He had been the chief monk of a small monastery – the only building on an island in a lake skirted by jungle - for over thirty years. Now, at the age of eighty, he was being moved to a temple in a town, close to the city of Galle, by the edge of the Indian Ocean. Here he would be close to a hospital and receive the palliative care that could not be provided on the island.
Although the temple, his new home, was surrounded by shops and the din of city life, it was surprisingly quiet within its walls. His was one several small rooms in a row that bordered a courtyard in which an ancient banyan tree offered shade, not only to the monks, but to the visitors and the dogs that sat or lay under its branches.
The old monk asked, on the day he arrived, that a wicker chair be placed on the covered veranda that ran in front of the row of rooms. There he could sit and look out onto the courtyard, admiring the great tree and watching the dogs who lay peacefully stretched out in the shade.
On his fifth day at the temple, the monk was taken to the hospital for an examination and given some stronger medicine for the pain that was becoming more intense. In the afternoon, in what had quickly become his custom, he sat on the wicker chair in front of his room. He noticed that the usual group of sand-coloured dogs had been joined by another one – clearly an old dog, but one who looked better fed and groomed than the others.
As he watched, he saw the dog sniff and turn its head in his direction. Slowly and stiffly, the dog walked towards him. When he reached the veranda, tail slightly wagging, the dog looked up, sniffed again, and then gently licked the old monk’s hand that rested on his knee.
Could it really be the same dog? – the monk asked himself. The same dog that was at the island monastery many years earlier? The dog that had very likely saved his life? Yes, it must be the same animal, he decided, when he saw the distinctive stripe that ran down the animal’s face and the scar on the left shoulder where the snake had bitten him. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ whispered the monk. The dog replied by again licking the man’s hand.
As he lifted the hand the dog was licking and stroked the animal’s head, vivid memories of events on the island welled up. The dog, he recalled, had been found by a young monk lying, exhausted, among the mangrove roots that fringed the island. He must have swum across the lake from the jungle, braving – or ignorant of – the crocodiles that patrolled the water.
Because it was New Year’s Day when the dog was found, the monks speculated that, like so many animals, he had fled inland to escape the great Boxing Day tsunami of the previous week. Frightened and hungry, the dog would have smelt a human presence on the island and risked the swim in search of safety and food.
The dog was certainly given plenty of food by the monks, and within two weeks had fully regained his strength. Soon he was playing, and occasionally fighting, with the other resident dog. The young monk who had found him would also play with him, throwing sticks for him to collect or a rubber ball for him to catch. When the dog became tired of games, he would often spend time with the chief monk who, even then, liked to spend hours seated in a wicker chair, calmly watching the scene before him.
Three months after the dog’s arrival, the chief monk was, as usual, sitting in his chair one evening. He had, however, fallen asleep and was unaware of the snake – a krait – that was beginning to slide up his bare leg, beneath the skirt of his robe. The dog, though, sensed and then saw the snake. He bounded up to the chair, seized the snake, shook it, and bit through its neck – but not before himself being bitten on his shoulder by the krait.
The dog did not die from the bite, but he was very ill for days, and then the wound became infected. He needed treatment that the monks were unable to provide. Fortunately, two French scholars, interested in some Buddhist texts housed in its library, were staying at the monastery. Their driver agreed to take the dog to an animal hospital on the coast where he could be treated.
Fifteen years on, the chief monk remembered clearly his sadness, tears even, on saying goodbye to the dog as his young colleague carried the animal to the car that would take him to the hospital. He recalled, too, his happiness when, some weeks later, he learned from the driver that the dog had entirely recovered. The driver’s wife, who ran a small guest house near the beach, had adopted the dog. Although he would miss him, the monk appreciated that a carefree life on the beach, in the company of lots of other dogs, would be better for the animal than a confined existence on the tiny island.
As he stroked the head of the dog, the old monk wondered how much of the events on the island the animal remembered. But it was enough to make him happy that the dog recognised him after so many years. A monk at the temple explained that the dog was only an occasional visitor. He had a good home in a guest house and came to the temple only when the guests had especially noisy and annoying children. In the temple courtyard, the old dog could find peace and calm beneath the banyan tree.
Reunited with the old monk, the dog now came to the temple more frequently. Instead of lying with the other dogs, he would immediately come to the veranda and sit by his old friend for an hour or two. Quietly, and sometimes asleep, the two friends enjoyed a sense of the presence of each other.
Such was the pattern until, four months after his arrival, the old monk’s condition worsened. He was taken to the hospital, where he died within a few hours. In the traditional Buddhist way, his body was placed on a funeral pyre. Hundreds of monks – from the island monastery, the temple, and elsewhere – stood around the pyre as the fire was lit. Sitting by the side of the monk who had found him among the mangrove roots many years ago was the old dog. The animal watched as the flames released his old friend from the body that had been his during the eighty years of a life now ended.
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United Kingdom • 82 years old