I could handle Lolo, I opened the gates while my colleagues wisely remained behind the gate.

I addressed the dog in a soft voice, ‘Lolo, Lolo’ and trying to distract it. Lolo looked at its new master and dropped to its feet. Then the fear set in as it leaped up and puts its paws on my shoulders. I am about five feet seven inches so it can be guessed how big the dog was if I said it towered above me standing on its hind feet. The girl, meanwhile, ran up the stairs leaving me to complete the waltz with Lolo. We waltzed all over the garden for what looked like half the day.

Lolo, for some strange reason doesn’t bark. So I was scared it was going to bite any moment. But it did nothing of that sort. It simply put its great paws on my shoulders and with its beady eyes gave me the sort of looks that told me my end was very near. I was expecting it to lunge forward and grab my neck in its sharp fangs the way guard dogs are trained to do. Every heart beat was like a minor explosion inside my chest as I tried to talk to it soothingly- ‘Lolo, sit, Lolo sit’. Once it obeyed and I felt I had it in my control but then it leaped up again and put its paws on my shoulders. That was how I knew how much it weighed.

With its enormous jaws just millimeters away from my face I got a good look at its tongue (pink), teeth, sorry, fangs (almost three inches) and of course, its beady eyes. It was a face I cannot ever forget because we waltzed in that manner- with Lolo on its hind legs and forepaws on my shoulders, for a long, long time. Later my colleagues told me we did the waltz for nearly ten minutes before Lolo’s owner emerged out of the house with a panic-stricken face. It was of course, an obedient dog for it let go of me and ran inside the house. The owner appeared to give me an apologetic smile but to me it was an angelic smile.

I wasn’t able to eat anything with my hands or work on the computer that day, not because I was scared. It was because my hands were shaking so violently I had difficulty holding the spoon. So that was my waltz with Lolo.