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It was ten minutes to 5 p.m. and time for Miss Dolly Moberly to feel excited. She paced along the balcony throwing restless glances at the narrow street below. Robinson was already there, gazing up with the devotion of a dog. Robinson, of course, was a dog, as were Mac and Badal who were yet to arrive. They resided in the slum not far from ‘The Rest’. Their owners, if they had any, must be calling them by other names. One day Miss Moberly had thrown a crust of bread to a dog and the crust had smartly landed in its mouth. Delighted, she had forthwith named it Robinson. Thereafter the dog would bound up to her with wagging tail and twinkling eyes whenever she called it by that name.

One evening, while she relaxed in her easy chair on the balcony and enjoyed the dog’s vigorous tail-wagging below, she gave some leisurely thought to this question: Why, of so many names, had Robinson come so readily to her tongue? It did not take long for her to remember the bewhiskered Mr.Robinson, her father’s chum who sported impressive sideburns, and was secretary of the local Anglo-Indian society. On the outskirts of the town lived another Robinson whose poultry produce was famous as the Sahib’s Eggs. Both had departed long since.

From the parapet a middle-aged cat–one which reminded Miss Moberly of a retired magistrate–watched the dog, disgust writ large on its chubby face. Miss Moberly always felt uneasy at the sight of this cat. ‘The Rest’ was a home for the affluent aged and it was true that most of the inmates had no near enough relatives to care for them, but the organization which ran it was a sound one and from the attendants right up to the health officers and the prefect, everybody worked with commendable dedication. For all their goodwill, however, and for the fat chunks they knocked off your bank-deposit month after month (or you could surrender your regular pension to them), they could not provide you with dear ones if you had none–none to visit you and warm you up with a few endearing words.

Did that mean that anyone could play uncle to you? But that was exactly what this cat was doing! It would appear on the threshold of her cabin near about midnight and give out a lusty mew which evidently amounted to ‘How are you?’ but which also seemed to contain an arrogant hint that you were bound to be happy under the arrangements here and that if you were not, none but yourself was to blame.

Miss Moberly used to answer the cat, ‘I’m O.K. Thanks.’ But despite her perfunctory tone, the cat would hop on to her bedside table and cast a piercing look at her before making a vigorous exit through the window.

In the beginning Miss Moberly had quietly put up with this odious behaviour of her nocturnal visitor, although it had not taken her long to find out that the cat had nothing to do with the management of the institution. But the night she, quite by chance, found out that it was a male cat (and realized to her own amazement that all her life she had thought of all the cats as belonging to the female sex alone), she had told it straightaway, ‘Your supervising is rather uncalled for. Please leave me alone.’ She repeated her protest to the cat at its subsequent visits, but in vain.

This struck her as strange, for she was certain that cats had once been much more sensitive and humble. Of course, that was seventy years ago. She remembered at least one of her mother’s several cats. They had at the time a young tenant on the upper floor of their house.

‘There you are!’ Miss Moberly told herself and grinned. ‘He was yet another Robinson! ’ In fact, the only Robinson that had once mattered to her!

Robinson used to return to his apartment in the evening and cook for himself, invariably inviting his landlady’s cat to share his supper with him. The pussy would shoot up the stairs at his call and return an hour later, its tail raised in triumph.

After a few months devoted to an exchange of shy smiles with the tenant, Miss Moberly, then a teenager and beautiful, had tied a love letter to the cat’s neck just before it was summoned upstairs. The letter was not long, but behind it lay a week’s toil over numerous drafts.

When the cat returned, what it carried, tied to its tail instead of neck, was not a reply but the same letter, soiled with butter, jam and curry.

Seventy years later Miss Moberly called out from her balcony, ‘Robinson!’

Robinson wagged its mangy tail and gave out a tender bark.

Once Miss Moberly had realized the significance of the name she had bestowed on it she had consciously named the second and the third dogs as Mac and Badal. Mac deceived her, after carrying on an affair with her long enough to make it the talk of the town. It would have been hard to find a dignified match after the scandal and Miss Moberly did not bother to try.

It was a decade later that the millionaire Badai had come forward to propose to her. He was a widower with a clean reputation and, at fifty, had suddenly fallen in love, for the first time in his life, he declared on oath. What a headlong fall is here, my countrymen! ’ a professor friend used to tease them with a parody of Shakespeare. ‘Then, religion, caste and kin sank down slain whilst bloody love flourished over them! ’

Badai closed down his business in Saigon but on his way back died in a shipwreck.

Badai, of course, could not be grouped with Robinson and Mac. But no longer did Miss Moberly bear any resentment even against those two. Not that she had ever formally pardoned them, but God must have. That alone explains her slowly transcending her anguish.

The gallant Badai died while he was at the peak of his happiness. For a long time Miss Moberly loved to imagine that the ship had sunk while Badai was fast asleep, dreaming of her, and the next moment he had found himself in the heavens where he still awaited her,sporting the same milky smile under his bushy moustache.

But what about Mac? After he had squeezed out of her all he wanted, he joined an international gang of thugs. Injured in an encounter with the police, he died of gangrene. (Till she tired of the fantasy. Miss Moberly had nursed a faint hope that Mac’s last message, to be delivered to her any day, was: ‘Dolly dear, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry….’)

