A month and something into this climate of sensory deprivation, and I wouldn’t be the only one feeling a persistent sense of free fall. Those of us who can afford to are sheltering in place, quarantining and social distancing. And rapidly realising that illness can be brought about as much by feelings of isolation, loneliness, and abandonment as by viruses.
So what am I doing to stave off all of the above in these trying times? Two words: dog videos. Go ahead, judge me. Every half hour, I find myself looking at dogs walking, running, rolling over, slurping, cuddling... you get the drift. I also obsessively refresh the Instagram page of a Bengaluru-based organisation called ‘Let’s Live Together’ that rescues, fosters and facilitates the adoption of puppies. I dream about a basket of puppies at my doorstep or of my partner magically appearing one morning with a fluffy cheeseball of a dog. Yes, all of the above. And I ponder about what makes this form of consumption so very comforting.
Our world, even pre-virus, has been having some intimacy issues. Therapists per square feet have risen to address, one, our increasing incapacity for spontaneous feeling, and two, the need to radically change how we live in relation to our privilege and its lack thereof in those we disregard and mistreat. In such a world, where all rules are up for debate, perhaps dogs represent a simpler kind of love. Perhaps they are the only form of risk-free intimacy left in a universe powered by anxiety, triggers, trauma and suspicion? Perhaps they are the only apt recipients of human love, given that we seem to no longer have any left to spare for fellow humans? And perhaps puppies are stand-ins for babies, the commitment that millennials and then some are so very afraid to make?
Not just love
But instead of treating dogs as metaphors, as representations and as projects in the service of yet another narcissistic rendition of mankind, perhaps anthropology in the Anthropocene can provide a better roadmap. Maybe, like Donna Haraway writes in The Companion Species Manifesto , dogs are not about unconditional love, but about “seeking to inhabit an inter-subjective world that is about meeting the other in all the fleshly detail of a mortal relationship”; in other words, the messy business of learning how to love so many others so different from oneself. And learning it in the most material fashion possible — through everyday acts of feeding, walking, tending, cleaning, grooming and cleaning up vomit. All for a dog that is fated to be never quite anything but, how do I put this, a dog?
I see myself — too charitably perhaps — becoming a better inhabitant of the world with every new dog I pet. I marvel at the neighbourhood beauty that communicates wordlessly that it has no need for the water I carry or the biscuits I bring, but that it will gladly accept any and all head-scratches. I re-read my friend and columnist Gouri Dange’s glorious ode to her dog, ‘Yoyonama’, to relive memories of a dog that I understood not at all, but loved with so much wonder and abandon. Gouri’s adventures with Yoyo make me think that Haraway must have been writing about her when she said that “The permanent search for knowledge of the intimate other, and the inevitable comic and tragic mistakes in that quest, commands my respect...” And contrary to many people’s assumptions of dogs as upper-class luxuries, I remember homeless men and women hunkering down with their sole companions, their well-fed and well-loved dogs.
We are not alone
Dog-human relationships tell us that the question of animals versus people is a false binary. Loving dogs allows us ways to reconcile ourselves with and, indeed, learn to love the multiplicity of human-ness itself. For what better time than this to remember that not only are we not alone, but that our emotional and physical survival depends on fostering relationships with all manner of others. The question of dogs then is no less than a question of an ethics of learning how to live together. And, therefore, before we let out the people, I think we should let out the dogs.
Mathangi Krishnamurthy teaches anthropology for a living, and is otherwise invested in names, places, animals, and things.
