Saleh bin Fawzan al-Fawzan, a lead cleric in the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, was recently aghast to hear that Arabs are taking selfies together with cats. He declared that it was ‘prohibited’ to take such pictures: “not with cats, not with dogs, not with wolves, not with anything.”
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Let us hope that the noble sheikh doesn’t start a Facebook page, for he would be appalled by the profusion of people hugging and caressing dogs and cats, though perhaps not wolves. I recall seeing photographs of people in proximity of elephants and tigers, and of Britney Spears cavorting publicly with an oversized python.

I grew up in India and respectfully observed a Sanskrit couplet that advises you to stay ten yards from horses, a hundred yards from horned creatures and a thousand yards from lions and tigers. I have to confess that I could not observe the last part of couplet which tells you to totally vacate the area where there is ‘an ill-principled person.’ Having had the kind of bosses I had, I would have to quit all the jobs I ever had.
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No great animal lover, I have always maintained a safe distance from dogs and cats, let alone snakes of any kind. Now suddenly I find myself in a curious situation. My daughter, Lina, has left on a European cruise, leaving her pet cat, Sancho, with me.

Sancho is a furry little creature who has so far displayed no great mistrust of me. Admittedly, the first day he disappeared from sight, taking refuge in some splendidly cozy, imperceptible corner of my cluttered townhouse, but by dinner time he had revised his dubious view and came tiptoeing to savor his meal. I am no great cook, but Lina, fully aware of her dad’s culinary skill, has left behind a large cache of cans for Sancho. As the dispenser of their content, I seem to have gained some acceptance in Sancho’s eyes.
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That alone can explain his conduct the second day onward. First, he came meowing at my closed bedroom door at daybreak. I usually work and write well past midnight, and seldom see dawn. Clearly that had to change with my new guest. Sancho can be quite insistent. It was not enough for him that I opened my eyes; I had to get up and open the French window to the large deck, admittedly with a cup of coffee in my hand, so that Sancho could refresh himself in the morning air.

The deck opens up to a wide-open space, studded by trees and shrubs, and you get the feeling you are sitting in a garden. That possibly pleases Sancho, for the moment I take a seat there he leaps on to another chair and stretches himself in an evident gesture of pleasure. I feel guilty to leave him behind and return to my desk. I have started carrying my laptop to the deck and working there until the battery runs out.
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By now, Sancho follows me everywhere in a perplexing show of loyalty. Given half a chance he would even follow me into the shower.  When I sit and write at the desk, he places his front paw on the chair and lets me know that he is keeping me company. When I sit at the dining table and eat, he sits on the carpet and wags his tail to remind me that he is still keeping me company, despite my gaucherie in not sharing my meal with him. I might have imagined that, compared to a dog, a cat would be an unsuitably small companion. But I have realized that its smallness gives it a special edge: it can not only walk next to me on a narrow stairway, it can virtually weave in and out of my legs.

The best part of a feline companion is its unobtrusiveness. Sancho is content to look after himself when I am busy or I am out; it is just as content to saunter close to me when I am ready to pay attention to him. What amazes me is the peaceful way it sits and meditates, hour after hour, while I attend to my chores, without the slightest sense of impatience and boredom. Sancho may enjoy my company, but he is happy to be on his own. In his peculiar cat-like way, he seems possessed of the earthy wit with which Miguel de Cervantes equipped Don Quixote’s sidekick. I wish I could imbibe his curious sense of contentment.
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I will miss Sancho when Lina returns to retrieve him.

When I went to work for a European company in its industrial estate, Enrico Carracci became my neighbor. I met him a couple of times in the officers’ club. I played tennis, he didn’t; he played bridge, I rarely did. Our work spheres were different too. He was a maintenance engineer, forever doing hands-on work with shop engineers in different departments. I did administrative work in the headquarters, often confined to a desk. Our paths barely crossed.

