Dog vs. Dog Reels

I post a lot of dog videos. This has prompted people to sometimes ask me where I got the dog from. Did I specifically order it from outside Mizoram? Did I buy it local here? Usually because they want “a dog like yours”.

I am very wary of answering these questions. Mostly because the dog is a dog.

I am glad people find the videos cute. The algorithm found them so they were probably the target audience. But there's a reason the videos are cute which is that it has everything to do with film-making. You don’t want to peep behind the curtain.

For starters, the fact that they are on an average about 15-30 seconds duration should say much. In case I still need to spell it out, that's about as much time as my dog Mavena can manage to behave in a 24 hour cycle. 20 seconds out of 86,400s in a day. 0.02% of the day. The ratio is harsh.

And then there’s the fact the videos are cut and edited with the sound turned off and voiceover narration or audio overlay placed instead. This is film-making. This is selective story-telling. This is making the facts fit into the narrative. Forced narrative, I should add. The dog has no idea that a lot of people think he is a certain way. Because I – and not him – had always been the one that controlled the entire chronicle.

I would never presume to be better than people. But I do pride myself on being a responsible pet owner. I researched the breed. And why breed dog, you ask? I will answer that in a little tangent. 

When I joined service in government, people’s first, and loudest, most constant opinion was: “You need to start dressing up better; you’re an officer; people expect it of you”. That is a story for another day. And then in service, for a long time, I drove my dad’s old Maruti 800. People’s opinion then? “You need to get a better ride. You’re an officer. People expect it of you.” 

My fashion is on me; it will evolve and I have always liked how I dress. The car is an inanimate object and belongs to my dad; I have no strong feelings about it. 

But I knew that if I were to get a dog, and dogs being dogs and NOT CATS, I did not want to waste my good mood listening to people ask “why didn’t you get a breed dog?” 

I say “not cats” in caps because with cats, it’s fine. When people asked me why not Persian? I had my answers ready. With Momo, “Oh I stole her from a little girl, it’s fine” and that usually shut people up because in Mizo mores, you can “steal” a cat. With Nix, “Oh the previous owner already had 21 cats so she gave her to my sister and the calico just decided to buddy up with me instead”. Cats are fine. 

Dogs, on the other hand, very needy. Very needing of discipline. 

You can say don’t let people’s unnecessary comments get to you all day long. But if you can, it’s better to eliminate that comment altogether to preserve the few rare good days. People suck. Prepare for war; not battle. You know.

I've heard so many stories of people who buy expensive dogs and then abandon them or eat them because they're too difficult to handle. It got too big. It shed too much. It chews up shoes and wires and overall too destructive. It got stomach and skin issues. It won’t stop barking.

My dog is the same. Every day he sheds enough to make a new dog, it seems like. He is unruly, gets zoomies at really inopportune moments, needy, cries a lot, destroys exactly one part of a pair of shoes and then moves on to another. He howls a lot and his volume control is like if Donald Trump were a dog; you never knew what sound is going to come out – a whisper or megaphone. He is not to be trusted off leash at any point outside the house EVER. He needs a steady diet, medicine and supplements, aside from the regular shots from the Vet. And Dr Mahminga of Waggin’ Tails can attest to how many times he has drained extremely foul-smelling pus from his behind.

Ultimately he is cute because (and sorry for tooting my own horn) I tell a good story and I edit reasonably well for 20s. I am over the moon to have entertained you. I have no plans of stopping because sometimes he is very cute.

I do not regret bringing the beagle home but I also don’t want to encourage people to get beagles, either. I researched endlessly before I got him. In between all the IGOT Karmayogi lessons, the many online researches for DC, elections and land revenue, chats with family and friends, the endless certificates I issued digitally, I was researching beagles on a split screen. I knew what to expect.

The dog himself is not all that, man! He is a goofy idiot but I do love him because I wanted him, I brought him home with me, and the fact that he is this goofy is one of the reasons I am so fond of him. Alone, or with fellow pet lovers, he is not an issue. But not every insaan is a dog lover. 

He even seems like he understands commands sometimes but that is more incidental than real. More imagined than ideal. He knows to sit, to shake hands, to fetch, and he knows the word for “don’t” in Mizo but whether he obeys me or not is always a 50-50. What’s more, this is it. Even if he lives out his life cycle, it's 17y, and he's never going to be more than this right now, as in this is as much as can be expected from him. Ever.

I am fine with that. 

