Jimmy
It was 1967. Many years passed by. I was getting prepared for S.S.C (Secondary School Certificate) examination.
We had a beautiful house built with brick-wall and tin-roof.
My uncle had the hobby of growing flower plants. He made our home a garden house. He grew some rose plants in the front yard of our home. We had black and yellow roses that were not so common. There were plenty of red roses too. The flowers were quite big and fresh. They bloomed beautifully. Sweet fragrance of the flowers made our home attractive. Whoever saw these flowers could not pass by without appreciation. My uncle took much care of them, as if they were his babies.
There were betel-nut trees and banana trees all around the house along the boundary wall. We ate a lot of bananas. Our grandfathers and grandmothers and others of their age enjoyed the betel-nuts of our trees.
My father was a lawyer dedicated to his profession. He used to come back from the court in the evening and relaxed on an easy chair on the veranda. He was revered and loved by all our relatives and friends. He settled all their legal matters. They visited our home frequently and enjoyed father’s company very much. After his death many of them did not visit us often. When a person passes away he or she takes many things to their graves.
We belong to a conservative Muslim family. We never had dogs in our household. My grandfather was a religious leader. He could speak, read and write Urdu, Arabic and Persian. He did not know Bengali because Bengali did not reflect aristocracy at that time for the Muslims. Today we feel it to be strange. We fought our liberation war for our language. Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh now. Time changes in a strange way.
My grandfather said, “ Dogs are forbidden in Islam. I cannot say my prayers when any dog is around me.”.
My father built our house in Purana Palton, Dhaka. We did not enter into a built-in house. Father purchased the land which was a pool of water but later earth-filling was done.
A dog lived there on the vacant land. My father tried his best to send the dog somewhere else, far away from our home because my grandfather was annoyed when he saw any dog near him. But astonishingly, he could not make it. Many times the dog was taken away and left in a far away place but even then the dog came back to us. I wonder, how could it remember the path? It was an irrational animal!
Gradually father gave up the idea of making our home dog-free. He chose a name for the dog. He called him “Jimmy”. He happened to love Jimmy unknowingly. When he came home in the evening, Jimmy wagged his tail joyfully. Whatever father ate he shared it with Jimmy. I saw him sharing biscuits with Jimmy.
In the evening I was studying in my room. I was itching my legs repeatedly to avoid mosquito-bite. At that time, Jimmy started barking at me and was trying to show me something. I found Jimmy barking when any stranger came but I was not a stranger. I followed Jimmy’s gestures. Jimmy stood on the grassland in the front yard. There was a round shaped staircase of three stairs near the entrance of my room. A snake silently embraced the second stair. Jimmy drew my attention to that point. If anybody walked on the veranda he or she would not be able to see the snake. I was terribly frightened. From my childhood I fear, scorpion, lizards, cockroaches, caterpillar, snakes and other insects beyond any limit. I fear the snakes most. Forgetting the widely talked about subject of ecological balance, even today, I think that why God created snakes.
It seems that the snake came from a pool of water in our neighbourhood. There was a big and dirty pool of water to the west of our home which is occupied by big buildings now.
When it rained, our front yard became a bit muddy and marshy. It seems that for this reason the snake found its comfort around the stair. Father informed our neighbours. They came with sticks and other weapons and killed the snake. I breathed a sigh of relief. Jimmy was with me all through the ordeal. It often sat and slept near the door of my room.
Jimmy comes to my mind often. How did it know that I should see the snake? Even today I do not find any scientific explanation of my experience. It seems that we need to know much more about animals. They have eyes, ears, nose, heart, kidney, liver etc, like us. Their blood is as red as ours. They can feel pain. They can be depressed too. I have seen the black lined eyes of cows to be calm, sad and depressed.
A dog does not live as long as humans. At this moment I do not know how long a dog lives on average.
After a few years Jimmy got mad. It started biting people. It became a social problem. On one sad morning, workers of Dhaka Municipal Corporation came to perform their duties by killing all mad dogs by shooting. Our Jimmy was one of them.
My father was very much shocked. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Memory of Jimmy is always with us. I can never erase Jimmy from my heart as long as I am alive.
