Paranthas. That is what started if off…
It’s cold here. And as the heat of the body goes inwards, to protect all those vital organs, it stokes the ‘kayagni’, the digestive fire, into an irrepressible force. You either heed it, or some of your insides undergo spontaneous combustion. (Ayurvedic vigyaan for free here, folks. You’re Welcome.) And yesterday evening, as the cold was setting in, prognosticating this very event, I went into the kitchen to cook some Paranthas. (The Windows Live Writer is applying semi-bold to all words it cannot understand… Paranthas, dearie, are sort of… stuffed Indian bread… if I said chappatis, you’d have… yeah, exactly)…
So, with Jacob here as my sous chef, made some of them, and a lip-smacking mushroom curry. (For getting me back in the kitchen for cooking adventures, thank you Masterchef Australia. WHAT? Masterchef isn’t a word?!
So, I saved it in the casserole. Thought the girls would throw it out the next day and save me the trouble. Wished it weren’t so, and that thing would get eaten, somehow…
Morning. Pleasantly chilly. It had rained the night before, and the temperature had actually gone up a notch. I had just finished my breakfast and stepped out to find…
Soft hearted females, here’s you cue for ‘Aww… how sweet/cute/(“”)’
…and the first thought I had was, ‘I just found someone who will be really grateful for a cold parantha, and who’d appreciate it way more than any Matt, George and Gary. Thank you, God Of Small Things.’
The poor mite had got drenched in the rain, and was shivering like anything. It had somehow got in through our gates below, and climbed up two flights of stairs to curl up at the end of the passageway. Technically I am on leave on Thursdays, and I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I thought, why not play God and make it this particular dogs’ day?
And so it began. First, I rubbed it down with tissues. Then I fed it. Looking around for something else that could warm up a dog other than a bitch in heat ( couldn’t resist that one, sorry), I found nothing in the castaway section. Thus, the sacrifice of one old mundu of mine…(the bold again? I’m past caring, you indophobic computer…what the? I give up.). I wrapped it up, then took it downstairs. Once it got warmed up a bit in the sun, it took a stroll around and picked a prospective property…
This place is great, man! I’ll take it!
When it made up its mind, I moved in the bedding and stuff…
Then I went in to the clinic to act out the part of my alter-ego, as a caring Ayurvedic physician {who is ‘IN’ even on holidays} (and to get my hands smelling human again) […when I’m not in my ultra secret avatar of (G)oofyboy - for whom stray dogs and their big eyes are like kryptonite to Superman…]
While scrubbing myself down, I succumbed to that fetish of mankind, and started contemplating a name for this newcomer. After attending to a patient, I invited the therapists to contribute their paisa worth… Sweetie, Rocky, Tommy, Shruti, (You racist bigot, you…), and a whole lot of others came up, but were condemned to the christening trash can. Being unsure of the sex of the small one, and too bashful/lazy to ascertain it, I asked my mind to come up with a apt unisexual name… It cranked its rusty levers, and coughed up – “Prateek-sha”, and then sat back, smiling smugly.
I stared it down till I got an explanation.
“Prateeksha, you dolt. It means hope. You symbolize hope for that creature. It does the same for you. What did that last sentence mean? I don’t have a clue.”
My mind has attacks of pseudo-Zen sometimes. As frequent as diarrhea in the South Indian tourists in Delhi. And as awful.
“Besides, if it is male, you can just call it Prateek Shah (ah, look! Communal discrimination) , with the ‘H’ silent in writing”
Huh? Okay, well, so that was fixed. Prateek-sha it would be. (We found out later on that it was a female, therefore, with your permission, pronoun usage likewise.) Next step, heating up water, and washing her down with some dettol et al. (‘dettol’ too? Really? Does chloroxylenol work for you? Apparently not…Oh, wait. Dettol? Of course, Brands are spelled with a Big B). Once again, dried it off, then set up the lodgings, this time with a personal touch…
Looking at the photo above, I now see it represents the life of the household pet. “We’ll give you a name (name board), we’ll chain you (them metal links), we’ll train you (skipping rope), we’ll wipe your s#!^ coz we don’t want it to stink (tissue paper)”
And so…
I’m living ‘under’ the name of Prateek-sha coz he doesn’t know my real one? Anyway, ho-hum… This is so Winnie-the-Pooh…
And I’m cuter than that bear… so there.
