Naina and Sam part- 3

This second thrust prompted me to reopen the site as soon as I connected my system. I spent a lot of time viewing it and even pushed my colleague who sits next to me to open the link as he is also a dog lover. Subconsciously all that was hovering in my head was dogs, dogs and cuter dogs.

The same night, after dinner, where I did not actually eat much but felt bloated, we decided to take a walk. The moment we locked our door, I saw a not as small as Sam when we found him, but still, a think black puppy across the lane, near the neighbors who were predominantly chatting with each other. I went up to him (default gender) and held his face. It rested its chin on both of my palms and stayed in that pose for as long as I couldn’t help smiling at the innocent grey eyes and the serene expression it had. The urge to pick up a street pup, with no qualms about the hygiene issues (otherwise I am a hygiene freak, carry a sanitizer everywhere) always possesses me. The moment I held it, it shrieked. I knew it must be hurt somewhere to yelp in pain like that and sure enough, I found a bare patch of skin where the black coat was missing.
I fed it biscuits and placed a mat for it outside my apartment so that I could look after it. Varad was very anti keeping it inside no matter how much I wanted. It ran across the lane and climbed the stairs in the opposite block. I resigned and came back in. In a while, I helped it to sneak into our house. It lay on the same mat which I now brought inside and slept peacefully. We locked the door of that room and decided to let it be there. The same night, I had decided to take a leave from work and take it to the vet. I also spoke to a girl from Delhi who has been fostering pups for a while and took her number from her website and gathered information on adoption of such dogs. The same time we found out that it was a female pup.
One thing to mention here is that she growled when I petted it while it ate the biscuits last night. However calm and well behaved otherwise , I can say so because Sam is a complete brat in front of her, she behaved aggressively when a friend of ours who happened to be present there, tried to place her on the mat instead of the cold floor. Later the same night, I surmised that it must be behaving this way due to the torment and hardships it must have faced while on the street, when people poke sticks when the pup is sleeping, when it has fight with others dogs for food. I thought this would also be about winning her trust.

The next day I managed somehow to put her in the car and drive some 10kms to show her to a vet. It was a very moving experience to pin her on the cold steel table while the attendant oozed puss and blood from a second wound that we hadn’t even spotted the last night. It was heart wrenching to see that tiny life form suffering so much. I fought back tears and the attendant asked me to leave the room if I was planning to faint. I told them I wouldn’t and I didn’t. It felt a little better to know that she would get fine in 2 weeks and the vet was very kind and supportive and wrote out anti biotic for her.

I got her home and dressed her wounds. We applied our own understanding recalling our wounds as children and applied the appropriate medicine. Later the same night the puss stopped oozing.

This brings me to the dilemma I am facing right now and why am I strengthened to nurse her and be ready to make room for her in my life. To add to this series of spiritual events, I saw the movie Evan Allmighty. Morgan Freeman says something like, “When you ask god for courage, does he give it to you simply like some drug or does he give you opportunities to be courageous?”

I had been talking to people and realizing that the only religion I try to practice though it is very hard, is Humanity. Within a few hours to making this statement, I find this pup. I will put her up for adoption and pray to god that she gets a loving home and family like ours. Until her wounds are healed and she gets all strong and pretty, I will take care of her. I pray to the same power that brought her to my door step to take care of her for what is to come. I have named her Naina. She has the most innocent gret eyes with the most serene expression that I have ever seen.

