John Wick: Ioseph beats Wick’s dog to death, Wick’s companion in grief. Wick exacts a terrible revenge. “It’s just a dog”, Ioseph protests later as Wick shoots him dead.
There’s a dog again: Yudhishthira, the King, is done with battle. Now an old man, he trudges wearily towards heaven. A scruffy dog follows him. Indra informs him that dogs cannot enter. Yudhishthira refuses to enter, where dogs aren’t allowed. Turns out, the dog is Dharma. Yudhishthira’s compassion vindicates himself and his brothers, out of their hell.
A Dog Again: Ritual fire ceremony by Janamejaya, great-grandson of the Pandavas. A dog wanders in, gets beaten up for his troubles – like a dog! It takes the fear of a curse to get Janamjeya to negotiate his way out.
“Like a dog” are also the last words of Kafka’s K in his stoic despair. Death, like Life, also begins on the other side of despair.
Yudishthira in a conversation with a tree Spirit. It is not a mere academic discussion: Life and Death hang in balance.
Question: What is happiness?
Maupassant’s ‘Happiness’: a tale of love between the aristocratic Suzanne and a man of simple means. Happiness to Suzanne meant something that was disagreeable to the many. Guy and Yudhishthira would’ve liked each other.
What is the highest Good?
Nachiketas also confounded Dharma with a similar question. Plato had his Forms and Cave. Socrates, his Republic. Aristotle wrestles with this question in his Ethics.
The king now journeys to the heavens. This leads him to reflect on his own dharma – his core competency, which seems to fail him when the stakes get high. He ‘put a jacket on the Truth’ when it suited him, writes Gurcharan Das. So what is Dharma then, one wonders?
Yudhishthira is a conflicted man. His dharma fails him of his own volition, unlike Maupassant’s Suzanne. Her dharma is the strength of her will – She is his ‘stronger’, one may argue. She, too is abandoned by all – like a dog!
Here’s another dog: Semillante, the widow Saverini’s faithful in Maupassant’s ‘Vendetta’. Her instrument of vengeance, having lost her son. Having exacted her revenge, Semillante gives her a good night’s sleep.
Wick also needs a dog having lost one – finds one with whom he walks into the unknown – to a good night’s sleep.
“How sweet is mortal Sovranty!” — think some:
Others — “How blest the Paradise to come!”
Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum
Sufficient lead stories to wrap up with a quatrain by Khayyam!
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