Katha Ke Samay, Kutta Bandha
(Tie a dog during the Katha)
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I can still faintly smell the sleepy neighborhood streets of my early years, the sweet scents of mogra and of cow dung, now fading fast in my memories. We lived in a town away from our ancestral place and visited the nanihal and dadihal during summer vacations. My grandma, who had a real name (which I did not learn until adulthood) was simply Dadi ji to us and Mata ji to my parents and to the world, to everyone who mattered. Dadi ji was a force of nature. A paradox in flesh: the unstoppable force plus the immovable object smaller then five feet.
Dadi ji was old-school in the purest sense. Not the plastic, kitschy kind of vintage, she was a true believer quoting Vedas, Shastras, Puranas and occasionally terrifying tales. She had never touched nor ate anything non-vegetarian. Not even by accident. Her food never touched any of the china plates, g*d forbid. “mitti aur mlechh,” (dirty & disgusting, roughly) she’d mutter, as if porcelain personally offended her. Her meals were always served on gleaming brass or copper plates, sometimes banana leaves for special occasions, and cooked only on purified stoves, wooden or coal, never those “gas contraptions that confuse the prana of food.”
Each vessel in the kitchen had a designated job, name, and sometimes what felt like a zodiac sign. There was the kheer waala patila, the only-for-aarti ladle, and the subah ki haandi that could only cook things before sunrise. Stainless steel was allowed, but only if it was the heavy-duty kind that could knock out a thief if needed.
Dadi ji firmly believed that the world stood on three pillars on top of the Grand Turtle reincarnate, the kurmavatar - parampara, anushashan & dharma (tradition, discipline & religion). And nothing exemplified this better than the Satyanarayan Katha, a monthly ritual she performed without fail, usually on Purnima, the full moon night. And then there were other special katha occasions in between. At some point I could recite the entire thing backward and forward.
Of all the grandchildren, I was her favorite. My sisters were, well, girls, thus automatically demoted in her eyes, despite all their attempts to be noticed. They resigned themselves to this reality while helping with the cleaning, the flowers, the folding of banana leaves, while still basking under her affectionate but micro-managing gaze. My cousins were a wild bunch, made mostly of gangly limbs and loud voices, always breaking something or fighting over prasad. But I? I sat still, I listened, I knew when to nod during the vrat katha, and when to bow solemnly at the right parts. That made me special.
“tu sanskari hai,” she would whisper, fondly patting my head with her sandalwood-scented hands. “pariwar ka naam unchaa rakhega tu.” (roughly, you will uphold the family honor - designated by upturned nostrils?). Naak (Nose) was of supreme importance, and "naak kat gayi" was the ultimate dishonor in the society.
Her faith in me was as ironclad as her beliefs. And so, when Katha day approached, I was her second-in-command. I knew every step of the ritual. I knew which flowers were for the kalash and which ones were too showy. I knew the exact moment to blow the conch—and, perhaps most importantly, I knew Rule Number One: katha ke samay, kutta bandha.
Now, this wasn’t metaphorical. She meant it literally. As I reconstructed this years later, this sacred custom of dog-tying had a curious and rather colonial origin.
It all began during the British Raj, when the local zemindar, Lala Badriprasad, hosted a low-ranking British regent who had been stationed in the district for some years. When the regent was finally recalled to his cold and foggy native isles, he couldn’t take his beloved mastiff, a massive beast named Reginald back with him. Lala Badriprasad, perhaps out of diplomacy but most certainly a display of his eternal quest for being an almost-gora-sahib, adopted the dog.
Reginald was no ordinary dog. He was an enormous, drooling, tail-wagging disaster wrapped in muscle and mischief. He took his guard dog duties seriously, chased cows, chewed slippers, snored loudly and had a habit of howling precisely when the pandit would begin the Satyanarayan Katha. Legend has it that during one fateful puja, Reginald had run amok, knocked over the kalash, drank the charanamrit, and wagged his massive tail through the rangoli, leaving muddy strokes like an English watercolor artist trying abstract art.
It was then and there that Lala Badriprasad laid down the law: “Henceforth, no Katha shall commence unless the dog is leashed (kutta bandha).” The proclamation became ritual, and the ritual became practice. Eager to appear as sophisticated as the zemindar family, it was adopted by other households in the community. The parampara came down from the haveli to other households, and through generations until Dadi ji herself enforced it like gospel. “Yeh toh hamari parampara hai,” she would say with great pride. “It began with that angrezi kutta. Even the firangi’s dog couldn’t interfere with our bhakti.”
Our smaller Alsatian, the runt of the litter, was the designated modern-day offending kutta for our family. He had a divine gift for chaos. His most unforgivable crime was barking loudly during the aarti, scaring the panditji’s dentures halfway out. Dadi ji declared (with due affection for the pupper) that he was a born asura, unable to change his ways, sent to test her saintly patience.
So on Katha day, after the mango leaves were hung and tulsi got its special water, the doggie was ceremoniously led to the backyard and tied to the old neem tree. Not harshly, Dadi ji wasn’t cruel, but firmly enough to prevent any divine disruption for that day.
Once the dog was tied and the conch blown, Dadi ji would glide into the prayer room like a queen entering her court. The story of Satyanarayan, of devotion, temptation, redemption, and sweet revenge would be read aloud in her rich, melodic voice. I would sit cross-legged beside her, eyes wide, soaking in every word like it was my inheritance.
But time, as it always does, brought change. The dog grew old, his eyes grew misty, and one winter night, he quietly left us, curling up under the neem tree as if to say, “My job here is done.”
There was silence that next Katha morning. The neem tree stood empty. The air felt off. It was I who suggested it, timidly at first, that we continue the tradition.
So a household helper went to the lane behind the temple and brought home a stray: a scruffy, suspicious-looking fellow with patchy fur and soulful eyes. We named him Kaalu. He seemed to have the right temperament, a touch lazy, a little mischievous, and completely bewildered by the attention he was receiving. Kaalu was tied during the Katha, as per sacred ritual. But he didn’t come alone. Oh no. He brought with him his entire cohort, the basti trio of regulars and one limping part-timer. They trailed behind him, sniffing around the tulsi plant, wagged their tails, and received generous scraps before being shooed away gently, but firmly. “Feeding them is your karma & dharma,” Dadi ji would say, “lekin aarti ke samay shanti chahiye.”
Over time, specially after Dadi ji left this world, the neem tree still held an occasional leash, and the neighborhood mutts instinctively knew to linger nearby on Katha day for scraps, for attention, and perhaps for a little residual bhakti. Over time, those Katha days became fewer and fewer, infrequent and far in-between.
The g*ds probably still roam the courtyards and streets smell faintly of agarbatti and dog fur. Dadi ji ’s legacy lives on: discipline, devotion, and a firmly tied dog during Katha.
As for me? I have fallen in shameful ways, we no longer do any katha ourselves. We have not tied a dog, nor fed his friends in a long-long time, only folded my hands, bowing my head during aarti occasionally. The closest I have come is to feed our neighbor's tuxedo named Hammi regularly who visits often, looking for company, affection and food. I do wonder what Dadi ji would say now about the fallen me, the sandalwood scent and affectionate voice that once whispered, “pariwar ka naam unchaa rakhega tu.”
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With much help & inspiration from several friends in my WhatsCrapp group)