A couple of crows swoop and dive against the azure sky. A brave feathered soul soars up into the sky and dives down until it seems to me that he must surely crash into the unyielding sand. He pulls up at the last minute in a completely unnatural display of airmanship. It strikes me that these crows were misinformed about their purpose in life. A couple of his brethren cawed in delight at as he performed an elegant perfect fly-by. A couple of ladies walk by with determined looks on their faces. I recognize one of them and pretend to stare fixedly at my feet hoping she won't recognize her. The sun is blocked out and a pair of running shoes attached to mauve running tracks trudge into my vision. After the usual questions about my parents and work her questions skirt on the edges of my marital status. No amount of evading the question seems to work and politeness is soon cowering under the threat of extreme irritation. Luckily the band of weight-watchers is eager to reach the other end of the beach by nightfall and pull her away. She allows herself to be dragged away and assures me that she'll drop by to talk to me in detail. Oh happy day! I'm sure my performance through the encounter merited some sort of an award.

There is an unpaved road along the entire length of the beach that I used to go jogging on with my father. Well, he'd jog and I'd follow at a pace that suited my non-existent stamina. Sometime we'd bring the dog along and I'd use him as an excuse to slow the pace. He was a very non-competitive creature and generally conveyed the impression that a passive existence suited him fine. I suspect I influenced his disposition during the all-important formative years. The road was crowded now, flabby men with unsteady strides and plump ladies with tenacious looks marched to some unheard rhythm. Brightly colored saris and imitation polo shirts strode towards a fractional dimension where people looked slim, tanned and healthy.

The sun settles down lower in the sky and a refreshingly cool breeze begins to fan the languid air. An ice-cream seller's strident bell clashes horribly with the soothing sound of the waves. I look longingly at his cart but can't get the rest of my body to get up off the sand. The side of the cart is painted with enticingly dripping ice creams in cups, cones, on sticks and even on a clown's nose. The ice-cream man's hands are a blur as he works the bell. I notice my canine adversary slouching about the cart hoping for a handout. True to form all he gets is a few choice curses and a stone thrown at him. I finally manage to propel myself off the sand and walk to the cart. The dog looks suspiciously at me when I hold out an ice cream in a cone. He takes a couple of steps towards me and then stops with his front leg in mid-air. A decade of mistrust is not that easily overcome. The ice-cream seller stops clanging his bell and watches the scene amusedly. I place the cone on the ground and he takes a tentative lick. He's soon wagging his tail and licking the top of his nose for any errant drops of ice-cream that might have escaped his vacuum-cleaner mouth and landed there. I find myself with a companion as I walk down the road along the beach. Every once in a while he lunges at his tail which always manages to stay a couple of inches away from his bared teeth. It was almost as if his tail was taunting him, urging him to bite and then pulling away at the last minute. I wonder what he would have done had he managed to reach his tail. I suspect he'd bite down hard, yelp in pain and then look sheep-faced at his own stupidity. I wonder what human beings would do if we had tails. It would be really hard to hide emotions. One thing it would surely put an end to is Poker. There - he must have a really good hand from the way his tail is wagging; I'm out of the game.

Some of the faces along the road seem vaguely familiar. I keep hoping I don't meet anyone I know. I'm usually quite adept at conversing without saying anything but I want the evening to myself. I allow my tailed friend to follow me grudgingly. After a while it was nice to have him by me. He had a slight limp in his right front paw, no doubt the result of an old skirmish. The sunset is spectacular. The sky dons a palette of exotic colors and a cool breeze begins to blow. I can almost feel a collective sign from the people on the beach. The joggers slow their pace and the determined ladies look a little less aggressive. There are a lot more people on the sands now. Small boys selling peanuts from cane baskets weave their way through the thickening crowd. A balloon seller on a bicycle has taken up position near the ice-cream cart. I notice that a game of cricket has started up on the road. The wicket keeper religiously removes the stumps and replaces them each time a car needs to pass by. I sit on a small mound by the side of the road and watch the game for a while. One of the boys takes one look at the dog, shouts aloud to the other boys and reaches down for a stone. I realize that these were the same boys whose ball he'd stolen. He's off in a flash before the boy throws his arm back. The stone doesn't even come close to hitting him. I cheer him on laughing aloud. Soon he's a brown blur at the end of the road. It's starting to get dark and my stomach is sending distress signals to my brain.

Going back home seems a lot shorter than getting to the beach. I half expect to see my dog bounce off the floor and bound towards me. I'd like to clarify that I use the word bounce in a purely euphemistic fashion - he probably weighed as much as a small cow and never really 'bounced' off anything. It's been a couple of years since he died, years that I was away from home. The years he spent in our house are marked by the faded paint along the walls where he'd slide along before settling down to sleep and the scratches on the front door. The outdoors was someplace he spent as little time as possible; He never understood his place in the scheme of things. The fact that dogs were lower than humans on the totem pole was entirely lost on him. He trundled through life with these misconceptions and was so firm in his conviction that we came to accept them as well. Rolly polly stumble sleep.

My neighbor is at his gate, watching people walk by. He's an elderly gentleman who claims to have fought in a war. He was always vague with details and I never found out which war he was in. He didn't look like much at first glance but up close you'd notice a twinkle in his eyes that bespoke an agile mind behind rheumy eyes. He has a wiry frame and I've never seen him in anything other than worn t-shirts and striped shorts. His movements were slow and his hands trembled noticeably. His wife was at war with the world and went through life with a perpetual frown. Her temperament was such a contrast to his happy countenance that I began to suspect that the war he often talked about was a veiled reference to his married life. I'd often find him sitting on his porch with a book in his lap watching the road. I had never seen him outside of that gate except once when his family came over for dinner. That meal was decidedly the funniest hour that our dining table has been witness to. I was helping my mother put away the dishes when I heard her sigh; a sigh that lasted a couple of seconds but spoke a small volume. Our neighbors never dined with us again and my dog never bit anyone again for repeatedly refusing to pet him.