1.JIMMY

I don’t know when in my life the association with animals began. As far as I remember, the first animal that I can recall is a squirrel on the mango tree of my ancestral home and me in my Father’s arms eating food. My father musically singing “Annarkanna, Annarkanna kaliyaadidaan varumo nee” – or something to that effect. I spent my childhood – till I was 7 or 8 – in my mother’s ancestral home. We had a neighbour’s dog there. His name was Jimmy. He would often come to our house and spend time there. Everyday when my father and me went to the school in the morning in his bicycle, Jimmy would run behind following us till a junction. Then I would say good bye and he would return back to his home. When I think of Jimmy, I still remember a day when he came to our house with a big Aluminium vessel stuck in his head. He had put his head in, for water or some food and got stuck. He had come all the way from there, blindly following, I don’t what senses, to reach our home. My mother still wonders how he even made it. My father immediately sprang into action and with a cutting player, cut off the metal form his neck, freeing him up. He was so relieved and happy. That is all that I remember of Jimmy. But later once my mother told me that Jimmy has passed away. It was not a natural death. It seems he was in a habit of chasing one of the neighbour’s chicken, and the irritated neighbour fed him some food mixed with poison. Thats how he died.