Then I decided to walk to work, since the plant took only twelve minutes to reach and I felt a daily constitutional would be good for me. As I started for office the third day, a car stopped next to me, and a warm invitation rang out, “Hop in!” It was Enrico. It was too friendly a gesture to balk. I abandoned my ambition of a healthy stroll and boarded.
“Call me Rico, everybody does,” he said as he shook my hand.

That was the beginning of our friendship.

Rico’s father, Giovanni, was born in Tuscany, in the city of Carrara sixty miles northwest of Florence, famous for its wealth of blue-grey marble. The city name, as well as the name of the river alongside, Carrione, accounted for the family name, Carracci. Rico studied engineering trades and joined a British shipping company, which brought him to a major colonial port in Britain’s overseas trade, Kolkata. He married a local Eurasian girl and settled down in India.
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As I walked to and from work, quite a few times Rico -- who invariably drove to work, for he sometimes needed the car for his chores – would stop and pick me up. I liked walking, but I also liked his company and enjoyed our brief chats. I noticed that he never talked about work; nor did he ever talk about the club, his colleagues or even his family.

He seemed to have a keen awareness of the world around us. He always noted and spoke about things that had eluded my attention: a broken tree, a slinking fox in the dark, some limping puppy or a new scent in the air. What amazed me was that he spoke of these things not as so many facts to be observed but as living realities that made a great difference to our life.

I was a city person who had seldom visited or had any interest in the countryside. The only tree I could identify was a banana tree that had bananas on it. The only animal I knew was a pony my uncle had once let me ride. The only thing I knew about birds was that they flew. Rico’s interest and his unfailing perceptions made me sit up and take notice.
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Two months later he really amazed me. We were returning from the plant and talking as usual, when he shushed me into silence and stopped the car on the side of the road. He cut the engine and then extended his arm through the open window of his convertible. I was befuddled, for I saw no reason for his conduct. Rico made a sign that I should remain quiet. We continued to sit still for several minutes, when a small blue cardinal came and landed on Rico’s outstretched arm. The bird sat quietly for several minutes, gazing at Rico, then chirped. With a pause it chirped again. Another pause, another longer chirp. Finally, Rico whistled back, very softly and very briefly. The cardinal sat another several minutes on his arm, looking at him, and then flew away with a flourish.

The incident left a strong impression on me. That is the only explanation for the fact that I asked Rico for help when my friend Raj encountered a problem with his pet. Very eager for a terrier as a pet, Raj had unwisely entrusted a dealer to find the right dog for him, and it proved a very wrong one on arrival. It bit the person who brought him and promptly bit Raj on arrival. It seemed unaccountably ferocious and Raj sought my help. In turn I sought Rico’s advice. Rico came over to see the dog.

​From inside the cage the dog made menacing gestures at Raj and me, but Rico immediately wanted to open the cage door. I was certain that he would be bitten too, but the moment Rico stood at the door of the cage the wolf-like dog suddenly had the aspect of a lamb. As Rico opened the door to the cage, the dog walked slowly up to him and licked his lowered hand. As Rico spread his arms, the dog hopped up to them and stayed calmly with Rico for the next half hour.  I don’t know what happened after that, but the memory of the dramatically changed behavior of the dog on its encounter with Rico will stay with me for a long time.

I am told that, when Rico retired from service, he decided neither to return to Carrara nor to live in the lovely apartment he had in Kolkata. He built a small cottage in a village in eastern India and lived the life of a small farmer. It did not surprise me to hear that there was a bird sanctuary near his cottage.

​I can’t forget that waiter.
 
I had just arrived in the United Arab Emirates for several months’ work and went for a long walk along the seaside in the capital city of Abu Dhabi. Hungry, I stopped for a meal at a large boat that had been converted into a charming seafood restaurant.

​Hardly had I taken a seat when an elderly waiter came to the table with a check on his tray. Seeing me, he asked if I was with the Indian gentleman who had been sitting there earlier. I explained that, though I was from India, I did not know the previous Indian diner. Visibly perturbed, the waiter stated the obvious: that the man had left an unpaid bill. I suggested that he leave the bill on the table, explaining that the client might have gone to the restroom or left absent-mindedly and could come back.
 