I had made my peace with the fact that I was going to bring home with me a creature that could grow up to be a menace to society, with the online beagle community describing them as single-minded, food-obsessed escape artists with selective hearing and equipped with the nose of a shark. But I wanted a loud dog that can chase away potential thieves by giving them second thoughts because, yk, dog. 

Even then, he was a challenge.

Which is how a lone cat like myself came to require a domestic help because while I can take care of myself, I cannot take care of myself while attending a beagle. My dog has no clue he is a financial liability because he eats fancy, piles up vet bills, and requires a domestic help. Not only does he not know the expenses he rakes up, he cries every time I leave the house without him. Not one clue I have to do that so he can live the life of luxury he has grown accustomed to. 

All this when literally all I expected him to do was bark at strangers and he does not even do that. He will bark at a leaf that's blowing in a direction he doesn't like, but he will lie on his back and begs for belly rubs from strangers, even people I want to be angry at. Recall is an exercise in futility. Weirdly he doesn’t hump people very much so I am spared that mortification, but he does want pets and games from everyone. Menace. To society.

Suffice to say he does not even reach the low bar I set for him. He's a male dog. 

I do love the idiot. But I remain wary of telling people how and where I got him from. I never encourage people to get beagles. It’s a 20y commitment. In the meantime, I just make videos.

Joshua

Did you know that Joshua and Jesus are the same names? Yeshua, both of them. But somehow one is Jesus and the other is Joshua.

I feel like if they’d been consistent with translations, and kept both names the same, the story of Moses stopping at the borders of Canaan, the promised land, would have been so much clearer. I mean I know the one about how God was being petty and because Moses said "We give you water" and not "God gives you water" is why God was all like ya no you can't go in the promised land. Lesson in obedience yada yada.

I mean, of course, no one said "petty" but it is implied, right? Like you have to be careful with your words types because the Lord takes notes. 

The names though. Moses was leading the Israelites. He was the great Law Giver, the Hebrew Manu, so to speak. But ultimately, the one who led the Israelites through to the promised land was Joshua.

In a re-enactment of this tag-team, Mosaic Law will take you as far as possible but then it will be Jesus/The Second Joshua/New Testament Joshua that will take you into heaven. 

So it was basically Moses and Joshua physically portraying a prophecy rather than making a verbal prophecy, which will be fulfilled with Christ.

P.S.: There is a really nice The Office style mockumentary on YouTube called The Promised Land series. Do check it out. It’s grand fun. In Bible comics and/or Bible films, they add tints to the scene, give it atmosphere, make it ultra dramatic and all that so it never registered how extremely odd it is that the only thing Moses was doing while they were fighting the Amalekites was raise his staff. Go out on a random day with your walking stick, stand somewhere on a busy street, and just raise your staff. You’ll see how very, very odd that command was. The ultimate message being, of course, implicitly trust God and God will do right by you. But how it plays out? Very random, very weird.

Black

I don’t really listen to heavy metal. I know very little of it. It overwhelms my senses and I tune out more than tune in. But I do know heavy metal people tend to be elitist in terms of music manifestation – technique, lyrics, performance, arrangement… A song by Don Williams on a six-string feels too simple for them. 

But to each their own. 

I know for myself that if my heart were to break over a song, chances are exponentially higher that it would be over a country song on a hollow guitar than it would be over a Superman-strong rhythm blasted out of a thorny electric guitar, a bass guitar, a fancy keyboard, and a set of loud drums.

I do listen to a few rock songs. Not usually of my own volition but lowkey forced on me by older cousins, older boyfriends and good old millennial culture of trying to fit in. A good lesson that good music is good music. I did grow to love a lot of them. Queen, for example. Or Eagles. Even pop rock like Bon Jovi.

On a tangent, I learned to give a lot of genres and languages a chance. This is how I love songs today of languages I do not speak. 

Good music is good music.

Continuing on, my younger siblings listened to punk and I shared music system with them growing up so I learned to love some punk and emo songs as well. Not regrettable. There are some very good ones out there.

I list out these genres because of black, the colour. It is a unifying factor between them. Different genres although not entirely strangers to each other, I suppose. Perhaps you can lay them out in a spectrum. Whatever that spectrum is, black goes hard with them. It is their visual identifier.

There is something about black, the colour. So many layers to it. Mystery, elegance, rebellion, minimal and yet pregnant with meaning, darkness, depth. No wonder the at-times politically charged genre like punk and heavy metal should lean into it so much. Tormented souls – the romantic tragics, the political despondents, the angry rebels – all immerse themselves in the colour.

