Sunday, January 20, 2013

Canine's Mind

People who think for Forest,
I thought I should share the memory of a little incident with all of you today that would be of incredible help to you should you face disagreements with a friendly canine...I cannot declare that I can convince you on this...but trust me... its worth a try anyway...

I was more than busy that morning...a whole troop of our old friends...several Langurs ... had shown up in our village...crossing the deep river...with their indomitable passion to eat all that comes their way. Langurs are the second smartest species in this world...well almost in everything...but especially in solving extensive form Centipede games (people who know a little bit of game theory might immediately get what I am trying to say.). They individually optimize by eating and destroying every bit of food item they see in the first instance. It was not the eating part that hurt us more, it was the destroying part that drove us crazy.

We,  all the school going kids at that time, always dreamt of having a friend among the Langurs, if not for anything else, but just for occasional favors like a bunch of ripe mangos thrown at us ... or teaching a lesson to our annoying history teacher who was in the habit of boring us to death... and twist our ears if anyone started snoring truly innocently. 
One of our Friendly Langurs
But we were not unreasonable. We did not want to get the favors for nothing. We indeed were very willing to compromise in our attitude toward them ... assigned to us by our elders... to hit them with the hardest marbles from our sling-shots especially designed for the purpose.

But how would they get the idea?

However, competition and jealousy had brought them a set of more determined enemies...our village canines.Our village dogs considered Langurs a very big threat to their food supply...(I am very confused about this since I had never seen any of those friendly dogs climbing a tree to look for a fruit or nests.) And they were determined not to let the fair weather immigrants do any damage to their free haven. So, de facto,
dogs always extended their heartful support to us by joining our agression against the Langurs.

The troop of our village dogs obeyed a hierarchical structure. There was a big dog...who commanded respect from others (including less influential villagers and children) just for being big...and just because he could call at a louder tone... and just for running ahead of the village troop of dogs... for any reason.... Of course, there were smaller dogs in troop and their respective but variable female companions. However, everyone was under the leadership of the big dog.
Bhatta: The Big Dog

In that particular morning that I am talking about...for some reason beyond my comprehension...Langurs were displaying more agility than other times by paving their way swinging from branch to branch and not ever touching the ground. Having said that you can impress yourself by thinking what miserable feeling they would have brought to the mind of our village troop of dogs. With their inherent disability to climb the trees, and with their indomitable rage to purely end the world of Langurs ...the dogs were almost in the verge of losing their minds by chasing the tree swingers at a much lesser speed on the ground. The troop of kids which was being led by me to accomplish this arduous task at hand was still trying to come up with a strategy to deal with the situation. The troop of dogs, include the Big Dog, was starting to get a little frustrated with the ineffective leadership.

At this juncture, nature gave us a way out.

The dogs noticed that a particularly large and arrogant Langur was sitting on the branch of a Mango tree. Its tail was free-falling from the branch it was sitting on. For some reason the Langur was looking at the sky with no regard to the frustrations that we are facing and seemed to have immersed in the mesmerizing beauty of the blue sky.

 And ...that was the chance our canine troopers were looking for. Slowly...stealthily...the whole troop crept to the respective mango tree and gathered at a distance such that they could get to the tail of the Langur in a simple spring.

All the kids in the troop were holding their breath to see when the dogs will get the Langur down and we will have a chance to get even with him.

The lieutenant canine prepared with care.. 1 2 2.5 3 ...he gave a quiet and a very large spring...

damn it... just missed it...

Langur is still lost in the Blue sky... we still have high hopes...

The second-in-command started stretching... hop...skip...here we go...

Shit...not again...

Langur is not looking down...

We were still betting on the Big Dog's chance...

He  got ready...and without much ado took a huge spring...

Hell no...He missed ...

We were totally doomed...our last hope was gone...

But still the Langur is not looking down....?????

Our persistent dogs were not ready to embarrass themselves and continued with their second and third rounds...still missing...

Langur is still not looking down....???????????????????

We kids started reviewing the situation...
As long as we remembered we knew that these swingers were a very informed and a cunning species. We never had a chance to get close to them to take a shot. They would always find out when we got close and would always flee before we could hit them. So it appeared to be very weird that the Langur is not even noticing the obvious effort of the village dogs...we had to do a little investigation...we sent forth a member of our troop to see what the other Langurs were up to... and we waited while the dogs continued with their springs from different angles.

