RAJU was born in a village near Vehari city some six months ago. He has already been initiated in the bloody battle tradition. His current master had been fascinated by all these stories of how dogs of certain fighter breeds could win big duels at melas to bring their owners fortune. In this instance there were fortunes that could only be changed through a gamble.

When he heard that a fighting breed pair originally brought to the plains of Punjab from Kashmir was ready for mating, the fortune-seeker offered the dog owners his land as the rendezvous point. In return he was to have a male pup when the mother gave birth a couple of months later, which could then be trained as a fighter.

There were costs involved in having your place selected for the event. That meeting, with all its accompanying ceremony, set the host back by Rs8,000 — two-thirds of the monthly salary he drew working as a driver in Lahore. He was to later realise that this was only a small instalment of the investment he was to make in the hope the project would bring him honour, (which was at least as important as the money) and the money of course.

Given the title of Raju as a good omen for the princely conquests he was expected to make, the new guest in the modest village house had his own needs. Some of Raju’s siblings had been lucky to have found a home in more affluent houses with more resourceful mentors. Raju, on his part, had to make the best of what he had in exploiting the dream of a man with limited means to eke out as good a life for himself as possible.

He did quite well under the circumstances, managing to extract a fair share of the milk from the cow the family part-owned. With time he developed a liking for rotis. A few months’ old, he could have half a dozen of them twice a day, apart from being fed supplements.

Whereas the gold-digger himself was compelled to work far away in Lahore, the work and expenses Raju entailed was a bit too much for his wife to handle by herself. He says his wife — he never refers to her as his wife but only as ‘folks back home’ — gently forced upon him the idea of bringing Raju all the way to Lahore. After all, for many years he had been living with a well-off landowner who treated him like his son.

If other things required a little bit of effort to procure, there was always plenty of milk available, sent over from the landowner’s village not far from the city. A few extra glasses of milk that is synonymous with strength and power in the fortune-seeker’s book could do Raju’s chances in the big bout no harm.

The man says he was encouraged by the prospects of grooming his charge in better, urban settings with greater resources at his disposal. But a polite inquiry is enough to reveal that he was torn between two thoughts.

He imagined the happy scenario of Raju winning a grand battle and fetching him a neat sum from the “buyers from Kashmir who are always on the lookout” for high-pedigree dogs with an unblemished history in battle. Or, if the price was good, and it had to be good given the popular demand for all kinds of ‘doggies’ in fashionable Lahore, he could sell Raju right away.

He must have also been a bit concerned about the possibility of Raju losing the big bout. If that happened, the dog would be reduced to a worthless creature, with all those rotis, all that butter and supplements plus a dream coming to naught.

Raju arrived to a promising enough reception in the city, notwithstanding the sleepless nights his cries in the alien land caused to his surprised hosts. People turned up, eager to behold the red-eyed dog’s gaze, searching for a future victor’s resolve there. But for whatever their praise was worth, the eagerest of them put a Rs30,000 tag on it. Just Rs30,000? “I have spent much more than that on rearing it.”

Raju’s fate was sealed. With the effort to feed him and finding for him a place where the dog could be less intrusive for the city’s peace acting as an additional damper, Raju was all set to return home after a failed expedition, but the door of fortune was far from closed. As if to mock the city dwellers for their inability to recognise real talent, news soon came from the village that Raju had stood his ground in a preliminary match, hopefully leading to the grand title fight in future.

That was something for his master to be proud of; only there were ill-timed interventions that prevented some of those around the latter to share the happy moment he had been working towards for so many months. There had been an advertisement in the newspaper announcing a fighter dog and the campaigners against cruelty to animals were genuinely upset.

Soon the message will be conveyed to Raju’s mentor and he will not be encouraged to read out his bulletins on his proud ward’s conquests. Man’s urge to fight in various guises will remain. Raju’s exploits may continue but the disconnect will be a relief to the conscience.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.