Animal emotions

Speaking about animals, I had this experience. The year was around 2007. I was staying in our family compound, away from my bigger family home, in a slightly dilapidated house. This I was doing to maintain a sort of distance from the encroachment of the local culture, which was entwined in Malayalam and the local social compulsions.

On the road suddenly three dogs appeared. Of three sizes. The first was a big brown dog, the second a black one and the third a white and black dotted dog of just above puppy size. The three seemed to have been suddenly thrown into the roads, from some cosy household, for they seemed quite unsure of how to deal with the outside world.

I do not want to tell the whole story here. I will concentrate on the brown dog which was female. It tried to be friendly with me. However, it was impossible for me to accommodate it in my house for I was sharing the same compound of the other family-houses in the compound. However, within a few months of being on the road, it became pregnant. At that time, it was allowed to give birth inside the compound in a shed. The house gate was kept slightly open to allow it to come and go. I could see that it was desperately trying to convey its gratitude. It would try to mouth out words, which were not coherent to me. Could be that it had no vocal cord to do that. Or it might even be that being solitary beings, there was no particular language in it. For language also needs to be taught by a social group. A solitary human being cannot have a language.

When it saw me, it would wag its tail, in a very passionate manner to address me. Later, it took its kids elsewhere, but continued to reside inside the shed. At that time the family took up the decision to oust it. I had to carry out the decision. However, when I tried to oust it, it put up an act of desperation. It turned its rear part to me, and went on wagging its tail in a piteous and desperate manner, looking at me with a turned-towards-me face. It seemed to feel that I would see the wagging tail only if was turned towards me. It was sure that it was trying to say something, but lacked the machinery to do it.

Later when my wife tried to shoo it off, when it had entered again, I saw it desperately trying to speak. Well, when I say these things, I use the same understanding that I have with regard to human beings. The same desperation I have seen in human beings, when they are in tight corners.

I am sure that the thinking part of the brain is not fully connected to any hardware. For, it could possibly be connected to some software. I remember one time many years ago, when I was travelling by a two-wheeler through a mountainous area. I was having a sore throat. So couldn’t speak properly. Only incoherent sounds would come out, if I tried to speak. I stopped in front of a Tea Estate in a bus waiting-shelter. Opposite of the shelter was the gate of the Tea Estate, through which the workers were coming out. There was a man who looked like a drunk, in the bus shelter. He tried to put up a conversation. I simply tried to shift the topic by simply looking at a manager-like man coming out of the gate in a motorbike. I simply spoke these words with no specific aim, ‘Who is that?’

I do not know what went wrong. The other man in the shelter immediately rose up and started up in a pose of questioning in a very offensive tone: Why do you want to know? Who are you?

Now my situation was that I couldn’t speak. If I were to speak incoherently, I knew what would happen in the midst of a remote location population. So, I tried to evade the situation with some vague vocal sounds. Immediately, he got up and moved towards me with a very ferocious looks, as if he had cornered some prey. However, since it was impossible for him to physically manage me, he started using vocal commands. I immediately moved towards my bike. My problem was that I couldn’t speak. And it was impossible to predict exactly how others would react to his frenzied shouts to the others to accost me. Due to my innate agility, I could spring on to my bike and escape the scene. The problem was that he was trying to gather a mob. To an elevated group of people I could at least use some written English to define my stature. To the uneducated mob, one can’t predict how things would go.

Now, what I have just described is the power of the means to speak. And the power to move a mob. This incident could also point to the inability of the English ruling class to communicate their egalitarian ideas to the mob led to frenzied moods by their ‘Indian’ leaders. The mob couldn’t understand English and its soft refinement. However, it can understand the barbaric rhetoric of their political, social and religious leadership. 

Even though I was reasonably intelligent, quite well-travelled in the local nation and a bit abroad, well-read, good in English, proficient in British Classics and having much information inside me, the moment I was without an ability to speak to another group of people, the situation was just like being an inarticulate animal.  

