A trip to Song river

Our summer holidays in Dehradun were quite uneventful for the first two weeks as Ritesh was working on vacation and it was up to me to keep my daughter busy while she missed her friends back home. As she is a late sleeper, it was usually 12 by the time she woke up and accosted me with her favourite “Mummy I am bored” phrase. I saw my husband in between meetings and asked him if he would like to go for a walk to the river. It was a hot day and we weren’t so sure about what we would see on the walk. However, the hubby really needed a break since he had been working since early morning. I could do with one too as parenting my tween daughter, on my own,  at my in-laws place was not my cup of tea. So we decided to walk to the river bank. It would be the first walk to the river on this visit. We had been there twice, couple of months ago, on our last visit to Dehradun. 

As we walk, we spot a dog under the neighbours car. It looks at us and we look at it and we walk ahead. We seemed to have forgotten the way. New houses were being constructed in the colony blocking some old pathways. We reached a dead end and decided on exploring a different route. That’s when Oscar joined us. My daughter knew his name from our last visit here. He is friendly stray, adopted by a local family. He follows us and she encourages him and I allow it having no inkling that he will follow us further. He seems friendly enough looking askance at us with a wag of his tail.

Somehow he made us less unsure. Trotting behind us initially, then beside us and then when he knew he was invited on the trip, taking the lead. He lead us on to the pathway between the brambles and undergrowth to the river bank. Running up ahead and then waiting patiently for us to catch  up, he behaved like he was our dog. 

When we reached the bank we could see the river, narrow but in spate.  Oscar ran up to it and refreshed himself with a drink and dip that did him good in the hot sun.

We sat down on some of the boulders near the edge, dipping our feet into the cool water. As the water was slightly muddy because of the rains we did not wash our hands or faces. The view was breathtaking and the gushing river made a great sound that echoed through the hills that rose on the other side. We three sat on different boulders, smiling like Cheshire cats, acknowledging our good fortune to partake in this first hand. I also felt sad thinking about how long this would last, as neither the people or the government seemed much interested in protecting this wilderness. “A developing country cannot afford to fiercely protect what’s left of its natural forests” being the populist Mantra.

 We clicked some more pics and videos.

Meanwhile, Oscar who had run up ahead trotted back to see what took us so long. On seeing us resting by the river, he ran up to the water for a second drink and dip. He was very confident of his footing and knew how to avoid the strong current while we dared not venture beyond the edge. My daughter called out to him and he gently walked towards her and then towards me. Allowing us to pet him and stroke him, which we did warily at first but more confidently when we saw him enjoying it. He smacked his lips in approval and then as my husband got up and walked upriver  along the bank, he gently extracted himself and followed my husband. Suddenly, he shot off into the greenery beside the river bank. There was herd of young buffaloes there. He seemed to play with them or herd them by his barking. It wasn’t clear to us as we had never seen such a encounter before. One of the buffaloes rose up to his challenge and stepped ahead of the rest of them. Although it was a fun watch, we were also a bit panicked that they may charge at us. However, we managed to keep our cool and just called Oscar off. Thankfully, he too responded as he realised that a herd was more than he could chew. The stand off ended there and we retreated up ahead and there was no more action from the buffaloes. We also spotted spotted deer far up ahead. We could see them clearly through the binoculars, a very valuable addition to our Dehradun trip.

Two young Gujjars, a girl and a boy were walking down. They were the nomadic tribe who had camped behind our colony in a tiny settlement of thatched huts. There was an ongoing dispute between them and my father in law and other colony people about them stealing electricity, from the government supply, with periodic flares and police interventions. Mostly resulting in greased palms and status quo. Gujjars complained that the colony people harassed them by cutting off the wires they used, despite them( the Gujjars) never bothering directly the people from the colony. The residents of the colony didn’t care too much for the fact that they were stealing electricity off the lines for which deposit were paid by them. It also don’t help that the Gujjars were Muslim nomads in a pro-Hindutva state which had renamed itself as ‘ Dev Bhumi’ in all official communication. My father in law seemed to be in the thick of this dispute having lead the representation from the colony.

They probably knew who we were, given that we were mostly hanging about on the terrace of our in-law’s house, at the edge of the  developing colony directly opposite their settlement, with a pair of binoculars trying to spot a new bird or animal. Despite this the young girl gave us a shy smile and asked in a dialect of Hindi I could barely understand whether we were exploring the river banks. I returned her smile and nodded yes.

We walked a bit more through the bank made up of smooth rounded stones interspersed with squelchy mud and generously littered with droppings of different species. As we walked back my husband spotted the small boy adding his own to the collection far away.

On our way back, Oscar dutifully trotted alongside or ahead of us till we reached the clearing from where the pathway began and then he suddenly disappeared. We decided to buy him some biscuits from the little shop in the colony so that we could treat him the next time we saw him. Village shops are in a league of their own. Our young neighbour came up on his cycle just as we reached the shop. The shopkeeper was missing and the boy, who had played with my daughter last winter, stood shyly extremely conscious of us, clutching his money and avoiding eye contact with any of us. When the shopkeeper came, he could barely whisper what he wanted. The shopkeeper kept asking “what? what?” The boy replied in an even softer tone all the while cringing in embarrassment. It was amusing as well as painful to watch the young boy’s discomfiture on our accord. The shopkeeper was also smiling by now, clued in to the boy’s predicament. The whole interaction must have lasted five of the longest minutes of his life:) We then waited patiently as the shopkeeper leisurely stuffed his purchases into a bag before turning to us. Thus, we bought a packet of biscuits in the time it takes us to do our weekly grocery shopping back home. However, the experience of it was much more enjoyable. 

As we headed home, there was still ‘Oscar’ again. Seeing the packet of biscuits in our hand ‘he’ bounded enthusiastically towards us. but we saw the dog which had been lying under our neighbours car.

With many happy wags of its tail he happily wolfed down ‘his reward’ and smacked his lips in delight. 

All in all our trip to the river was a big success, much more so because of Oscar our friendly and sweet companion!

A very sweet story right? Nevertheless, there is a twist. A neighbour saw us feeding ‘Oscar’ and said. “ Why are you feeding this dog? It bites everyone here! ” We were quite indignant at her calling our sweet ‘Oscar’ unfriendly.

Fortunately, we kept our indignation to ourselves for we later, when looking at pictures that we realised that we had fed the impostor, whom we had first found sleeping under the neighbours’ car and not Oscar! We felt quite sheepish for not even being able to recognise our loyal companion