The Angry Sadhu and the Contented Dog

March 1, 2026

Suresh, the tea seller, harks my attention in the busy narrow bazaar street passing in front of Parmarth Niketan Ashram.

He is a happy, dark-coloured man, smiling face, elegant manners, soft words. He is at peace. I cannot see the hard edges of restlessness in him.

I ask about his pet, Sweetie.

“She died a few months ago,” he says sadly, the female dog whom he loved so much.

The loss is visible on his face.

“She died due to kidney failure,” he adds.

His son is sitting nearby on a bench.

“We have another pet now,” his son informs me. “It's a Rottweiler named Jack.”

That's how life moves—losses, then new additions, change. There is nostalgia about the past, but then something new in the present to cling to.

I am having tea at his stall.

The tea man Suresh is now in conversation with a sadhu who is standing across the grills separating the narrow path from the riverside platform.

“What day is it today?” the sadhu asks the chaiwala.

“It is Wednesday.”

“Is it Wednesday?” he asks.

This query triggers a strong reaction in a woman passing through the street. She stops and starts shouting at the sadhu, a middle-aged woman beaten down by circumstances. She is draped in a worn-out shawl and carries a bag made of sackcloth.

“What did you say? You don't know how to behave with a woman? I will report you to the police,” she shouts.

The sadhu also gets angry.

“She is mad, a mad woman, okay! I challenge you to take me to the police. What would they even think about a mad woman's antics? She is a mad woman. She broke her daughter's head. She is a wandering lunatic. Her family has turned her out. Of course, the reason is her madness. Mad, mad.”

The sadhu is giving counter-punches.

“All of us are mad in our own ways,” I mutter under my breath.

“You should not get angry like this, Sadhu Maharaj,” I say.

The woman has walked on, but the sadhu is carrying on in the same angry pitch.

“Why shouldn't one get angry? One has to get angry in such situations. Otherwise, how will one even survive?” he justifies his anger.

He cites scriptures to defend his right to be angry under such provocative circumstances.

“Yes, I agree, it is natural to be angry.”

He is mollified slightly by my acceptance of his right to be angry.

Then he talks with ease, opens up, shares his story.

“What do we have? We have these dogs and cows for our family,” he says.

He then tells me the names of all the stray dogs roaming around.

“One of them bit me the other day.”

He shows me his middle finger.

“He bit me by mistake, not intentionally. He was thrashing a little puppy like a bad bully. I intervened to save the tiny puppy, and he bit me out of instinct.”

He points to the dog that had bitten him.

“But the next day when I fed him, I could see that he was very sorry about his behaviour. I could read this in his eyes.”

The sadhu is from Juna Akhara. Bhagwan Dattatreya is their patron guru.

Bhagwan Dattatreya had 21 gurus, he tells me, and one of them was a dog.

“Why a dog?” I ask.

“Because a dog is santoshi, contentment personified. A very contented being. Suppose you are eating from a plate on the ground, and a dog comes to sit nearby, keeps looking at you eating your food. If you don't offer it even a single morsel and finish your food, pick your plate and walk away, the dog will still have something to get contentment from. It will come and inhale the smell of your plate on the ground and draw some pacification and contentment from it. Even this much is sufficient to pacify its hunger”

He lovingly looks at the stray dogs whom the sadhus have given lovely names.

The sadhu listens to Osho ... on his smartphone, of course.

Phone is a must these days. Only very poor Babas don't have a smartphone.

“Osho is full of knowledge,” he says. “Osho tells very interesting things, but still he can't know the ultimate truth, because for that you need to have a guru to see you through.”

He says we ascetics give our guru the bigger place, even more than God.

“But Osho had life and living itself as his guru,” I say.

“Yes, but that is not as good as having a real guru.”

I want to say that Osho himself is guru to millions, so will his disciples get enlightenment?

But I don't say it.

The sadhu has regained his kind posture. He is smiling lovingly. Why spoil this by falling into arguments?

I think it is better to keep mum over points that might bruise someone's conception of life. Fight with your own opinions if it pays you in your career. Otherwise, it is a wastage of lung power and precious energy.

One need not carry weapons of oral armory in small talks within families, nukkads and bazaars.