Watching P-s like this made me understand the phrase ‘warming the cockles of my heart’.
To have someone to love, to care for..and to love and care for them – it is the greatest addiction you can have if you are attuned to the headiness of self-worth that is generated by gratefulness of others. When you do something for someone, you feel high. And after a while, you get bloated with self-importance and other noxious things. …That is why, perhaps, public servants are pompous asses sometimes, they do such a lot for so many. …That is why Krishna so wisely counseled – Karmani eva adhikaraste, maa phalesu kadachana… Reality? We don’t do anything for anyone else. All our actions help us. But our actions, through the change they bring upon us, change the universe.
All happy and glowing, I went up to drink some water, and when I was up there, glanced down. This is what I saw, and it slowly deflated me…
That is P-s on the left side of the fence, which is the right side to be. Marble floor, lodgings, food, water-bowl, the works… And left at the wrong side of the fence, those are her Mother and two siblings (out of the frame) on the right. They had come a-looking. I had played God, yes, but a petty personal one. Created a disparity of fortunes. Broken up a family that was happy in the streets. I couldn’t redeem even a bunch of strays, and look what the Big Man has on his hands, entire universes… If there is a God, then Respect, Thalaiva… You’re one heck of a Manager.
After lunch, I came out to find that Prateek-sha had again climbed upstairs… When I came near, she curled up around my feet…
…but I was still preoccupied with my melancholy thoughts… what was it that I had achieved? Was there even a hope that P-s would live on here, and not get thrown out by Maheshettan when he returned from Delhi (The manager here. He is not evil, I assure you. But he has to be practical, unlike me on my off-days.) . What would P-s be like growing up in a hospital run by an Ashram, if it did that? A vegetarian canine? On how many fronts does an action leave an effect in Nature?
After a while, I snapped back to the present, and started going down, then stopped again, and looked back at P-s. She was looking at me, with a bemused expression like one of my housemates had back in college when he had too much white rum. We stared at each other for sometime, and then, Prateek-sha started nodding off… Have you seen babies who start to fall asleep, then wake up with a start… getting all sleepy without knowing it? (Or mates at boring lectures/powerpoint presentations for that matter, when you force yourself to keep awake during them) It is just adorable… [MS guys, Live Writer also thinks powerpoint makes no sense…:)]
I carried P-s down and tucked her in…
Accidents? No worries, I’m covered by some top international names… what? Provogue is Not an insurance company??! I got scammed! IRDA!
Alternatively: Female all the way… footwear, and only the best will do…
… and then I thought, it has been a long time since I’ve posted something. Why not make her my muse?
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As I got to that last paragraph, Jacob comes in and tells me – Prateek-sha is gone… most probably back to her mother, on the streets.
Somewhere, I must have expected this. I am not surprised.
I’ll see her again, she’ll be on the streets. She’ll come up to me, wag that tail, be happy and let me be happy for that moment. And she’ll move on. Just like one more of life’s gifts. She knows she has made a friend, and she is content with that. Gilded prisons hold no value for her, she’d rather be free to love whom she pleases… (I do tend to put my heroines on a high pedestal… :)
I read what I’ve written, and reflect on her brief presence in my life… I look at that image, P-s curled up at my feet, making little contented sounds, and try to remember the feeling I had then – but I can’t, because right then, my mind was thinking, of what I had done in the past, of what would happen in the future. And I hear this from some recess of my being – the only way to a great death is to live each moment completely in the present. How well you do this determines how well you die. Enjoy that warmth of love, let it go. Savor the spiciness of the argument, let it go. Explode in righteous anger, let it go. And so on… If you deserve any of them, they will come back to you.
And I think – Prateek-sha knows all this, somehow. She was happy, even when her instincts told her she’d be back on the street. Why? Because right then, the sun was shining, she was warm, and she was evoking love…
Aren’t we all evoking it? From Creation?
This moment, just be.
Love.
P.S. : I figured out the kink in Live Writer after a while, but then thought I’d keep the bolds in this post… :)
