5 a.m.

Alarm peals, saviour from nightmares
The body shuffles awake, groggy, unwilling
Returns to sleep

The doorbell rings, the body wakes up now
The mind has wandered long and far,
Faintly reminiscing the dream just dreamt

I walk to the door and mumble incoherently
To the milkman wide awake – he’s in a hurry
keep a bag at the door next time

I shuffle to the kitchen and light the gas
The milk takes time to boil, I wait grumpily
The bed is warm, the floor is cold

Aah! It’s boiled, I can sleep a little more
Before the rush of the day
But the crooked coffee filter beckons

The right mix of coffee and milk
Just the right heat, slightly sweetened
Bubbles at the rim

Window blackened by the sky
Surrounded by a soundless creep
Of slow sunshine

Somewhere in the distance, not very far
Another alarm peals, a light goes on
Action repeats as a doorbell rings

The ‘caw’nthem

We had a huge tree a little away from our window. Crow visitors would often come to sing their anthem at food intervals.

I know you just saw
Me caw caw
Fresh food is all I’ll eat
Caw caw
Hot rice, some dal and a dollop of ghee
Don’t fob off yesterday’s rice on to me

Wait a sec, what’s that I
See Caw caw
Chappati just off the griddle
Caw caw
I prefer that with butter, oh add some more
Rice, dal and ghee can be quite a bore

Words

Words flow as I write
Ephemeral things
Catch them as they come
On invisible wings

If I walk on a street
A thought appears
And stays for a second
Unless trapped on paper

But should I fail
To put thought into form
It remains a vague memory
A troublesome haunt

And should I rack my brain
To word my thoughts suitably
They slip past quickly and
Laughingly elude me

The Dog family

At some time during the last two years, there have been a few changes in the canine crew members of our building. Blackie 1 and Blackie 2 migrated to better climes (I hope) while their mother went ahead and delivered a litter of 8 puppies. Well, one and two is fine, it is a little at a time, but eight is six too many, I declared to my thrilled news-bearer son.

Now when there are 9 puppies and 'n' children, there is chaos, mayhem and a lot more. The puppies were safely ensconced deep under a few bushes in a corner of the garden. Mummy dog was nowhere to be seen when the puppies needed her most, which was all the time. Daddy dog, not the black one but a new brown guy who we shall call James Bond, was nowhere to be seen. Besides, he kept growling at them to stop wandering around, so he wasn’t much use anyway.

The children ranging from ages 2-16 and maybe higher fought about names, carrying rights, taking home rights, cuddling rights and putting to sleep rights. In short, they squabbled all day long. Thank God for schools! Here again there was a crisis of leadership as the naming ceremony began. Some pups were white with black or brown markings, one was white all over. The mother herself is a handsome lady with dark brown markings all over. It was time for a change in strategy. But first, they had to figure out the girls from the boys.

A simple physical probe would not suffice. Some serious under the tail research ensued and a decision was taken about the girls and boys. The all-white one was a girl, it was declared – she was named Dyna (after a soap!). The girl dogs were called Sweety, Browny, Whitie. The boy dogs were named Jackie (?), Blackie and Tyson. So much for a new naming strategy! One dog showed an amazing talent of wriggling away from loving human contact and taking off at top speed to the nearest bush – Ferrari it was. Ferrari's look-alike sibling was Duplicate (gender unknown).

A year later, Blackie delivered a litter and Sweety (who had earlier been declared a girl) turned out to be a boy. The others? Well, that is the story of another post.

Signing off

There was a time when letter-writing was a long-drawn process. Careful writing (what with no back-space possible) and an appropriate sign off in keeping with overall tone. A writer who wished to state that the recipient’s views were asinine would first express views in no uncertain terms. The letter would be checked for spellings and grammar, lest the recipient find fault with the method. Errors were corrected and the letter rewritten. In the course of rewriting, the author would check for tone and reword the content. It can be no surprise that the long drawn process led to conveying that the recipient’s viewpoints were in fact of the highest order and only a fool would disregard them. Finally satisfied with the outcome, the letter would be signed off with a formal ‘yours respectfully’ or the informal ‘yours truly’ or a plain ‘thanks’.

