Doggone Evolution

Stepping out of my house in the morning, rushing to the distant yet valuable spot allocated to park my car I was transfixed in my stride to see a dog sleeping on my car. It lay there comfortably sprawled in the slightly indented roof of my otherwise spotless car; its weight forming a comfortable sag which I hoped to god would not stay. My cautious footsteps disturbed the repose and its ears attuned in my direction. He opened his eyes slowly, perhaps confirming if it was his perch that was in question, or was I just coming to shoo him off, being the possessive human who couldn’t just let others be in peace. I indicated that his siesta was over, remotely unlocking the car, making it beep once. He gave me a disapproving nod and proceeded to get up, slide down my windshield and bonnet and finishing with a final jump down to the road. As I got in behind the wheel, he finished his morning stretches and let out a yawn and gallivanted away.

My abstraction took me through` `The Rise of The Planet of the Apes’. High school biology taught us that evolution is a slow tedious process spanning multiple generations, but adaptations and mutations can happen spontaneously. The movie showed how a single intelligent ape could alter the entire dynamics of the populace. The canines of my community (I hate calling it a colony, it makes us sound like bacteria) have gotten increasingly comfortable around modern development. We stand witness to a series of adaptive evolutions and I am not talking about the likes of bacterial drug resistance, that spans generations but of a rapidly progressive social and intellectual grown in the animals in the region.

The Indian Native Dog (INDog) is an ancient autochthonous (landrace) type of dog that is found all over India; the original breed of the country, found free-living as a commensal of man all over the Indian subcontinent. Since these dogs have never been selectively bred, their appearance, physical features and mental characteristics are created by the process of natural selection alone. The current ruler or alpha dog of my community is not much to look at, but neither was that chimp fellow in the movie. I have never read the book, and haven’t really much cared if it was based on one. But now coming to think of such things, I can see where the author came from. Back to my Alpha, I find that I respect his intelligence. He (yes it is a male), has single er.. pawedly uplifted the dogs from mutts under our cars to the brutes that now sleep over them. He now roams the streets unperturbed by the fuss surrounding the bipedals around him. Further googling shows that the INDog species originated from china, talk about china flooding the streets in India.

I saw him first as a pup, and he has never displayed great physical prowess. We mocked him as “The Joker” for his discolored pink red amelanotic sniffer, possibly a diagnosis of canine vitiligo, but that’s just the doctor in me overthinking it. As kids we knew the previous local top dog; he was a burly black mongrel who was the scariest dog around, even more than the Doberman kept at house no. 87 whose only passion was to run to the door to bark as anyone passing by. The thewy black fleabag had led to mutinous behavior in the local dogs, they would refuse to budge from the roads when we drove in, the kids were scared and the awful midnight barking a menace. To pitch him against the `Joker’ I might as well call the bad black dog, `The Batdog’ for naming sake.(The irony here would be Batdog losing to Joker). The Joker led a non-violent campaign, showing us that dogs can live in harmony with humans and people began to realize the menace of the Batdog. After many a dog had it’s day under the tread of a car for refusing to move, the municipal corporation did apprehend the miscreants for biting a lady acting on the repeated complains. The Joker has ruled since.

If you are wondering about the delay in the action on behalf of the municipal corporations, you probably aren’t from India. Dogs and other animals here often enjoy more political and social protection than people themselves do, certainly not the General category. I wonder as I see the Joker if he could talk, he would probably give a detailed explanation about why his kind should sleep on cars. The chief points could be:-

• Car hoods and roofs are cleaner surfaces than the ground to sleep on; it provides for better health and proper sleep patterns.
• There is reduced disturbance from street sweepers, other people and cars and also fewer accidents.
• Warm Engines are especially good for winters.
• Presence of the dogs deters thieves from accessing the car; it also serves as a higher vantage point for watching other areas as well.
• It allows for cordial and safer interactions between the car owners and dogs as neither is startled by the presence of the other now that it is easier to spot the dog.

The Downside I see are the teeming little scratches on the roof and the windshield and possibly and indentation or two. But how do you explain such aesthetics to a dog. Maybe I can, having previously failed to attribute intelligence where it was due. As these dogs sitting on cars watch our world as we rush after meaningless pursuits for money, as the pigeons roost on my Air conditioner conveniently out of reach of predators and as the local monkey clans steal the milk from my doorstep if I don’t pick it up on time, I realize the world around me is changing at levels I don’t even notice. The crows too have wizened up know how to puncture the milk containers to have a sip in the morning. We are fighting for the same resources and so called lesser evolved seem to be doing it far more amicably than us.

I am more than impressed, so what say to letting our animal instincts take over.

Cute - more a verb than an adjective.

“Cute”, an article by a flustered man

Being a man and that too not a stupid one at that, I can claim to know many things but one thing that dodges all understanding is the usage of the word cute by my feminine friends. Oh yes, I have some, why would one think I would not and be put into this controversial question. I have been flabbergasted by the varied forms the meanings, or the recipient of this word can take.

Not to be left behind in any way, I went and picked up the dictionary to see what it said, I came across,

Cute (colloq.) sharp-witted; ingenious; (US) quaint.

Now obviously Oxford has got it wrong, and no surprise at that, because it was written by a group of men, none of whom seem to have understood how their female colleagues use this word in all forms of implications and intonations.

They could not have possibly have imagined the vast array of meanings this four letter word is beset with. I don’t really think that this is a word whose meanings are countable for each time you meet another woman, another meaning will surface, needing to be added to the list. So far I have come across numerous annotations to use it in, the best of them being used for babies (how on earth are they shrewd, ingenious or even quaint), dogs, plants, cats, houses (ok they can be quaint), laughter (now that explains a lot) and of course girls, their dresses (haven’t yet met a dress with a mind of it’s own), their food, the list as I said is endless. I could go on and on trying to make sense of the word cute, but I will be as it has been till now, no success at all. I might say that the understanding of the word cute is as complex as understanding the female mind itself, and if one can do either (that being a man who does so) must be nominated for a noble prize.

It is a noble quest indeed, one of the greatest mysteries of the language we speak. One I dare say I think will never be truly understood by men, who are in the spirits to find the true meaning of this word. I am not derogatory, just giving a friendly warning that the female companion whom you might end up questioning after reading this article may not take too kindly to such enquiries into her knowledge of the meaning of such commonplace words, putting your relation in jeopardy.

I have had the experience, often funny or of nature indescribable in text, of my female friends putting to use this absurd contraption of a word, to things I would have had described in any word rather than cute, but it simply seems to me that the easiest word they can utter when at a loss for it is “cute”. That may have offended some reading this, but the idea was not to do so, infact it is to make you aware of the mistake made so most commonly by us in everyday life. English has always been a funny language, and though recent times have modified language to suit our needs some misappropriations need correction.

I was reminded of this when I ran into my old English teacher, who upon hearing my language, which by the way due to female company had come to include the word cute for numerous wordily pursuits as an easy substitute, couldn’t control her smile, and neither could I, when she told me that cute is not every thing for everything is not cute. It is a mark of my respect and my dedication to this language and its teacher I write this article.