I then placed my order and, when it came, was pleased to find the food delicious. By the time I finished my meal, however, the earlier client hadn’t come back and the bill remained unpaid. When the waiter came with my tab, I paid it, tipped, and added another sixty dollars to cover the earlier customer’s meal. The waiter remonstrated, “But, sir, you didn’t even know him!”
 
“That is true,” I gently responded, “but I wouldn’t like you to think poorly of Indians.”

​The waiter was very appreciative. I told him that I was staying at the nearest hotel and expected to visit the restaurant again to benefit from his excellent service.

​The next day, my first day at work, I stayed late at the office, and when I returned to my hotel I was surprised to receive an envelope from the receptionist at the front desk. Inside were sixty dollars and a note in Arabic that I could not decipher. The receptionist translated the message for me:
 
“Thank you for your kindness. The Indian gentleman came back today and paid his check. I wouldn’t like you to think poorly of Arabs.”

Kirby was put to sleep three years ago, but it seems like yesterday. I am no great animal lover and Kirby wasn’t even my dog. It seems ridiculously maudlin to write the obituary of a pet that was not mine, but I have to recognize a void that is both real and significant.
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Kirby belonged to my neighbor. Since we are friends, I would often have tea at his home, and the dog became familiar with me. Kirby was a fifty-pound brown-and-white Siberian husky, very fetching and surprisingly even-tempered even with a relative stranger like me. That tempted me to offer, on an occasion, to take Kirby out for a walk when my neighbor, because of an emergency, could not.

​I intended to take Kirby for a short walk, but she seemed to like it so much that we went round the entire lake near my home. She sniffed every bush on the way and anointed several trees. When the weather is congenial and a cooling breeze is there to help, I like to intersperse my walk with a jog.  This seemed to please Kirby all the more. She outran me easily and readily overlooked the distraction of the many squirrels that scurried temptingly near our trail.

I soon started declining first-hour meeting with specious excuses, and since the neighbor had by now entrusted me with the combination to their home, in the rare instance I could not escape an early meeting, I would take out Kirby for a walk at an unearthly hour. Kirby would be often thirsty at the end of our run, and I gradually got in the habit of pouring her some fresh water at the end of our tryst. Eventually I started supplementing the water with the dry food breakfast she liked.

Soon we were walking in the evening as much as in the morning. The evening walk was less brisk and more leisurely, often interrupted by short conversations with friends and neighbors out for a constitutional. The amazing thing was that Kirby seemed to know the difference and never seemed to rush me or press me for a run. She was content to enjoy the roadside scents, the broken twigs, the fountain in the lake, the sunset from the Van Gogh bridge. Her placidity would be disturbed only on the rare occasion we sighted a fox in the bushes or a pair of deer in the woods.
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It impressed me that Kirby seldom evinced discomfort in the presence of other dogs. Most dogs, even the disciplined ones, bark, sometimes uncontrollably, when other dogs appear on the scene. Kirby didn’t. It was notable because Kirby was a spirited creature. In her younger days, her owner told me, she would often run out, if the door was left open, and disappear for hours. On one occasion, she had disappeared during her master’s trip to another town and simply could not be found. Her master returned home, disconsolate, but Kirby turned up after six weeks: she had found her way, across more than a hundred miles, and reached home, hungry and filthy, but intact.

When it rained or snowed, I occasionally resented having to go out. But, once dressed and out of doors, I felt thankful for the freshness of the air and the spirited air of my companion. Kirby, though getting on in years, was never morose, never dispirited, eager to explore the new day, the next bush, the unfolding drama of an unknown trail.

That is what I most remember of Kirby: the endless yearning for the world outside, the craving to explore the unseen and the unknown, the eagerness to see even the familiar road to explore what is new or changed. Even as she grew older, her vision blurred and her hearing faded, her taste for life remained undiminished and her desire to experience the universe continued.
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Age and infirmity eventually took their toll, and Kirby had to be put to sleep. I still walk around the lake but without a companion. I stand on the bridge as before and watch the sun rise, and ponder what remains to explore.