And Robinson! Perhaps the chap had never been able to love anything better than a cat all his life. Miss Moberly was convinced, though she could not say why, that unheard and unsung, he had died of leukaemia in some mofussil town, and that his skeleton was dangling in the anatomy department of the new medical college attached to the impoverished local hospital.

Miss Moberly stopped pacing to and fro and, leaning on the railing, looked down. At once three tails began wagging and three tongues lolled. Robinson, Mac and Badai. Miss Moberly disappeared into her room and emerged, chuckling, with a small plastic tray filled with crumbs of cake, bread, and biscuit.

‘Would you now set the chairs on the balcony and prepare tea?’ she called faintly to her attendant. It was time for her friends to arrive. Mr Doss was already in the park below, whacking his stick in the air and killing time. That was his virtue. If he arrived even half a minute early, he would kill that half-minute prayerfully looking at his watch, outside the door. ‘You are almost an Englishman, Mr Doss!’ his boss used to observe when he was in service. Mr Doss took the tribute as the crowning glory of his life and was never tired of repeating it.

Mrs Sawoo should be arriving any moment, accompanied or followed by Mr Jacob. All three, now in their late eighties, were slightly older than Miss Moberly. Her father had been an influential man in the town, with varieties of achievements and a couple of titles earned from the British Raj. Her acquaintances, naturally, were numerous. But these three were the last surviving members of an inner circle which had sighed at every phase of the tragedy that dominated her life. They claimed to be younger than she in spirit and had begun to insist that she had lately been prone to mild hallucinations and should be careful about it. Mrs Sawoo, for instance, asserted that it was wrong to imagine that a male cat could ever talk! Miss Moberly should have quipped that the cat talked in its own language and not in English! But the fitting rejoinder always evaded her when most needed and occurred hours after she had been snubbed.

All that the three had done for a good many years now was to sympathize with her. At last the day had come for them to realize that it was not just sympathy that was her due; she deserved congratulations too. Henceforth no one would be able to say that her life had been nothing if not a calendar of failures. She was now ready to demonstrate to all concerned her spectacular success in striking her target.

‘Dolly darling!’

Doss, Mrs Sawoo and Jacob entered together and Mrs Sawoo gave her a noisy kiss. Miss Moberly did not neglect showing her usual warmth but she remained thoughtful. She must demonstrate her feat in an artful manner; the guests should suspect that she was making a deliberate show of it.

A crumb fell from Mrs Sawoo’s hand. Miss Moberly stooped to pick it up.

‘Sorry, but leave it there, dear,’ murmured Mrs Sawoo.

Miss Moberly smiled and holding the crumb in her hand long enough to draw everybody’s attention to it, suddenly threw it over the railing. Robinson jumped up and caught it in its mouth. Mac and Badal, knowing that their turns were coming, licked their lips and gave out subdued barks.

‘Excellent!’ said Jacob and Doss.

‘Thank you, but wait and see!’ Miss Moberly turned her chair to face the road and placing the plastic tray on her lap, began throwing the crumbs with style and verve. The dogs romped and hopped, catching the missiles with dexterity.

‘Excellent. Wonderful! ’

The guests were liberal with their exclamations. Miss Moberly did not recall at what point she had stood up. The rhythm of the romping dogs found an echo in her own motions. She almost danced as she threw the crumbs.

‘Come on, Dolly, enough of it. Drink your tea!’ said Mrs Sawoo in a matronly tone.

The plastic tray had been emptied. Miss Moberly sat down, satisfaction reigning on her face like a sunrise.

‘Hah! you are surprised, aren’t you? Believe it or not, rarely do I miss my target. Who could have thought that I would be able to achieve success ninety times out of a hundred,’ she managed to say between mild gasps, and laughed.

‘Why not, Dolly! ’ Mrs Sawoo remarked while stirring her tea.

Miss Moberly looked down and waved at the dogs. ‘Still there, eh! Disperse, quick! See you tomorrow!’ she said.

‘It is a regular sport with you, is it, Dolly?’ Jacob queried with a chuckle.

‘Who could have dreamed that I would be such a success at it!’ Miss Moberly trilled bashfully.

‘Well, Dolly, is there a cleverer hunter among the beasts than a dog?’ observed Doss.

‘Exactly,’ Mrs Sawoo took upon herself to elucidate the remark. ‘A dog will snap up a crumb even if you threw it with your eyes shut! ’

‘Do you remember my Alsatian, Don Juan? Once he nabbed a robin from a branch two and half yards above the ground–yes–he did so while I looked on,’ reminisced Doss, drawing in the air with his stick the location of the bird’s perch and the swiftness with which Don Juan had pounced upon its prey.