Naina and Sam part- 2

If there's any one who believes in signs then here is the second part of the story for you only. 4 days ago, I finally got down to filling up a registration form for Sam. It is from a blog run by a lady in Mumbai who harbors a passion for the Indian breed of dogs, those which are always more in number in any locality than needed, and those who are the most preferred victims of physical and mental abuse by us, humans and the other canines of the same community. I filled up the form and received reply from her about collar tags which I have been wanted for Sam for a long while. When I googled for her, I reached her blog and despite feeling very sleepy at 11 pm, I ran through it, smiling while seeing the picture of so many wonderfully adorable dogs like Sam and where their owners had to share about their antics and story. This action made me very sentimental and I spent a large amount of time scrolling through it.
The very next morning when I opened the door to our tiny apartment, I saw a Labrador sitting in the front balcony of a flat opposite to ours, following the movement of the pedestrians below.
I had met this pup around 7 - 8 months back when it was very tiny and held him and it had licked my hands and face with great elations and hyper energy. During the months gone by, I had seen him a couple of times only and it was still unclear as to which flat did it stay in until this beautiful vision. I smiled and new that I was going to have a good day.
A few minutes later, on the 8km drive to work, I encountered a gleaming Toyota Corolla on a narrow and tight road that I take through a residential colony as even I am, a spillover from the disaster our BRT which otherwise costs me only 5 km to work but twice the fuel. The corolla’s front seats were occupied and it has a yellow on black number plate. When my eyes wandered at the back seat, I found, to my absolute delight, a beautiful adult golden retriever sitting majestically in the precise centre of the seat, with an overconfident and royal expression on his face. I say his, as he wore a broad leader collar with brass studs on it. I could catch this glimpse when I desperately overtook the car from the left in order to get a closer look. This vision added or rather exponentially raised my joy level. This was a sight, which I am sure I will always remember.

Naina and Sam part- 1

The greatest religion that is above all religions is humanity. I am saying this out of a personal discovery. I am sure that many philosophers and spiritual leaders must have said this already, many times in history. But for me, it’s a revelation.

We recently got over with Diwali and during the pooja and other religious formalities, I realized that it was proving to be extremely hard for me to sit through the chanting and the rituals. I realized that even though all my life I have been a Hindu, I have never actually believed very strongly in my religion. The credit for this neutrality, also goes to my parents, who brought be up in a practicality driven environment where religion occupied a very small space. I do not know the mythological stories right, do not know who was whose brother or son or which god is attributed to which miracle. I cannot recite a single aarti without reading from a booklet.
This however, does not mean that I am an atheist. I believe in god. I fear god. But it is genderless faceless and story less. My god is nothing but a power, a strength reservoir where I need to dive deep when I am in emotional distress or worry for the future.
So now I am going to type, for myself to remember this phase in my life, a sweet story that I hope ends sweetly too.

I am a dog lover. I always was. When I was a kid, I used to pick up stray pups from parks and bring them home and beg my mum to let me keep it. Most of times, Ma would sternly deny and I could be seen holding that pup, loaded with a heavily morose expression, walking towards the same park where I found him. In the coming years, I tried tears, threats, silence to have my parents agree, but Ma was always sitting on a big NO. I had asthma and when there are introduced, medical concerns of any kind, no parent would consider even registering such a request.

Till 27, my craving for a dog was unmet, uncared for. One fine day, after a major fiasco at work with a coworker, I went to a park near my place in South Delhi. Me and my partner are not the park going types but this time we thought it would be nice break. There I found this adorable plump pup which came running to me as if saying, " Hey, here I am, was looking for you all this while!". My heart overpowered my brain and also my partner and we both carried him from there, on a bike, to my mother's place, some 30 kms away. My mom's first reaction was "God, he's so cute." immediately followed by a brain centered output of ,"Why did you bring him?"
The pup who was behaving in a shy timid manner earlier, suddenly started to run around, jumped on Ma's lap and placed himself there as the rightful heir. My mum had no clue how to raise him. Neither did I. We struggled and learnt how not to sleep at nights, how not to surrender to the tiny tail wagging at 3 am and what not. He is almost around a year old now and has become the centre of our universe, especially my mother's. His name is Sam.

Sam is a pampered kid of the house. I have more pictures of him in my computer than any one else I love. He looks at me questioningly, from the wallpaper, every time I use my phone. He is in short our baby, our son and no one is allowed to call him a dog. This bit of the story is very similar to many middle class households. We love our dogs with as much or probably more passion than we love our children. We do not have servants for the dog to spend all the time with. We do not chain our dogs in the parking area as we do not own mansions. In short, we make the most of the love the dog showers us with and we give him a very large potion of our hearts.
I restate - he is our son with four legs instead of two and an extra tail.