A Dog At St Stephen's College Romanticizing His Melancholic Solitude

 

A Dog At St Stephen's College Romanticizing His Melancholic Solitude.

Picture Credit: Sarthak Kanswal(self)  My VSCO Profile

A lone dog lies stretched across a green bench in our beloved college, occupying it with the casual entitlement of a creature that has temporarily inherited the world, or at least the bench. The bench, something designed for human rest, for a small period of time becomes the private throne of this beautiful animal, who is almost a student of this college without clearing cutoffs, just by luck, geographic luck they call it.

The dog appears as if it is romanticizing its own melancholic solitude, something many of us do (I certainly do it very often). Sitting alone, one begins to look backward at the day that has passed, then further back at the life they already lived or could’ve lived, and inevitably forward again toward the uncertain shape of the future or the future they could’ve had. Benches like these become small observatories for introspection or maybe little time machines. People sit here thinking about friendships, disappointments, ambitions, or about life, that life which is somehow both moving too fast and not moving at all.

Of course, the dog is probably doing none of this. It is unlikely that the dog is contemplating existence, regret, or destiny (hopefully we don’t know anything about the dog economy). Yet the image tempts us to project these human emotions onto it. Why else would it choose the bench when there is an entire empty ground stretched out in front of it? The bench is not necessary for survival. The ground would do perfectly well and comfortable too, to both humans and dogs, yet the dog chooses elevation and perhaps even visibility.

This choice is what makes the scene feel very symbolic. There is something deeply human about the bench, it represents pause, waiting, reflection. By occupying it, the dog accidentally or possibly intentionally imitates the posture of a human thinker. One begins to wonder, is the dog mimicking its human counterparts simply because it has watched them do this countless times? Or is it something simpler and more instinctive, the animal equivalent of a passing thought, “This looks comfortable. I will sit here, it’s mine.”

Perhaps the more interesting question is not what the dog is thinking, but what we are thinking when we look at it. Humans have a peculiar habit of turning solitude into something poetic. We sit alone and frame our loneliness as reflection, our confusion as philosophy (like I am doing with this picture right now). The dog, meanwhile, is probably simply enjoying warmth, shade, and the luxury of an unoccupied seat and possibly thinking about things which are more meaningful like chasing campus cats and food.

In that sense, the photograph quietly reveals two different relationships to solitude. Humans sit on benches trying to understand their lives. The dog sits on the bench simply living one.