The Legend of Hanging Dog

and the history of anecdotes ( कहानी किस्से की )

I am not sure if you are familiar with the Hindi word “Kissa“. Ideally it just means an anecdote, but these anecdotes have a very deeper relationship with the culture of India. The culture of cities might have evolved but I would like to believe that in the smaller towns and villages of India this ( किस्से की प्रथा) tradition of people to just gather together on the ( नुक्कड़) corner of the street and share anecdotes with each other still exists. Think of a time before the internet, before television where the source of entertainment was limited to some songs on radio or these weird anecdotes shared by people time and again. Obviously the content was not being generated at the speed with which we do it today therefore, a popular anecdote might actually just get repeated time and again. That’s how eventually some incidents or people exhibiting certain traits end up becoming legends. Not in the sense that you and I would revere a Hollywood master but their stories would have reached far and wide among the people of the nearby villages. Most might have never seen the person or the place but they would know all about the related incident.

Now when it comes to an anecdote, it might not have a far and wide appeal but it remains very dear to the group which has the context of it. Stories have a way about them, it might be a very mundane everyday incident with absolutely no element of surprise, all that matters is the way the writer is feeling about it and if they are able to convey it in words, even for the reader that incident becomes special.

I also have “kissa” which I would like to share with you today. We might never get to meet at the corner of the street ever but let’s consider this post as our beloved “nukkad” where we exchange our stories.

I used to live in a small town as a kid. Both my parents were teachers and they landed in this town because of their government jobs. Being teachers themselves they were very determined to get their ward the best possible education. There were schools in the town which were fine for primary education but for middle school they decided to put us in a school in the nearest city. So they talked to a few of their friends and the parents of four of us kids agreed to send their ward to the bigger city school.

A driver was hired and every week one family would offer their car, which will be used to pick and drop the kids to the school. School was some 40 KM away and petrol was quite expensive in those days. So to optimize on expense the cars were converted to LPG cylinders, which was a dangerous move I believe. Then it was just one of many.

Every morning the driver uncle would walk to the house whose car was designated for the week. Then they would collect kids from all four houses and reach our school after an hour long journey. The mornings were usually uneventful as we kids were mostly sleepy at the time or just wanted to reach the school on time so that we don’t get scolding for being late. The journey back was quite chill though and that’s when we made most of our rituals.

Once the school was over our adventures used to begin. We all had stories from school to share or the driver uncle used to share the story of how his day had been like. Our first stop used to be a bakery called “ Volga” stop close to the school from where we used to buy Paties or on other days it used to be a famous sweet shop to buy Samosas and Kachoris. Everyday parents of one or the kid would have given us some chores to be done in the city. That used to lead us to different stops on our way. Our other regular stop was this stationary shop called Standard Book Depot. When half of us used to cross the road and go to the other side to buy our school supplies, the other used to go to this confectionery shop to buy sweets and chocolates on the way. On our purchases the driver uncle would often comment on how if we could have spent the same money on fruits instead of sweets and that would have been way more healthier. We used to get some pocket money every month but given our escapades I had started stealing money from my parents wallet for supplements. In case you are wondering I did eventually get caught and faced a well deserved trashing but that’s for another time.

We used to follow the same route everyday and there were few constant landmarks that were part of our conversations. My favourite was this huge wall of an old palace facing the main market, which was then used to advertise posters of the latest movies. I used to love to keep a check on which movie was upcoming or was running in cinemas now.

Most of our stops were in the city. After the city there used to be mostly two stops, one big temple which used to be on the way. This was a regular for us, not because we were religious but because we used to get “ batasha” sugar drop” as “ prasad” God’s grace to eat. The other stop was driver uncle’s village, it used to be on the way so at times he used to stop there to run his errands. Not many people in his village had cars then. So whenever our car used to stop there, all the kids of the village used to encircle us and peek inside from the windows. We were objects of amusement for them.

On one of these travels back home once two of us saw a dog hanging from the electric wire in one field. At first they thought it was dead but then suddenly it started moving. When they told the rest of us, at first we refused to believe them. We asked the driver uncle to turn the car but he refused. The next day, we were very curious to see the hanging dog. Lo and behold there was something hanging from the electric wire for sure. It looked like a dog but we were not really sure. Since that day onwards the hanging dog became a regular landmark of curiosity for us. We would discuss and debate incessantly on the feasibility of it being a dog and the dog being dead or alive.

After a few days, post a lot of cajoling and coaxing, we succeeded in making the driver uncle stop the car in the middle of nowhere just so that we could get down and go closer to that hanging day and settle our hey for once and all. All four of us walked inside the field and when we came back we were laughing our asses off. You would have guessed it by now, it was just a piece of cloth which kept us engaged in deep discussion on the origin of the hanging dog.

From that day onwards we could never see that cloth as the dog again. One mystery solved but there were quite a few escapades we had during those travels of ours.

Dear reader, thank you for reading it this far. It might be a very generic incident for you. You will forget all about it once you close this tab. Though for me it is one of my core memories. A “kissa” from my childhood. It is a thread with which I still keep those three friends of mine alive in my memories — we might not have even spoken to each other in years. This anecdote makes me realise that I still have the same warmth for them and I would like to meet them someday and talk about the good old days.

Nowadays when we meet someone we either don’t open up and talk just about the weather, or vomit out all the latest pop culture adventures we had to sound cool and adventurous. Among the weight of latest news, best AI hack, most profitable side hustle, the sweet and simple “ kissa” is losing its sheen. It’s been asked to update itself so that it doesn’t lose out on the rat race.

Let’s try and keep our share of kisse alive. If you have a favourite childhood memory, do share it in comments, I would love to hear it.