A dog is man's best friend. This is an incident which, in reality has justified the saying.

Since the pre-historic time when man was undergoing the complications of the "Homo-erectus" stage till the completion of the "Neanderthal" era, man has undergone a transition with changing likes and dislikes, and changing conditions. Sooner or later, as man started growing jealous of the rich of his own kind, he resorted to thefts, and burglary. Gradually, man employed dogs to guard their property and their houses, from such unsurpassed and unforeseen rivalry.

Dogs, like Alsatians, Dobermans, Labradors, Spaniels and Great Danes, became more attached to their human friends after the discovery of the "Galton's whistle", which made use of ultrasonic vibrations through the air medium, which is very much audible to dogs. Later, novels were written, about heroes and their dogs, viz. Tintin and Snowy, Famous Five and Timothy, Secret Seven and Scamper, etcetera. Loyalty of dogs don't only rest with heroes in story books, but also with the ordinary individual. I have also received loyalty and faithfulness from this animal, of the genus "Canis".

On 16th June, 2002, my friend, Mr. Harley Quin, was kidnapped and as I etch in the picture of the situation I was then in in my mind, I feel suddenly the urgency and solemnity of the occurrence. Mr. Quin, as I knew him, was a regular morning-walker and the "Butcher Alley" was one of his favourite haunts. Mr. Quin was far more punctual than any other swallow and he made for his frequented site at six in the morning. On the mentioned date, he was sighted in a van sitting in between two thuggish-looking henchmen. The van could not be tracked down, as its license number plate was missing!

As Mr. Quin was unfortunate to have lost his parents and as his ancestry yielded no evidence of an existing blood-line, I, his friend, was called by an unidentified voice that threatened me not to call the police and to give them a ransom amount of $50,000 for Mr. Quin's release.

I was in no position to give that amount to a worthless kidnapper, let alone deposit it in a bank for my own benefit. So, congregating all my courage and sinew into an inseparable entity, I set off for the police headquarters, where, I filled the Inspector in, on the happenings of late. He nodded gravely, indicating, he would help me. That day, I was annoyed at receiving another phone call from the same voice, but this time, he was apparently calling from somewhere else - an STD booth.

The cold tone was smothered to a whisper as it said, "You have reported us to the police! Now, prepare to join your dear friend ..... ". Here, I noted his subtle euphemistic way of speech, and I immediately inferred that he was a smart mastermind in the plot, " ..... and the hours remaining till our arrival to do you in are for you to make the necessary amends! ..... ", and it faded.

I, was later on in the day, ambushed near the "Butcher's Alley", by the supposed same henchmen and whisked off to an underground base. They kept me tied to a chair with a rope. Their faces were masked and so, I could arrive at no conclusion. Let me say here that I have a Doberman, by the name "Rabby". After the henchmen took me, he had caught my eye and I had felt some kind of communication between us. Suddenly the voices of the two thugs talking to each other, rose to an unbearable pitch of an opera Soprano singer and the inevitable "thud - thud" of the two hitting the ground, excited me. I was certain by the steady, low whining that it was Rabby who had done the necessary trick! I felt the ropes tying me to the chair loosen and finally cut, as the dog hacked at the bindings with its razor-sharp teeth, after some time, and then I stroked the dog with all my affection for it. It wagged its tail, tongue lolling out fondly. Then, we went to the next chamber, where Mr. Quin was bound. Rabby liberated him from the bindings and we attempted to make our way out. On the way, Rabby had fallen behind and I saw him fiddling (with his fore-limbs, of-course!) with some detonator-packs, with unnatural deftness! I whistled to him to leave the dangerous articles and we made our way out.

The next day, I read in the newspapers, the news of an underground basement in "Butcher's Alley", that led to a trapdoor on the street. It was reported to have blown up unexpectedly by a "ticking-detonator" while some evening shoppers were doing their shopping in the Connaught Market Place. A lady, shivering with fear, and holding her face in her hands, had reported, "I was a few feet away from the implosion and consequently, a part of the street had caved in disclosing, for a teensy moment, the interior of a dingy coal-cellar." The police had also located two henchmen (clearly knocked out!) and their boss, (with a look of wild comprehension and anger on his face!) out cold.. I looked up, right into the eyes of Rabby, probably even through his unfathomable conscience, comprehending an impossible truth - and I was not surprised to get the inevitable wink!

I had to hitch a ride home one night. This is a near-vivid, almost unexpurgated description of my experience.

"Please be at my place at 8o'clock sharp on the following date:

Date : 10/07/'06

Venue : Number 7, Wellington Palace."