That is just one illustration that I wanted to mention here. There is another one. It is about my contention that when people in this nation, meet others of the same nation, but of different language, there is a feeling of meeting another animal. 

Bear in mind that the cows in England who would develop to speak in English would find fault with the English nation for slaughtering their forefathers many centuries back for food. However, the cows in India which remain as animal cows, would not have the means to complaint about the more barbarian manner of killing that their forefathers had to bear.

However the fact that they live in a social ambience far above what the other dogs in other nations live in will not be mentioned. In those nations the dogs would still be living a life of devoted worship for their human master. In the England, the dogs would be superior to human beings and would demand equality to be statutorily encoded. In later centuries, a fabulous dog would even stand in the elections and become the Prime Minister of England, for the superior dogs would out-number the native-English human beings of the nation. And he, instead of connecting himself to the great people of England, who corrected the genetic deficiencies of the dogs, would publically proclaim his link to the various other dog-populations in other nations.

Here am I denigrating anyone with this allegory? If anyone does think so, he has to think again. A dog that can speak perfect English, use computers, drive cars, and take command of human operations and such things! Is it inferior to the human beings? The truth is that it is definitely a far superior being in terms of physical and mental possibilities.

For, what the dog can do the human being can’t do. What the human being can do, the dog can do.

The whole social scenery would turn totally unbelievable when other dogs from other nations also start arriving in England with the help of their English compatriots and getting an anatomical change procedure done. They then learn English and all the other paraphernalia, including computers and vehicle driving. Next they would want all the facilities and social entrances that the dogs in England had achieved through centuries of mental and educational change. Well, this is the point of current day debate.

Now, what about the issue of what these dogs are having in their mind? Well, what they do translate into English is understandable. However what they leave out in the translation, no human being can understand. What they plan among themselves will all get sieved out in the translation. How they define, categorise, segregate, differentiate and, despoil and ennoble humans within the creepy confines of their own mental process would remain hidden from the human beings of England. For most of these emotions won’t have any equivalent in human emotions. Like the word eda and edi in Malayalam. They cannot be translated into English. For such beastly emotions are not there in English language and social intelligence.

The more these dogs improve, the more would be their complaints and criticism of the people of England. On the other peoples all around the world, they would not have any complaints. For, they had never given the occasion for their own dogs to improve.  

Here, I would jump to a minor part of the extension of the idea. The rest I leave to the reader to ponder upon. When a feudal language speaker translates his words into English, there is no conveying of the powerful tearing up of dignity in human features he has done in his own language and mental process. This part is real. But then the native-English speaker has no inkling of it. Well, that is the inherent danger that feudal language speakers carry forth in their communication systems. Their tearing part is not immediately understood. They do this and are doing it. Still, the native-English speaker does not know about it, until the English social system slowly, over the decades starts showing the scars.

Now, let me just move into a slight frill extension. The English speakers do not know what the superior dogs are thinking in their exact mental platforms. So, they decide to study the dog language. Well, it is here we come to a fact. A language is a software. In many ways it is connected to the body peculiarities of the being. It is a communication software. In animals, wherein there is no vocal cords, this software uses other body features to communicate it emotions, need to eat, calling others to hunt for food, urging sex, planning assault, setting up decoys etc. Now, learning an animal’s communication code is actually akin to turning into the animal itself. Once that is learnt, the same irritation that one dog has when it accosts another dog will set in the human being also.

Even though this contention may seem quite far-fetched, actually it is quite easy to convey. An Englishman does not know Malayalam. So, even if he is addressed as Nee, and referred to as Avan, it would have no effect on him. However, once he is made to learn Malayalam, he would understand the negative connotation, which would be quite unbearable and of satanic proportions to him, and he would react vehemently.

