The dog a slice of Old Dhaka called its own

Rebecca was already crying when she looked up at the poster.

It had been taped to a plaster-worn wall along a narrow lane in Lalbagh, in Old Dhaka. The photograph showed a brown-and-white dog with an alert face. His name was Tomy. Beneath the photograph was a short tribute.

Tomy was not Rebecca’s dog. She keeps cats at her home nearby. But for years she had passed him on the street, as had almost everyone else in this part of Lalbagh. Tomy sat outside the shops. Sometimes he followed people to work. Children called his name from balconies.

Then, on a recent Thursday, he was gone.

Tomy died around noon at a veterinary clinic after complications following surgery to remove a tumour. He was 10 years old.

Nijam Uddin, a local shopkeeper who had cared for him since he was a puppy, went to collect the body. He washed Tomy, wrapped him in clean cloth and applied Aator. Then he put him in a van and took him to Iraqi Field, where he was buried.

Afterwards, the posters went up.

In another part of the city, the death of a street dog might have passed largely unnoticed. Here, people kept stopping beneath his photograph.

Old Dhaka has a way of making private lives public. Houses rise tightly above narrow lanes. Windows and balconies overlook shops. Conversations begin at doorways and continue on pavements. Shopkeepers know the children upstairs; children know who is sitting below. There is little distance between a home and the street.

Tomy lived somewhere between these two.

“We love and care for all the dogs around here, but Tomy was different,” Nijam said, standing outside his shop. “He had built a special relationship with everyone over all these years.”

He had technically belonged to Nijam, if belonging is the right word. Nijam had taken him in as a puppy and cared for him throughout his life. But Tomy spent much of that life outside, and the neighbourhood gradually acquired its own claim on him.

Children several floors above would spot Nijam on the street and call down.

They wanted news of Tomy.

People knew his routine. They knew where he liked to sit and which shops he visited. If a few men gathered for tea or stopped at a corner for a conversation, Tomy often appeared and joined them. He would settle beside the group without demanding anything.

He was good at being around people.

Shahzada, a barber whose shop stood along Tomy’s regular route, remembers the dog walking inside during working hours. Tomy would find a place in a corner, sit quietly and stay there with the barbers and their customers.

He did not bark for attention. He did not need to be entertained. After a while, he would get up and leave.

Residents also remember the confidence with which he moved through the neighbourhood. Some local students compared his walk to that of royalty: slow, composed, apparently certain that the street belonged to him.

With other dogs, that composure could disappear. “He had patience, but he also had this fierceness,” Nijam said.

Tomy knew his territory. When unfamiliar dogs entered it, he could become aggressive. Even when two or three dogs confronted him, Nijam recalled, he rarely retreated.

People were different.

Around the residents of Lalbagh, Tomy was gentle. He had spent years learning the rhythms of the lane: the shopkeepers opening in the morning, children passing through, customers entering the barber shop, groups forming and dissolving on street corners.

And they had learned his.

As Tomy grew older, his world became smaller. The four flights of stairs to Nijam’s home eventually became too difficult for him. Nijam could have confined him downstairs. He chose not to.

“I never kept him locked up because of his freedom,” he said. “I wanted him to live among everyone.” So Tomy stayed where he had always seemed most comfortable…on the ground, among the shops and people.

By then, keeping track of him had become a neighbourhood habit. That became more apparent when he fell sick.

People began stopping Nijam for updates. Children leaned from balconies and called down to ask how Tomy was doing. When he stopped eating properly, residents tried to coax him with the language Bengali families use with children. Baba. Sona.

The concern reached the local mosque. Mawlana Mizanur Rahman, imam of the nearby Medical Staff Quarter Jame Mosque, said kindness towards animals was part of Islamic teaching.

“Showing kindness to animals is certainly important,” he said, describing compassion towards street animals as a religious responsibility.

By then, Tomy was seriously ill. A tumour required surgery. He survived the operation but developed complications afterwards. On Thursday, at around noon, the veterinary clinic informed Nijam that Tomy had died.

The rituals that followed were simple. Back in Lalbagh, someone printed the posters.

In the days afterwards, people stopped beneath them. One person would remember something Tomy had done. Someone else would add another story. There would be a brief laugh. Then the conversation would return to his death.

The routines of the lane continued. Shops opened. Barbers worked. Children looked down from the upper floors. Men gathered outside for tea and conversation.

Only one familiar participant was missing.

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