I traveled through India in the winter of 2004, carrying a small backpack, a copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’ and an old canon 35mm camera. On a previous trip across South East Asia, I used a massive backpack filled with things I never used over the 4 months (I had 3 different types of shoes, but I never took off my Teva’s). This trip I was determined to travel light, so I could be agile and walk and explore without backache. India was, to my fresh eyes, one of the most intense countries I had ever been. Life and death could be smelled in the air and its cities were at once charming, sinister, beautiful and disturbing. In Varanasi I saw birds peck on the bodies of people as they floated down the sacred Ganges River. In Rishikesh I wandered the mountain paths, and once had to fend off an army of monkeys to safely cross a road. But it was Jaisalamer in the far west of Rajastan that struck me the most, where I saw things that have in the years since, stuck in my memory, haunting me, refusing to leave. Jaisalamer is perched in a brown desert, famed for its beautiful fort that stands in the center of town. As often happens when traveling, I planed to only stay for two days, but I ended up staying a week. One afternoon, I took a walk to a nearby lake. As I walked I passed by a number of dogs. Cities and towns in India are full of skinny dogs that feed off of the refuse. Watching these dogs I felt I was watching natural selection at its most brutal. The males that were successful and healthy had scares on their faces from battle and although lean, were muscled. Dirty green reeds surrounded part of the lake, dirtied from the brown dunes that encircle it. As I walked around the circuit, enjoying the view, I caught sight of a big dog coming toward the lake from the dunes. I was alarmed because it was making a strange sound and its gait suggested it was panicked. Thinking it might have rabies (I was terrified of a dog bite) I picked up a good-sized rock and watched it run toward me. It continued to whimper and moan but when it came to me, it merely looked at me and then sat down on its stomach and put its chin on the ground. Its face told me it was worried. I looked closer and I saw that part of its skull was missing and its brain was exposed. Instantly I felt my stomach turn. It only looked in my eyes briefly, but I felt like its expression said: ‘Something terrible has happened to me and now I can only wait for a painful death’. I was obviously anthropomorphizing, but seeing this animal at the edge of a horrible death, I was moved, and I’ve always felt that when a dog is happy, its expression is happy or when a dog is sad, it looks unhappy. Walking back into town in the twilight I thought about this, as the sky turned purple. I passed men wearing shawl’s rapped around their shoulders like a cloak to protect them from the cool winter breeze. I climbed the fort, found a restaurant and sat looking out into the darkness watching the night pass, wondering if the dog was still alive. BM