I have seen it happen when I was staying in a Hindi area in North India. A lady from the south was addressed by an ordinary vendor as Thum. She had not much problem with the addressing as she was not much good in Hindi. Moreover, she had the impression that Thu was Nee, Thum was Ningal, and Aap was Thangal when converted into Malayalam. However that was not the truth. Actually, Aap is the standard word of addressing that is polite and ‘respectful’. The other word Thum is not ‘respectful’ and when used by an ordinary road vendor is quite atrophying and of abominable content. Now, when I apprised her of this, she went into a wild fury and never allowed that vendor to sell her anything. However, the vendor had only done a momentary assessment of her from her dressing and her looks at that moment.

I have mentioned this thing just to point to the dangers in native-English speakers learning such oriental languages as Chinese, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhalese etc. without first understanding what it is one is changing into, as a software code that reaches deep down into the very life software of a person is being installed inside the mind. 

It is like this. There was a mini-lorry, a Swaraj Mazda, in our family. The driver and ‘cleaner’ of the vehicle were the typical no-English kind of lowly informed persons. {This categorisation is only from India. If they were to go to the US, they would very fast be like other Americans}. They were going to the next state of Karnataka. Their native language was Malayalam. The next state language was Kannada. For a Malayalam-speaking person who hears Kannada for the first, it is worse that Greek. So incoherent would it sound.  

They were going with another young man who was a businessman going to bring a lorry load of fertilisers from Karnataka to Kerala. He was a person with a squint. On the way, the lorry driver stopped the vehicle by the side of a paddy field. He wanted to clean his specks. There were women coming from the paddy field. The ‘cleaner’ got down to check the tyres. The young man with the squint was sitting on the side seat, looking straight on the road, with all his intent on reaching the fertiliser factory. However, to the women on the road, his eyes (with squint) were looking straight at them, in some prohibited areas. The driver said some funny thing about someone back home. The young man laughed loud and replied in the same vein, in a boisterous fashion. The women on the road saw him looking at their features and making loud snide remarks which they couldn’t understand.

Now, the fact was that many long-distance lorries, driven by low-informed youngsters do stop near these women, make comments on them and ride off. Now, here was a group that was daring to stop and try it out in a very cosy attitude. The women shouted out loud. The people in the lorry couldn’t understand that what they did was a call to battle. The men folk ran out of the fields, came near the side of the lorry, and caught the young man. He held on to the lorry for dear life, not understanding what the commotion was. They were beating him soundly.

On the rear side, the ‘cleaner’ had also being caught and was being efficiently manhandled. The driver shouted out to him to hold on to the lorry, while he started the vehicle and broke out of the gathering crowd.

I mention this just to illustrate the issue of miscommunication or non-communication or lack of coherent communication.

There is another incident that comes into my mind at this moment.

One young man, with whom I had casual acquaintanceship for some time told me this. He was coming to Kerala through a place called Gudalur. This is a place where the three Indian states of Karnataka, Tamilnad and Kerala meet. His jeep had a minor collision with a motorbike. The bike rider was a Tamil speaking man. An altercation naturally took place. The damage was inconsequential. However, the spoken words could move in directions along the indicant word scale, from that of mutual respect to, one-sided respect or to total pejoratives. Without abusive words and expletives. A phenomenon not enact-able in English!

The jeep rider mentioned that he was willing to do anything, meaning that he was willing to give whatever compensation was required. However, he spoke in Malayalam, in the understanding that Malayalam words could be understood in Tamil. However, what he spoke translated into the other man’s mind as ‘I am ready for anything!’ Meaning that he was willing to fight it out.

Immediately, instead of the issue cooling down, the other man went in for belligerent stance: ‘Nee (lowest You) enthum cheyyumo eda?’ The last sound eda, is also a provocative pejorative, with no equivalent in English. The words meant in English, ‘You will do anything?’, but then the provocative pejoratives are not there. In English, it had lost almost all its beastliness.

It has taken a few centuries for a major section of the African and Asian populations to learn English and to more or less arrive at a communication level with the English people. Now, let me take this as an allegory and position it to ponder on another thing.