It is past midnight. All is calm, but not quiet. A dog begins to bark in a measured way — not for, or at, anything particularly, but as though just establishing its presence — and wakes up households around a half-a-km radius. A few other dogs from near and far respond to the barking, each creating individual high-decibel circles of a half-a-km radius.
It’s like a Venn diagram of partially overlapping barking circles with my apartment in the middle, getting it from all sides. I am startled awake by this motiveless tranquillity-busting, and I wait out the nuisance. I’m sure this is no watchdog alert — no burglar has ever been challenged by dogs in our area. Any burglar with a pack of biscuits is welcome. So the cause of the initial commotion is likely to be a cat on a wall, minding its business, or a sewer-hopping bandicoot. Soon, the other dogs go quiet, but this dog — the one near my window that inaugurated the barking circuit — takes its time winding up.
I try to recoup the deficit in my sleep cycle, and nearly succeed. But session 2 of barking commences more urgently. This time, it’s a dogfight settling a turf war in a brief and one-sided skirmish, followed by the Doppler effect of receding yelps signalling the departure of the vanquished. End of session 2, and I realise I’m constructing a dog story based only on the audio input. My writerly imagination is running amok, and it is goodbye to any more sleep. From then on, I am alert to sporadic canine activism till dawn breaks.