Black is very accepting. Formalities would even demand it of people at times. But tear up the elegance and you have a sub-culture, the colour of vampires, of demons, and all the creatures of the dark

Black is promising. It is the colour of the life-giving alluvial soil and the night sky that promises you the stars and the moon, even of the nothingness that is peace and calm. 

Music genres that associate themselves with black the colour tend to go hard on their lyrics. I think sometimes that this is also one of the reasons of the elitism. The arrangements and the technicalities aside, these songs tend to reflect poetry at the level of the tortured artist. The sorrow and pain is real, the anger palpable. 

Little wonder such depth would scorn at the sweet little almost-jingle-esque formulaic pop songs characterised by bubble gum pink and/or bright primary colours if not outright neon altogether. Or find the sepia tones and blue jeans of folk and country simple. Or consider the satin and velvet vibes of blues, jazz, orchestras and operas too conforming. Confining, maybe. 

Black is freeing. A blank canvas. A fertile ground.

Plus, everybody looks good in black. You can’t go wrong with it. I mean an Eva Longoria would look better in red than black but you can’t say that of many people at all. That’s really neither here nor there, my apologies. I digress.

Not sure how to end. Maybe here.

Luxury Bags

In college, an IRS boy once looked at me across the table and remarked: “I think you are the kind of girl who prefers momos to designer bags.”

In his defence, I was hungry and devouring chicken momos, the dumplings practically flying in my mouth, washed down by cold stinging soda water. It was heaven but I was probably not a pretty sight. Also Delhi momos have a very definite smell that people who aren’t used to it find off-putting. All in all, I don’t suppose the whole sight was very attractive.

In my defence, however, and I reiterate again, I was hungry. And you can’t eat designer bags. And at the time, I had a man-sized appetite coupled with golden metabolism so I was good.

That being said, I appreciate pretty things. And I might not have the necessary interest or the intellectual enlightenment to recognize an expensive bag when I see it. But I do recognize pretty things for what they are. Thing of beauty, joy forever, yada yada.

My office bag is a brown leather Hidesign bag and I will have to replace it soon because it’s getting old and a little worn. But I have not got around to it. And I suspect I will procrastinate for a good long while. I like what I like and I find it hard to replace anything semi-permanent in my life. Even something as functional fashion as an office bag. The bag contains what it contains. I have the memory of Dory and the day I alternate bags is the day I forget one thing or the other. So I have to have something like brown leather that can be forgiven with most attires. It is what it is. I do not look forward to the day I will need to change it.

I have never had an eye for ladies bags. But sometimes social media and celebrity culture expose you to fancy things you are voyeur to, if not partaker. And so have I, too, fallen for the scam art of designer bags that cost small fortunes that I find slightly revolting in their opulence. Eagerly consuming the culture of excessive abundance, that be me!

Beautiful things do deserve their place on the mantle. And rich things serve a purpose beyond their beauty. Think the soap-esque giant emerald locket of Nita Ambani, I mean, come on. They announce you before you speak. Like the boy whose reputation preceded him. Was it Ed Sheeran who said he had a “reputation that don’t precede me”? What does that line mean?

I digress.

Luxury bags. I went down a rabbit hole the other day. I can’t believe the prices some of those can command! Man, talk about poverty in a third world country! Some bags are prettier than others, some are definitely more upscale than others, some boast of craftsmanship and product material. I appreciate it. Also all the more so because I cannot imagine the kind of a life where I work with bags all my life, identifying design, procuring material, arranging accompanying clothes, organise designated events. It sounds a little ostentatious to me.

Even the concept of looking at someone and noticing their bag for its rarity, or price tag, is weird to me. I don’t even remember how much I paid for my bag. 

I do suppose it’s at the level of people asking how much I paid for my car, which I do value, and which I do know, and when I see other people in their Jimnys, I do randomly find myself guessing how much they paid for their car, and the little accompanying accessories, and I check the plate and see the number… I do make little guesses. Neither here nor there. What does that say about anything anyway? But I do. So I guess I understand the brand recognition and obsession.

I suppose the IRS boy was not so far off. I would love to own a designer bag for the art of it all, for the bragging rights of it all, for the luxury of it all. But he had me pegged; it’s still not very high on my priority list at all, even this side of thirty.

Different worlds!

