The day the dog howled...

I want to tell you about a surreal incident that happened to me about four years ago. The year was 2015 and month was February. 

In early 2015 I was working in Mumbai as the Head - IT Applications for a leading manufacturing company. I was staying in an apartment complex in Vashi, Navi Mumbai. I had joined the company in 2012 and after two and a half years of working there, I had submitted my resignation from the company in December of 2014. I was asked to stay back till March 2015.

I had been staying alone in Mumbai for over two years and had got bored with the traffic and travel time in the city and looked forward to coming back to Bangalore where my parents and family lived. 

One day in early February, on 4th February to be precise, in the night I heard a dog howling. Normally dogs howl in response to some other dogs howling in the distance. In this case I did not hear any other dogs howling. This was a solitary dog howling very close to my apartment complex, may be inside it. It felt weird

Right from childhood, I have been told that the howling of a dog signifies an impending bad news. 'Dogs can hear Yama (the god of death) arriving', so went the conventional wisdom, 'when they do that, they express their fear by howling'. 

I did not care for much of that stuff. I am educated and rational. 

I remember vaguely wondering if someone in our apartment complex has passed away. Even if it had happened I would not have known it. I lived an isolated life in Mumbai. I hardly knew anyone in my apartment.

Next day morning, as I came down to go to office at 8.00 AM, there was a dog sitting right in my path and it was howling. It is rare to see howling dogs in the morning. This dog was in my path and it was looking at me and howling. I was disconcerted and felt uncomfortable. Old lessons have strong roots, you know. 

It was like some bad news was imminent and I wondered what that will be. My mind went through the list of people in Mumbai that I knew who were struggling with ill health. I still held on to the idea that it has got to do something with residents of the apartment complex where I lived. Let me go to the office now and I will check up with the watchman in the evening I decided. 

I had to know.

In the evening I checked with watchman. He told me that someone was sick in the previous night and was taken to the hospital late at night.
So that was the bad news. I felt relieved. It felt like closure.

After I heard what the watchman told me, I did not give it any more thought.

On 7th February, in the evening at 9.15 PM, my father passed away.

Coincidence? I think not. The universe was sending me a message, which I did not want to acknowledge.