7.KAAKKA

It was after my grandma passed away that the routine of feeding the crow became a norm in my family. My father would spot a crow on the nearby tree and tell my mom “See, Your mother has come.”(Popular belief in Hinduism that the spirits of the dead come back as crows to accept feed from the family members). And my mother would come with some food to feed it. This continued even after my father passed away. Although it is difficult to distinguish between the crows, there was this one crow that would come and just sit on a branch or in front of the house somewhere. It wouldn’t crow or make any other sound to attract attention but simply sit and stare at the house or anyone outside the house. Even if someone is there outside the house and fails to notice him, he would sit and watch patiently until that person takes notice. So we used to call him “Muni Kaaka”- The silent one. Sometimes he also used to come up the doorsteps and stand at the threshold looking into the house .If someone takes notice, we are supposed to fetch the food. We have been  raising a few generations of them till now, I guess.

8.BUNTY

I was doing Phd at the time when Bunty came into our lives.He abandoned outside our house by someone. On a day when one of my cousin’s children visited, my mother spotted him and brought him home to entertain the kids. The kids left, but he stayed. He was also a very cute kitten, but not as much as Chikku. And he had a bad habit. He would chew the clothes we left without washing. That is anything that smelt of us, including the bedsheets. We lost a lot of clothes during the time he stayed with us. But then due to some personal reasons, we had to shift to Trivandrum for an year. So there was no other option than to leave him with family friends, who too loved him and agreed to adopt him. The day we went to leave him at their house, he somehow understood we were leaving him behind and followed us back for a long distance. But then we couldn’t do anything about it. By the time we returned, the family told us that one day he accidently got bitten by a dog just outside their house and soon afterwards he left their house.

9. RUMI/TOMMY

Rumi was his original name.He was a police dog and was owned by an ex police officer who lived in our neighbourhood. He was a cross between the local and the Alsatian  breed and was maybe the tallest dog in the entire neighbourhood. Me and my mom are in the habit of going for regular evening walks.  We used to see him standing just outside the gates of his house exactly at the same spot looking at the passersby with somewhat dispassionate eyes. Once we decided to give him some titbits and watch his reaction. Even though he appeared friendly, he never allowed us to touch or to pet him. Slowly, we befriended him and he would follow us for some distance in our walk and then fall back when he reaches his house. One day my mother had to go in the same route alone, late in the evening. When she returned, it was almost dark and she was feeling a bit afraid. Suddenly Tommy appeared from his house and began to escort her, which he had never done before. Usually, the dogs being very territorial, wouldn’t leave their boundaries and if they did, the dogs from the other side would chase and may also hurt them. But that day Tommy crossed all the limits and came with her. Other dogs began to bark in protest, but where afraid of coming anywhere near him, owing to his huge size. He left my mother safely back home and went away. A few months later, his appearences became irregular and we often wondered why. One day we came to know that he was very ill and immediately went to his house to see him. He didn’t (or maybe couldn’t) eat the biscuits we offered but wagged his tail lightly on seeing us. He looked pathetic and we asked the owners why they wouldn’t take him to a vet. They said that the man of the house was out of station and so they had to wait until he returned. Tommy did not survive to see the next day. Later we came to know that he had some kind of tumor on his head, maybe because of which he refused to be touched.

10.JIMMY2

After Tommy’s death, there was no one to feed the biscuits to, until Jimmy came into our lives. Jimmy is owned by a neighbouring family. But once get got infected with some virus, after which he cannot control the nodding of his head. His head is always nodding, whether he is eating, sitting or lying down. People say that the dogs that get infected with that virus usually die within a week or so after the infection. But Jimmy survived and maybe as thanksgiving, spends much of the time in the nearby temple where we usually go in the evenings. From there we saw him and taking plight of his condition began feeding him biscuits. Now, he is perhaps one of the biggest consumers of the Parle G biscuits. He usually waits at the temple and keeps an ear out for us as we open the gate of our house in the evening. He at once recognises the sound of the door opening, and comes running towards us for the biscuits. Some devotees who come to the temple are also fond of him and feed him with biscuits. But many people are against the idea of a dog lying near the temple premises. They feel he should not be allowed to roam freely in the temple surroundings. Anyway, for now, he is happily a resident of the kavu.

11.KUNJIKILI

I was going through a painful phase when I first saw kunjikili on the branch of a shrub outside my house. I was strolling in front of my house one night, when I saw something in between the branches that appeared like a ball of cotton. When we shined light on it, two little eyes sparkled in the dark. It was a wonderful night to have discovered something so small and so beautiful, that you didn’t know even existed until then. That night he was alone and we didn’t see him for a few months, maybe an year. But he came again, this time with his partner and settled on another tree. They will come in the evening, sit next to each other, sometimes with their head buried in their feather and take rest. In the morning, just after sunrise they will leave, to return back at the exact same spot in the evening. The partner gets scared easily and would fly away if we tried to approach them before sunset. But once it is dark, they are perfectly still until it is morning. Now we see them almost every year on one of the trees nearby our home, every winter. Once it starts to rain, they go somewhere else. But we have never seen them making nests or laying eggs. But whatever they are, they are a perfectly happy couple, or so it seems

12.HALO

Halo is one among the pack of four stray dogs that dominate our village. He was a normal dog ,until an unfortunate accident happened to him. It was a very hot summer and maybe he was very thirsty. He put his head in the water container made of plastic and the rim of the container got stuck in his neck. He tried everything, but couldn’t pull it off and he began to carry it everywhere (like a halo around his head).  Soon the people and even his own pack began to look at him like some alien being .Halo is an extremely shy dog, and maybe he had experienced some bad treatment in the hands of human beings. He was, and still is, mortally afraid of any human coming near, much less, touching, him. So as much as people tried, both in single and in groups, nobody could get near him, much less pull the plastic container off. Halo began to spend much of his time alone, even when his friends were busy roaming on the roads. He would just come and lie down in our yard all day. He couldn’t even eat food properly as his head was stuck inside the jar. Thankfully, the bottom of the container was open, enabling him to breathe. Some days, he would just come and stand in front of our house with tired eyes, and we would know that he was hungry and feed him food. He went through this plight for almost 2 – 3 months, when somehow he by himself broke free of the container .Now he is a happy dog, free and reunited with his pack.  Halo’s story has deeply inspired me. It showed me how flaky all the relationships are. The friends, the society and everything else is so pointless when a real mishap occurs in your life. The only thing one can do is to brave through it, with the hope that tomorrow will be better than today. At least that’s what Halo did, and he didn’t die, when he could have.

13.SH group

SH group, or Self Help group as we named them, are a group of six goats that come to graze in the fields near where we go for evening walks. We began to notice them because they were not accompanied by any human being, which is the norm. These goats would come alone by the side of the road, cross the road careful of the traffic, graze alone and go back all by themselves once the sun sets. They have a leader amongst them, who wears a black rope around his neck. The others follow his lead and move. We were amazed at the discipline and punctuality of the group. So called them Self Help.