Two lives.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Most of the day, she is lying silently on the pavement, her head flopped down. Behind her, over the same hours, he stays super-busy rustling out one round of tea after another. The young man stands by his gas burner, his arms a blur with the stirring and pouring of chai for his customers. While she occasionally curls deeper into herself, lowering her face towards her paws. Neither looks at the other. But it seems each might miss the other if one were not there.

The dog is Lucy. The tea man is Jawed. All the other people living and/or working on this stretch of a Central Delhi road-side call her Lucy too. Jawed thinks she must be around two. The tea stall anyway is new. Jawed opened it this month, having earlier worked as an attendant in a chicken shop. His open-air establishment consists of a table, a bench, and a gas cylinder. The stall also serves boiled eggs and chatpata Maggi noodles. This evening, a peeled egg is resting on a steel plate covering a saucepan. On the egg crate, rose petals are arranged among a smattering of tomatoes and green chillies. The roses are drying.

It has to be admitted that Jawed and Lucy are not fast friends. They do not engage in much batcheet. He calls her only when he has something for her to eat or drink. She understands the words “khana” and “pani.” Every day, Jawed collects chicken feet from the area’s meat shops for Lucy’s khana. He also feeds three other dogs in the vicinity—Jeny, Lawrence and Sheru. Although Jeny hangs out at the nearby stall of “Shahnaz Chai Wali,” Jawed says, much as Lucy at his.

That said, Lucy has no particular place reserved for her. The pavement in front of Jawed’s stall remains mostly clear of passers-by and garbage, and so she lies there. Indeed, at four in the morning, when Jawed opens the stall, she is already around. At 11 at night, when he closes, she accompanies him part of the way to his home nearby. Beyond a certain point, she stops. The dogs there are possessive about their area, Jawed explains.

Recently, a fight with another dog left Lucy injured at the back of her neck. Jawed says he brought “engine oil” from a car repair workshop and applied it to the wound. He credits it with her recovery.

“Lucy never bites,” Jawed says. Sometimes she does bark when somebody kicks her. Now, being photographed, Lucy suddenly raises her head, bares her teeth and growls. Jawed makes kissing sounds. She at once calms down, withdrawing beneath a row of parked scooters. Only her face and paws are showing.

Later, a customer is lingering beside the tea stall bench. Lucy quietly approaches him, sniffs his backside, and returns to her usual place in front of Jawed’s stall. See photo.