The day 10th July,2006 was a usual, run-of-the-mill one except that it was exceedingly and most innocuously adventurous. I was requested to visit my friend , Arun on his birthday, by his parents via a card which had the aforementioned details. Arun's house was a mile or two away from mine, but the only road leading to it was the one that followed a labyrinthine dirt track, through a dense forest. I was a great friend of Arun and I bore the reputation of helping him out of "sticky corners". On the other hand, Arun was a highly talented boy who possessed dexterous qualities. So, I felt over the moon to hear that I would go to visit him on his birthday.

The journey through the forest was a silent, short and uneventful one, in our spacious Maruti Alto. The headlights of our car, scanning the invisible limits for the actual road, made the suburbs look even darker. The dirt patch, led into vast stretches of meadows, hills and then, finally into a locality. My father began searching for the house and after another fifty metres of search, a big, old-fashioned manor loomed into view from round the corner. I stepped on to the portico. There wasn't a doorbell, but instead a hand-rung in the shape of a serpent hanging in a U-bend from the cadaverous-depths of a gargoyle's mouth.

I suddenly felt the creeps about this house. Everything was so medieval! I felt strangely the magnificence and grandeur belittling me to the size of a starved water-shrew! Before I could do a thing, the door opened and Arun appeared before me. I was ushered in and greeted with a warm welcome. Arun introduced me to his parents, and showed me around the Entrance Hall. The walls seemed to talk, the lamps seemed to swap flashy grins while the carpets hugged the polished, mahogany floor of the Entrance Hall. He also showed me some softwares he had managed to procure, conducted several games including a quiz contest for his friends, etcetera.

At 9 o'clock, we were served a sumptuous dinner in which Arun's mother glutted us with all the delicacies! I wished Arun the best for the year ahead of him along with the greetings and set for home as the car was unavailable. The dirt road felt even more eerie with dust blowing everywhere. Every moment, I felt someone was tracking me. I felt a hundred eyesobserving me under the dark moonlit canopy of tree-leaves. Now and then, I stole a glance at the path I had already tread. Just when I felt that it was useless to walk any more, I heard the screeching of car-brakes behind me. Turning back, I faced a young man, probably a little older than a teenager in his late teens ..... He voluntarily asked me if I wanted him to take me home. I asked him who he was and he replied in an unnaturally cold, whispering voice, that my father had sent him to bring me back home. He looked quite harmless and friendly for a stranger, but, his opulent apparel enlightened the fact that he was well-off. He stopped at our house after an unusually short span of time and I asked him to come into our house. The man spoke to my father for a few minutes and then departed. As the car drove out of the portico, as the key turned in the car's ignition-panel, as the silent night air was rent with the guttural sound of the car being rejuvenated, I couldn't help but feel that he had winked at me.

On my street lives an old man with an evil reputation as a one-time dangerous criminal. This is the account of my unexpected compassion for him ......

"Mass murderer! Sirius Black - age 28, IMPRISONED!"

I was rifling through a pile of tattered, parched newspapers, as if perusing and examining certain antique pieces of a curio shop, when a particularly small, cut-out portion of an article, sporting the aforementioned headline and a picture, drew my unwavering attention. I trained my eyes on the picture - a mane of matted untidy and tangled hair lay scattered around an otherwise-handsome face. His murderous stare and power-hungry expression justified the accusation framed against him, ordurously.

Forty years hence, I was in my drawing room, one day, when the doorbell rang ... I peeped out through the keyhole and saw an old man - the neighbour of mine, living on my street, who preferred to keep himself incognito. But, I had heard from others that he was at one time, a dangerous criminal, imprisoned for a tenure of five years and let loose in an angry state. I reluctantly opened the door and let him in ..... and faced a person I had never in any nightmare thought to come face-to-face with.

A mass of tangled, white hair lay in a mess on his forehead, that had carried the burden of so many fatal turnings and destined disasters. His hands had committed what his mind had not told, his eyes had seen what his conscience had never bidden for, and slowly, as time rolled by, the man unravelled a mystery of his life history. The gaps he left between two tales, was a silence, heightened and fostered, in some strange way, by his mere quiescence. He told me how he had been robbed of his parents early in life. He confided in me his filial sentiments.

After his parents' bodies had undergone post-mortem, he had come to know that the reason for his being an orphan was murder. As the murderer was unknown and was probably biding his time in the dark, Sirius had been seething with an angry desire to prove himself capable of avenging his parents. Thus, he had started the rampage with several minor killings in the town, where his parents had been murdered. Then, there was this mass murder in the City's Assembly Hall!.....

I felt a judicious amount of sympathy for the man ... he was a loner in life now, a man given much to killing and slaughtering. Now, he had grown old, and looking back at his useless sixty eight years, he feels himself fit for hell ... I consoled him, because I understood, there was no one there to lend him a pardoning conscience, a listening ear, an advising will. I asked him to have dinner with me and two hours later, a one-time dangerous criminal was chatting animatedly with me, at my dinner table, between mouthfuls of a delicacy which, co-incidentally, he too loved!