Tail it straight

So, as we reported on Thursday, when a dog’s tail wagging has a Left-wing bias, it is a clear message not all is well, that it is upset. A Right-wing tendency, in contrast, means all’s right in that canine world. Of course, the association in canine affairs between a Left-wing tendency and not everything being all right should not be extrapolated to analyses of human activity. Humans should instead notice the splendid lack of ambiguity in canine communication. In human affairs, Left-wing and Right-wing biases offer no such clarity. To take a few examples from that peculiar human preoccupation: politics. Is the CPM Left-wing or Right-wing about industrialisation in Bengal? Is the BJP being Right-wing when it opposes, say, liberal patent laws? What about the Congress’s position on reforms? It seems to be Right, Left and centre at the same time. We don’t know. Probably the CPM, the BJP and the Congress don’t know either. But clearly, if every human action could be unambiguously interpreted, this would be a much better world.

What did the boss mean when he/she nodded but had a slight frown while indicating assent? What did the employee mean when he/she said yes but gulped while saying so? At work, at home, in love, and in courts, we spend hours trying to figure out what some us meant when we did/ said/indicated something. What a waste. If dogs studied humans — they study humans of course; what we mean is if they published their findings — they would perceive us as an extraordinarily strange species. And churlish, too.

We lack the canine felicity for clear communication but we are extravagant when it comes to giving a dog a bad name. ‘A dog’s life’, ‘dog eat dog’, ‘gone to the dogs’ — these and other unattractive phrases about a species which can do wonders with a shake of a tail. Human Left-wingers called Tony Blair George Bush’s poodle. A poodle wouldn’t have waffled about Iraq. Was the war justified? Is it going well? Ask it and watch the tail.