Our investigators returned to the scene with a smaller canine who was missing ....with very serious news...the rest of the Langurs were ransacking the Papaya and Orange orchard on the other side of the village and seemed not to be bothered if anyone would come and get them....

Now things started looking clearer which we were not able to appreciate for so long...this particular Langur who seemed to be (or voted to be) the smartest, had strategically chosen that branch . The branch was in such an ideal height that, if the Langur sat on that branch it tail will fall to a height  that will give the dogs and the kids hope that they will be able to catch it. However, with their immense knowledge of mathematics the Langur knew we will not be able to succeed. And this will provide two strategic advantages. First, it will act as a diversion and the rest of the Langur troop would rampage the other orchard scot-free. And the second,  the troop of kids and canines will return home with the deep remorse of defeat and get required punishment from their superiors....

Anger took over our patience in no time...and our friendly canines were not in the mindset to listen to anything except knock that Langur off. However, the instinct to teach this Langur and his troop a lesson took over my thoughts.
For the first time I wanted to act strategically...first realization that I had  human brain...

I sent all the kids except three to the orchard with their sling-shots. Three of us kept three marbles each  and gave the rest to them such that they have a lot of supply. I told them to bring down hail on those  Langurs in the orchard with the marbles as soon as they saw them and absolutely make sure no Langur turns this way to help their smart aide. I let them borrow a couple of dogs to help them with this matter.

The rest of us decided on our positions.The idea was to dodge this lone Langur and separate him from the rest of the group...and each group separately when they do not have any information about our movement. But it all rested on the orchard group successfully stalling the group there such that our beauty, the lone Langur, will have no help.

The strategy, in fact, worked well.

Three of us, who stayed back to deal with this Langur, took careful aim and shot the marbles simultaneously at the Langur. Luckily, three of those large sized marbles hit the Langur hard in his head and his back. The Langur, who was still seemingly joyous of his success of having misled us and was concentrating on the blue sky, hard hit by the marbles, lost his balance and grip of the branch and landed right in the middle of our canine troop...

My friends, you will have hard time imagining how the dogs reacted....I'll try my best to explain it...think of a situation where you have been hungry for at least a week and you find a whole dish of freshly made Chicken Tandoori right in front of you...out of nowhere...please close your eyes and imagine how would you react...you might be confused about what to eat first...

Our village dogs...who were losing their minds for not being able to pull that insolent Langur down...had a similar experience...they were having hard time in choosing how to bite the Langur and were getting more and more restless...growling with due disagreements with each other....

Well, our job was done here since we knew the canines will do more than enough damage to settle this deal...
(We later learned that after biting the Langur several times the troop of village dogs chased him for several furlongs to ensure that he is not coming back)

And the three of us ran to the other end of the village...pandemonium was reigning there...our guys were doing an agressive job by shooting marbles like carbon dioxide powered BB pistols...and the canines present there were blocking the way of entry into the village and barking their voices out....

We joined that troop with a fresh supply of marbles and  now the attack on the intruders was on full force. After resisting and swinging from tree to tree for about ten more minutes the bunch of Langurs realized that  they are in serious trouble and it would not pay to stay any longer...

They started jumping out of the tree by calling each other while we chased them by continuously shooting at them until they were out of sight...a couple of the Langurs were hard hit to move faster...but we restrained ourselves and our canine companions to hurt them anymore...

The troop of canines that were engaged in that smart Langur joined us in our way back after having finished their business. We put a stop to every other activity that day...we were exhausted...however the deep feeling of a victory over a group of smart intruders were giving us enough joy to credit us with ice creams...along with our canine companions.

Our friendly canines were also having their day and never left us until around midnight when we were called off to bed. They were developing a deep sense of respect toward themselves and our whole troop...since this was a rare occasion where we had bit the Langurs strategically and not just by chance or force. Outsmarting a long daunting enemy is worth a lifetime of satisfaction...and the canines well appreciated it.

The troop of Langurs never came back to our village that season and we got unconfirmed report that the leader of that pack apparently resigned after the decisive defeat at our village...

But the next season I was reported of this...



I am still thinking what could it possibly mean...


Cheers,
Talk to you later.





4 comments:

  1. I havent read the blog as yet but the last pic is just FUNNNYYYYYYYYY....Ahahahahahahahahahahahah

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  2. Good one! ...totally loved the last bit and companionship wala kissa!

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  3. Next season, they probably signed a memorandum of understanding!

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  4. I believe so. This is defection...

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