Eight years ago, my daughter-in-law decided to get a dog. My son and she both work overseas but she wanted an Indian dog. So on one of their visits, she went to a dog shelter and picked out a puppy which, in due course, was taken to their home in Europe. But the dog could not adjust to the foreign country and two and a half years ago it came back to India. My wife and I decided to keep it even though it is an anxious idiot with a highly exaggerated sense of territory. In some ways she is like my younger son who, as a toddler, would let out an anguished howl if his elder brother came within six feet of him.
All pretty straightforward, right? Well, yes and no. The dog in the house was fine but neither my wife nor I were keen to take her out morning and evening for her ablutions. The routine, we felt, would be like dropping our children, when they were young, to school and fetching them every day, no breaks, no relief; heat, rain and cold notwithstanding, it’s got to be done. So we decided to employ a dog walker, which is a very new profession in India because of the new rules regarding hygiene and, occasionally, some consideration for others. This ‘walker johnny’ relieved us of a great daily strain and we were hugely pleased with the arrangement.
But this is India, where an agreement is subject to varying interpretations. There is an elasticity to words that is often used to justify non-observance of an agreement. And, of course, no one can beat an Indian, except perhaps another South Asian, at making the same excuse a dozen times — illness, death, marriage, and the new word in the lexicon, emergency. We are all familiar with this flexibility.
Anyway, after the first couple of blissful weeks when he was regular and punctual, our man started reverting to type. He wouldn’t turn up and that too without warning. The poor dog would be in great discomfort holding back her urges. Eventually when it seemed cruel to make her wait anymore, my wife would take her out to the designated spot in our residential complex. At first this happened infrequently but gradually the bunking started happening more frequently. The original deal was that the dog walker would come 14 times a week but that has been reduced unilaterally by him to 8–9 times a week. That by itself wouldn’t matter so much because the payment is per visit and is deducted. What does matter, however, is his steadfast refusal to inform us in advance.
The price is paid by the dog in terms of excessive discomfort but the fellow doesn’t care. My wife has told him scores of times to inform us in advance but to no avail. He simply refuses. But because he has a virtual monopoly — he takes a dozen dogs for walks in small groups instead of singly as agreed — we have had no choice. We have had to accept that, well, he is a South Asian when it comes to business ethics.
The big unsolved riddle is why he keeps taking days off. One reason could be that it’s a boring job. Another could be that what we regard as excuses are real reasons. A third, to which I subscribe, is that he actually rotates his customers because he earns more by using the time not spent on our dog on doing something else that pays enough to compensate for our deductions.
Whenever I tell my friends about this behaviour they come out with their own stories about petty contractors, tailors, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, even the guys who take blood samples and so on. Clearly, it is a dog’s life for us all when it comes to casual workers.