That was a time that when a castigating letter ended on a formal tone and if the message was allowed to don the garb of the cheerful advisory sort, best wishes would be added at the end. Garbing a message required time and mental work. Such letters were not prepared in a flash and sent with the click of a button.

Came the computer and in its wake the email, spell check and automatic signature. Messages started to flow at unimagined speeds. Sending a mail became an involuntary action of the hand. The need to check errors was done away with and with that went the process of reading and perfecting the art of signing off in a tone consistent with the content.

The writer did not intend to mock the recipient; the reader experience was inadvertent. The finer mental processes were never employed to verify the expressions. The phantom hand clicked the ‘send’ button faster than the eye could see. So it came to be that the writer who called a person an unseemly bag of gas, signed off with the advice “Smile always”, omitting to view the content in line with the sign-off. Another was dumped by a terse email signed ‘Ever Yours’.

And so it was that I received a mail about an error that spelt trouble and stress for many days to come. My mood was sought to be uplifted with a smiley wishing me a great day ahead!

The pigeon

At the window where I stood
A curious pigeon came to look
Maybe it was trying to be nice
Trying to convey some good advice

It looked at me intently,
I watched, bemused as it
Bent its head deep to the right
Its eyes on me all of the time

It bent its head deep to the left
Its eyes compelling me to learn, be adept
It strutted on the sill, always on the move
Making a point about things birds do

When it saw me stand, unmoving
It tut-tutted in its own pigeon way
Flapped its wings to keep them strong
Pecked at them to keep insects at bay

Then it fluttered around to see
And viewed me ever so carefully
To see if I had understood
Whether the lecture had done some good

I intuited what the bird wanted to say
A little exercise many times a day
Will keep weak joints and necks at bay
And life and limb from going astray

Shobna

Building dog

Our building has been adopted by a group of stray dogs. They are mild and well-mannered so long as we don't go about making undue demands about rent.

One is a young bitch who is openly polyandrous which would be scandalous in any other society, but we are an open and tolerant people. The other is a white long-legged dog, with a long gentle face. He looks philosophical and kind, though he goes by the misnomer Tiger. Once in a way, he surprises himself by letting out a startling loud bark which scares him more than the children around. The bitch and the philosopher are often seen in deep conversation about the state of the world and the difficulty in getting good food these days.

There’s a mysterious black dog who sends Tiger into hiding with a look. He makes an appearance at auspicious times and goes off to newer pastures.

Last year, the bitch revealed her sense of justice and fair play by giving birth to one black and one white pup. The building kids delved deep into their imagination and thought up suitable non-controversial names - Blackie and Whitie.

They insisted on taking care of the two pups since the mother was often away at work. With great luck and good fortune, the pups survived their ministrations and turned out tail-wagging healthy.

One day, the puppies disappeared. Rumours abounded, tempers ran high. The children decided that a much-hated pot-bellied watchman. They were sure he had thrown the pups from a height and let them die.

The youngest among them insisted he had poisoned them because they messed the parking lot for which the watchman got blamed. To which some kids insisted that the watchman couldn’t have been blamed for the ablutionary habits of the dogs. Surely, there’s a difference between human waste and dog waste?

The watchman turned out to be a gentler soul than the children portrayed. He had waited for the pups to grow independent and then transferred them to a nearby jogger’s park so that they could complete their research on shoes. This information came up when one of the children insisted that they talk to the watchman.

This year, again, there's much hue and cry in the building garden. Two more pups have been born. Food is being pilfered from homes to feed the poor mother who has grown so thin. Milk is disappearing from vessels as are some plastic cups. The mother is being nursed back to good health so that she can go off to look for food while the pups are cared for by the young caretakers.

This year, though, the philosopher has fallen out of favour. Both pups are black.

The children congregated right next to the tired mother and after much raucous consensus, agreed on the names - Blackie 1 and Blackie 2.