A misnomer, if ever there was one: the weak, scrawny and pathetic five week old street pup. And what was it named? Tiger ! The only thing he had in common with the yellow big cat was parallel stripes on his flanks, no, not on his coat color, but of arched bony ribs that stuck out in a series of curved lines on his chest wall. Well, I was just here at St Joseph’s bakery to pick up a loaf of bread, and with me, was my daughter. As I step out of the baker’s towards my ancient (but much favored) motorbike, I see this wretched whelp. He is cowering, head low, but takes a few tentative steps, his thin emaciated tail quivering ever so slightly. I send my daughter back into the bakery, and she returns with a packet of Glucose biscuits – she kneels down and breaks about three or four biscuits and feeds the hungry brown mutt.

Isn’t he cute Koo?
Sure, cute, abandoned and starving, I said

So Tiger he became, as we watched him grow each day as we religiously fed him his quota of thee biscuits. He had become quite familiar to the sound of my bike engine and would come like a streaking comet from wherever he was, usually from the vicinity of a huge garbage dump that stood near Unity Health Complex across the road in Highlands.

Here I must divert to the bike I had. It was bought in the  wake of the super-hit movie, Bobby: It was a a 175 cc sports type small power packed motorcycle that was made famous in the cinema – with Rishi Kapoor and Dimple riding away, scrambling to the hills, away from life and society into the sunset, on the newly introduced Rajdoot GTS. I had bought it paying a small deposit and the remaining cost, I paid through Rs.100 installments. The total cost of the motorbike came to 4, 500. I was particularly fond of the two wheeler and continued to use it, and kept it in pristine condition, even 25 years after I bought it in 1977. I had taken me through my days of wooing, and had ferried my new partner, my wife to her typing classes and later I rode on it with my tiny daughter strapped on my back – till she was bigger whence she sat on its petrol tank as we spun round town – a decade later, she was my pillion rider. The GTS had served me well and had become a part of my being: though most students made disparaging remarks about its age and antiquity, it remained a very visible extension of my personality.

It was hard, not just trying to comprehend the enormity of the situation and loss, but also rehabilitate myself – and continue working. I perforce stayed in a friend’s place, in an empty room upstairs – and since he was a non vegetarian, I tried eating at wayside hotels, even off pushcarts as I was too penniless to afford a full meal twice a day. It was then, that one day, drearily trudging the very Highland road, pausing to stare at the St Joseph’s Bakery with its window-case full of goodies and cakes, the very stretch   I had zipped by on my vehicle for decades, that I heard the unmistakable chug-chug of my very own GTS – my ears reddened and my hair stood up as I watched a stranger charge by on ‘my’ motorcycle. I stood still, trying to control the well of tears that brimmed my lids, when, out of nowhere, I spotted Tiger. He was bigger and tougher looking now – he had heard the bike too, and in a split second, he dashed across the busy road – all I heard was a flurry of rubber squelches and tyre screeches: an Ambassador taxi cab, despite trying its best to swerve, directly ran over Tiger. Tiger had thought I was back, on my bike, and he would be rewarded for his wait and loyalty – he saw nothing, he just heard the bike – and ran straight into the path of doom.

I stood at the pavement, next to the over-laden garbage bin and saw a mass of fresh, but limp pulpy flesh and a few streaks of red blood trickling on the tarmac. It was too much to bear: I walked on, not stopping till I reached my lodging where I lay on my borrowed bed and wept. For Tiger and for me.

I never entered St. Joseph’s again, nor bought a packet of Tiger biscuits again: the dogs, I have with me now, share Parle-G Glucose – I cannot bear to tell why I never buy Tiger brand biscuit, or why I switched off the TV last month when they played ‘Bobby’ on its movie channel.