‘And I believe you all remember,’ he continued, ‘Sweet Heart, my spaniel during my Simla stint, whose picture had appeared in Vol. 3, No. 7, Page 12, March 1921 number of Dogs International, with a feature by Mr Richard Whites. How diligently Sweet Heart would fetch the tennis ball with a bite as tender as a kiss!’ Doss kept a slice of cake under his own tender bite for a while and then resumed, ‘I just can’t help recalling again and again the observation Mr Whites had made–that looking at Mr Doss, the ideal doggy, and Sweet Heart, his regal spaniel, one could suspect that Sweet Heart was the master and Mr Doss was her dog! But I used to protest, ‘Such compliments, Sir, are not my due!’ Mr Whites would say, ‘Mr Doss! You were almost an Englishman, except for this humility of yours, ha ha!’

For the next half-hour they remained engrossed in discussing the great dogs they had known in their life.

Nobody marked how dead Miss Moberly’s face looked and how awkward the movement of her limbs had become.

The guests stood up.

‘Till next week, Dolly, darling! ’ said the gentlemen, and Mrs Sawoo kissed her goodbye.

Miss Moberly, as brisk and breezy as an orchestra-conductor only minutes ago, walked into her room holding on to the wall and sprawled on the bed.

‘Despite all your glittering false teeth with which you try to smile clever, you

are a fool, Mrs Sawoo. And despite your dyed moustache which you still strive to keep forked out in your damned desire to look dashing, you are a snob, Mr Doss. And, Mr Jacob, you are a nincompoop!’ mumbled out Miss Moberly and that gave her the strength to sit up for a while. She did not know when sleep overtook her.

As soon as she woke up early in the morning and saw her supper lying untouched on the table and recollected the events of the evening, she began taking determined steps to tide over her anguish. At first she reminded herself for the thousandth time that it was vain to expect true understanding from human beings, including those who had been near and dear ones for decades. Then she tried to forget the matter and, failing, set about analysing the minds of her three friends. She concluded that since they had fallen into the habit of sympathizing with her for her missing the target all her life, they had grown chronically incapable of accepting her success even when it was so glaringly evident.

She was charmed by her own power to delve into the very crux of the matter and that gave her some peace.

But she soon hit upon the real mischief the deplorable episode had done. It had bred some misgivings in her mind about her own capacity and the doubts bred a deepening sense of frustration. But could she afford to lose her self-confidence just because of casual comments by a few silly felows? ‘No!’ she told herself, ‘No, no, no!’

She must prove, at least to herself, that her achievement was as real as her confidence in herself.

In the evening Miss Moberly stole several peeps into David Dawson’s room. The retired brigadier passed his mornings in humming or whistling ancient war tunes and his afternoons in snoozing against a huge bolster.

After strolling for a while along the balcony in front of Dawson’s room during which she assessed the brigadier’s condition, Miss Moberly stealthily entered the room and came out in a minute. Dawson did not open his eyes.

Back on the balcony she breathed deeply, inhaling a lot of oxygen and courage. She knew under which side of the pillow Dawson kept his pistol. She wavered for a moment and then entered the room again, picked up the weapon, and tiptoed out.

Now she could prove it! The dogs might get the credit in the case of the crumbs. But surely, it could not be the same when it came to receiving a bullet! If she could hit one, it would be entirely due to her accuracy of aim, not the dog’s.

Who should it be? Robinson, Mac or Badal? Any would do. Poor Badal! But what business had he to fall in love if die he must in a shipwreck? None of them deserved mercy. She could shoot down any of them. Couldn’t she? Of course she could! she assured herself, breathing in deeply several times.

‘Damn it! Who the hell took away my pistol? Good God! Dolly, you!’ Brigadier Dawson screamed and hobbled towards the door. Miss Moberly stood still, pressing the pistol to her breast, like a child stubbornly refusing to part with a toy.

‘You meant to commit suicide, Dolly? Yoho!’ the old warrior screamed again, trembling all over.

‘Suicide?’ cried out Jayshri Mishra, former actress and one-time mistress of a prodigal prince, as she came rushing, her eyes ignited by the brigadier’s exclamation.

‘Suicide? Oh no!’ cried out in a cracking voice the retired principal Jonathan Jana, who generally kept quiet during the day but at night taught Milton in his sleep.

‘Suicide?’ shrieked Miss Moberly herself and she broke into wild sobs.

The actress and the principal tried to take hold of Miss Moberly’s tiny head. She obliged both, first leaning on the actress’s breast and then on the principal’s. She also allowed the brigadier, who showed remarkable consideration and patience in relieving her of the weapon, to fondle her.

It was the principal who first echoed her sobs. He was instantly joined by the actress and the brigadier.

Fifteen feet below, Robinson, Mac and Badal yapped politely. The wellwishers led Miss Moberly to her bed. Jayshri prepared coffee for all. The duty of hurling crumbs at the dogs was discharged by the brigadier. They all sat around Miss Moberly till late in the night, had their supper together, and talked of human goodness and God’s kindness and exchanged anecdotes of profound significance.

‘Now, go to sleep, sweet child, my very sweet child,’ said the principal stroking Miss Moberly’s head and bidding her an affectionate goodnight.

When the male cat appeared at midnight and put its usual question to Miss Moberly, she did not take offence at all. She had begun to see a guardian in everyone.

‘I’m quite all right. Thank you,’ she told the cat politely and fell asleep.