I was born in a gulley, the gulley overlooks the streets which are down the lane of the square. In a cozy corner of the gulley, there laid me, my mother and my siblings. We were six of us. All cuddled to the warmth, which our mother offered. Suckling the elixir that energized us and beefing up every muscles of our body. That was gratifying to all of us. Our mother took every care of us. She never left us alone till we had enough strength in our bones to walk around and survey the area where we were born in. We all loved our mother very much.
One day she left us alone and didn’t return for hours. We all waited for her impatiently. Every one of us was gaping at the streets below. No one dared to wander down the lane. And finally she came. All of us were exuberant and moved in circles around her, wagging our tail, trying to impress her and to prove our love for her. She had love in her eyes. She licked us clean. Then the next moment we saw a mammoth figure appearing before us. The apparitional figure was bigger than our mother. The tail and the ears were erect and the limpid eyes stared deep into our eyes. In that stare there was tenderness, feelings of love and affection. Then our mother commanded, “He has fathered you all, go near of him”. My mother’s ear were flattened, she was avoiding the stare of our said father. She began to crouch and then rolled over her back. There was complete submissiveness in her voice and action. She began whining. Then we all obeyed our mother and went near our father. We began imitating our mother and started whining. He came and licked all of us, giving his undivided love to us. We were encouraged by his actions and left our fears behind. Each of us began to wag our tail vigorously, moving in circles and gnawed him playfully. We began to love our father.
I was the healthiest among my siblings. No one matched the strength of mine in our frequent bouts. The three brothers of mine were never a match. The only one who could contend a fight was my sister, Raina. All of us played together, running, jumping and sometimes playing with rats. One day, our mother came to us and vomited some solid substance and asked us to lunch on it. We savoured the meal and it was delicious. We were eating something for the first time. Our days of suckling were over.
Our mother began to relax on us. She didn’t restrict us any more from exploring the territory we were born in. We all began to explore the streets. I began to see a new world now. There were huge structures standing on ground and kissing the sky above. I later on came to know that those were the settlements of our friend species, humans. Mother used to narrate her encounters with humans. She liked some humans but hated their kids. She had once said, “The human children are very notorious. They pelt stones on us. You pups promise me that you would never approach those little devils.” She also warned us about the vehicles that the humans used for their transportation and taught us the tricks to cross the streets without hurting ourselves. I never liked the humans. I never liked their very existence. We all siblings followed our mother to a place, where she said, plenty of food would be awaiting us. I saw father there and also many of his friends. We all ran to father. He immediately licked us and we all played with him for a while. No friend of his would approach near him, while he stood there. I felt as if he had the command over that place. We saw humans come and dump food for us. We had a great and delicious lunch. I began to like humans.
During our return journey to the gulley, we were needed to cross the street. Mother had helped us to cross it the first time, now it was our turn to cross it on ourselves. The killer vehicles moved now and then. We had to be very careful to cross. I managed to cross the road but not one of my brothers, Anand. He was run over by a killer vehicle. Mother was grief struck. She began to howl. We all joined in. I could not reason out her grief. I missed Anand only when we siblings played tail pulling game. The days passed on and I did not miss him any longer. One day father came badly hurt. He was bleeding profusely. I saw many teeth marks on his body. Later on I came to know that he had a fight with his friends. And they had badly hurt him. They had injured his leg. From then onwards he limped and was not able to walk with the pride which he used to. We lost the preference that we got whenever we visited the food ground. The life was not the same again.
Days passed on and years followed, I grew unto a handsome dog. During this period I had made many friends. All of my fellow friends envied my strength and charisma. In those passed years, my mother had lost two more of her offspring in road accidents. She had contracted a deadly disease. She used to drool most of the times. Fleas’ ticks and mites lived on her. Her body was emaciated and she was in a miserable state. My father was also in no good health. He could not regain the magnetism once he possessed. Now I had a human friend who was very caring towards me. Some of the days he would come with luncheons for me. I in return wagged my tail and offered my loyalty to him. In those years I began to like Champa. She was a friend of mine. We used to go together for luncheon. She was beautiful and adorable. She also liked me. But I never knew that I had fallen for her. I never knew that I was in love.
From here on, my days of tragedy followed. I was struck by a vis major, the same that some of my siblings had faced. I too had my day of accident. While crossing a street, I came face to face with a giant killer vehicle. All happened swiftly and suddenly. I went unconscious and when I woke up, I was in great pain and found my impassive mother on my side. She stared me indifferently. She had already lost all her emotions, once she had when I was only a puppy. I had lost my left hind leg. It took days for me to stand on my legs. My human friend was very helpful. Very often he would bring foods for me. At last I was able to stand and could manage to walk. I had become lame.
I wanted to go back to my daily chores, but I found that to be nearly impossible. There were some welcome greetings from my friends. But most of my friends didn’t care my presence. I had lost my charisma and dominance. My heart broke when Champa didn’t care to respond to my friendly gestures. I had lost her. I found that I had developed some enemies too. I wanted to be near of Champa. But I was stopped by her bully friends. I could not bear this. And I started a fight, my last one. I snarled on and warned the six of them for the consequences. No one backed off. In anger and frustration I bit one very hard. All pounced on me at once. I fought bravely and made a great attempt to salvage my pride but could not stand to the might of six. I was chomped repeatedly at most parts of my body. I would have been killed if my human friend would not have intervened and stopped the fight. I was badly injured but this time I didn’t loose my consciousness. He took me to a place where I was medicated. He kept me in his house for two complete days. He had great love for me. After I recuperated I went to see my mother, I searched her a lot but later came to know that the day before she had died of rabies.
I could not bear the loss of my mother and Champa at the same time. I knew that mother won’t ever return. I understood the meaning of death. Champa, on the other hand, was on my very sight but I could not make love to her. She was so near but still so far. This double tragedy made me mad. I developed a tendency to become snappish. I turned frenzy. This mental agony started to eat me. I became unruly. The humans started pelting stones at me. I showed some symptoms of contracting rabies. I had rabies.
I knew the day won’t be far enough when I would meet my mother and my fellow siblings, who could not survive the challenges of life, somewhere they had traveled to. Finally, I met my apocalypse. The day, I tried to cross the same killer road which earlier had taken the life of my siblings. In my delirium, I tried to cross the road at a time when many killer vehicles tend to pass. In a jiffy, I was run over by a giant killer vehicle. In this very last moment of my life, I could see the face of my beloved mother and the one, of who’s I could never become the beloved. In the fleeting moment of the time, I could see Champa near me and I was kissing and licking her with full of my innocence. Those were the eyes that I could not forget, those were the eyes I could have easily died for and those were the days for which I always lived for.
Here ends a story of a dog that could not become great in his life, could not achieve what he wanted to and could not make his dream come true. Here the story ends; narrated by a dead dog.