The Fig Tree and the Anger of a Good Man

Heavy rain days make me think of God. Maybe because they remind me of mortality. In Mizoram, with thunder and lightning, and in Durtlang the whooshing of wind, it becomes reflex to say little prayers. And relax.

This Tuesday, my mind travels to Jesus cursing a lone fruitless fig tree. Why, I’ve always wondered. I suppose if you’re hangry and you have the power to instantly wither off a tree full of leaves, you would, too. But you’d think God would be different. 

Something nagged me about the timeline and fortunately somebody in office had a Bible so I didn’t have to quite freak out with unresolved theories in my head and I could just quickly check it out. And there it was. 

Two major things happened, as per this discussion.

One, Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly but has little altercation with the temple leaders and one massive freak out at the temple. 

Two, Jesus curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit while he was hungry, and it withers. 

A long time ago, someone said in a sermon that in the Bible, when things repeat, it is to show confirmation. Which is how you have four Gospels that tell, by and large, the same account with only minor differences here and there, or The Ten Commandments repeated in Exodus and then in Deuteronomy, or how Kings and Chronicles are basically the same books, or parables of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep and Lost Son… they serve to emphasize a message.

For this muse, I’ve always taken the fig tree in isolation. I thought maybe it just stood out and people noticed. Or maybe it showed the humane side of Jesus, the man that could and did get angry. Something. 

However, if you take it into context with what happened at the Temple and with the religious leaders there, things start to fall into place. What was Jesus’ altercation with the temple leaders about? That the children recognized him for who he was as the Messiah but the leaders, who should recognise him, more so than anyone else, them being familiar with the Scriptures, could not. Why did Jesus freak out at the Temple? He did not care that the Temple grounds were being used for exploiting the poor worshippers. So in essence, his issue with the Temple and the leaders? They had the Right Image of worship and righteousness but were corrupt within and bore no fruit that the ones who needed it could consume.

This then was Jesus’ issue with the fig tree. The fig tree looked like it bore fruit, what with its multitude of leaves. But when a hungry Jesus approached it for food, he found it had none.

Repetition. And live demo.

Interestingly, Jesus has been saying this earlier as well, when he told his followers that they will know people by the fruits they bear. Point to note: not the clothes they wear, because some will be ravenous wolves that approach you in sheep’s clothing. Be careful, he had already warned.

So you know, more repetition.

I think the pitfall is the word “good”. Jesus once asked a young guy why he called him good because only God is good. I think he meant it like if you call me good, then you recognize me as God. I think in that instance it was less about humility, than it was about the young man not recognizing him as God, and Jesus just telling him he sees through him and into his soul. Or beliefs.

We call people good all the time and sometimes I think it is a plea for reciprocation. Please see me as good too, you know. It is easy to fall into this pit because once you think you are good, then it is easy to play you. I could play you. Imagine how much more so the Devil. All that we’d need to do is tell you you’re good, and therefore this or that. The real harm is when you think you’re so good that (a) other people are bad, and that (b) you could save them. Who is good?

Even Doctor Who debated this. Am I good, he kept asking himself. Clara and Twelve went into philosophy debating goodness. This was after Eleven went on a destruction spree banking on his goodness and all the people who owed him for his goodness, prompting River Song to recite a haunting poem of what happens when a good man goes to war. Am I a good man? he childishly asked of Clara. Clara thought about it and would eventually tell him she didn’t know, but that he tried to be, and maybe that was the whole point. Glum. The poem is really nice, though.

Jesus, though. He was a good man. Because He was God. And only God is good. And God in his judgement decided to be angry because Appearance was all that some people – and trees – had to offer him. 

The lesson is harsh. How can anyone be good, when only God is good? Maybe if we try, it will be enough. More precisely, if we don’t pretend to be good while rotting inside, we can begin to walk on the road to goodness. Maybe. Or maybe only God is good and we can take refuge in that. But still stop pretending to be good. They say the Devil tempts you; maybe that’s true. I suppose if I were the Devil, I wouldn’t tempt a religious man with drugs and alcohol or even sexy sex, but perhaps I’d tempt them with a boastful heart, pride, ego, the certainty of knowing oneself to be “good”.

Almost 1000 words. I guess my bottom line is: fear the anger of the good man. Or risk instant withering.

Near Death

1. If someone asks if you want to go fishing in the dead of the night and you said yes, and suddenly it’s 11PM and you’re “fishing” in places you’re not allowed to fish which means you have no light, and it’s nine grown people on a small wooden boat, calculate your best chances of surviving the night namely, where both sides of the banks of the river are, pray. Text your sister where you are, then put your phone in your jacket, zip up your pocket (wear a jacket that has zippers on its pocket), and pray.

