As a child, I had an irrational fear of dogs. I was so scared that even if I saw a dog on the opposite side of a road, I’d freak out.
The only time I could stand them was when my grandfather narrated a story on dogs. He titled the story ‘Oscar, the dog of Sanda’.
It was a story about how the owner would go away for a while, but the dog kept going to the station from where he boarded the train. He had two endings for the story: a happy climax, and a melancholic one... depending on how I reacted that day. This one tale helped develop a huge bond between me and my grandfather.
Years later, when I was 25, I got a dog as a birthday present and I started to develop a love for them.
We called him Choco. He was a pug whom I went on to call my brother. He lived with us for six years. He’s still the wallpaper on my phone.
With him, I started watching many dog films. I distinctly remember watching Hachi: A Dog’s Tale on television.
Richard Gere in a still from Hachi: A Dog’s Tale
It was a film that wonderfully chronicled the love and devotion between a man and his dog. It was inspired by the true story of Hachikō, a dog who’d always wait for its professor owner at the Shibuya railway station at Tokyo. It ends with how there’s a statue in honour of the dog at the station. I watched this film at home alongside my mother with Choco sitting right next to me. In the end, I had tears in my eyes... just at the thought of losing my dog someday. A year later, we lost him and it was very emotional.
- Starring Richard Gere and Joan Allen, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale was the film adaptation of a real life story about a Japanese dog named Hachikō.
- Hachikō, a Japanese Akita breed, is remembered for his loyalty to the owner, professor Hidesaburō Ueno, for waiting over nine years after his master’s death at the Shibuya railway station in Tokyo, waiting for him to return. Hachikō passed away in March 1935.
- The makers of Hachi , however, shot the railway station sequences at Woonsocket Depot Square in Rhode Island, US. In May 2012, three years after the film released, a statue of Hachikō was placed at the depot.
- Three Akitas were used during the filming — Leyla, Chico and Forrest.
- In the book Animal Stars: Behind the Scenes with Your Favorite Animal Actors , Mark Harden, who trained the dogs for the film wrote that he ended up adopting Chico.
Recently, when I had an opportunity to visit Tokyo, my only item on the agenda was to visit the Shibuya station. With great difficulty, I managed to track it down. I bought a few flowers and laid it near the statue, which is now quite old and run down. I made a video call to my mother from there, and both of us cried our hearts out seeing that statue. It felt very dear to us thanks to the experience the movie gave us.
I can never watch that film completely ever again. I sometimes listen to the music, but it haunts me.
(As told to Srinivasa Ramanujam)