2. If your sense of responsibility finds you wading through a mudslide in a drizzle with promise of more thunder and lightning, when everyone else is at home, cozying up with family, and chatting with friends (and arguing with foes) online, and discussing climate and government roles and duties, pray. Text your sister where you are because that shit is time stamped, then wear sensible footwear, light jacket that doesn’t get too heavy in the rain (because even wool is just a burden if it gets wet, because then it’s no use, it gets really heavy and very very cold), pants with pockets where you have an SAK, a ORS powder pack, a small bottle of water, a hanky, and of course one waterproof pocket with zippers where your phone can stay dry, and pray.

3. If your call of duty demands you’re in the middle of a rainstorm, neck deep in the middle of nowhere, bang in the midst of a16-wheeled trucks traffic jam, transporting god-knows-what, and it gets dark, and you have no light but the light in your Samsung mobile, your vehicle and driver about 27 trucks away, slightly drunk and irate truck drivers calling you to ‘babe, calm down’, and they’re not listening to your logic, pray. Text your sister where you are, in case you die, or worse, then put your phone inside your jacket pocket, zip it up (ensure your waterproof jacket has zippered pockets), bad-mouth the truckers and order them – and the policemen – to listen up, and pray.  

4. If your journey takes you to the top of a mountain which you’ve reached on the back of a pick-up truck, and your driver is talented but you’re not sure if he is wholly in his senses, because you know for damn sure your companions aren’t anymore this side of 5PM, and the nearest village is way nearly 90 degrees downhill, and the cute boy you know has told you last night that he had scaled that peak on foot and not on a pick-up, and you’re wondering if that was smarter than being on a mechanical cart, driven by someone you never met once in your life until 10AM that day, and you’re wondering if you just make very random bad choices in your life, take a deep swipe of your favourite beverage, text your sister (zippered pocket or not, makes no difference), then pray. 

5. Bottom line is tell your sister, and then pray. She knows enough to delete your phone history and what you have inside your locked trunk in your locked closet. That bitch knows what to do. You’ve never talked about it, but she knows. Then you make nice with Jesus and surrender.

C’est la vie. Such is life. And it never stops.

The Pope

I had a good night's rest so I was thinking of adult-like important things this morning. Namely how the Catholic Church is so good at politics.

I’d say they read the winds and see the signs coming. 

When a pope dies and they choose the next one, they make it into such a big spectacle, no? Like it was divinely ordained, the whole black smoke, white smoke thing. I mean it worked in the days pre-science & tech, but they continue so as to keep up tradition and also make it into this grand symbolic shit. And I think it works. 

But also I was thinking last time they chose a pope, they must have known they’d probably need an American pope. Seeing how the US is behaving; more importantly, how it was behaving by the time 2025 rolled around.

When my screen showed me Trump being Trumpy about Pope Leo, I was thinking: damn the Cats have survived 2000 years, seen regimes and monarchs and governments fall and yet they persevere and now I know why. They know their politics, man! 

Religion and god, sure, but also yk, POLITICS! We can talk of God-ordained priesthood all day long, and I appreciate how much the symbolism stands, and also I can even acknowledge divine intervention in giving wisdom to the Conclave that ultimately selects (elects?) the Bishop of Rome. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that however a Bishop becomes a Pope, other men are involved; it’s like arguing Bible is not written by God because it was literally technically written by men. Sometimes, inspiration is god-breathed.

It got me thinking that this is why when you put people who deserve their spots in governance and not based on their pedigree, you get good collective wisdom!! On a tangent, this is of course what democracy wants, but that falls flat on its face because people are dumb.

Meanwhile, the Cats have smart people in governance, who've spent their lives in the game – and only the game – not worrying about salary and family, their logic and calculations tempered by religion... this is why The Vatican survives. And thrives quietly.

Regardless of their politics and religious takes, these men spend their whole lives primarily thinking about how to make the Catholic religion go on. They have their prayers and meditation to calm them down, they regularly make confessions so they are less burdened with guilt and shit – I mean this religion comes with its own built-in therapist sessions, how can it fail? – and they're unbothered with fashion trends and luxurious living and shit and they have their hands in every single space on human-occupied earth so their intel, when they want, is impressive.

All due respects to Catholics and the church, of course. I am just exercising a little political sociology here!