Pup, PJ and Love

Love as addressed in this post would mean not just the one that appears on a Valentine's day greeting card. When I say
love in this post, I mean paternal, maternal, fraternal and all other forms of it that are known to exist.
So, why suddenly I have to write about kinds of love? You will know it sooner than later.
Love amongst human beings does not come for free. Love begets love. Beautiful isn't it? But when somebody returns your love along with it come the expectations. It is after all human, you cannot find fault with anybody. You only expect things from friends and not foes. And, very obviously you rub your opinions on your loved ones and not strangers. But, here is where the struggle starts and love spells its own doom from then on. Expectations clash with expectations and reasoning takes a back seat. The words of "why don't you listen to me" or "why can't you do it this way" come in. To showcase their love , people start narrating the account of all their good doings. For example, parents say: look my child I have worked so hard only for you. I did this only to make you happy and now you do not listen to me? And a wife says to her husband: I slogged and cooked for you, I washed your clothes , waited on you and this how you treat me? The husband replies: I struggled all my life to make you happy, worked over time to buy you a costly sari, cut my spending to buy you jewelry and now you say all this to me. You see , the ledgers and records of spending and slogging being opened up all at once, don't you? I see that you have noticed it only now, but I managed to do it much earlier .

Dawned with the realization that love amongst human beings becomes “ give and take ” when last comes to last , I sought refuge in animals. Again, I am not Menaka Gandhi or Amala( for those who do not know who she is, she is an ex-south Indian actress, who just like me found animals better) to set up organizations and run after animals. Forget about setting up an organization, I did not even buy a pet dog; you know my income is so low and I cannot force a dog to be vegetarian owing to my shallow pockets. Everything comes with a cost and so does a pet dog. But I wanted love for free, so I poured my love on to a street dog . It wasn't a dog completely it was a month old puppy in fact. I wanted to tell the puppy that I loved it. How do I do it? Would I buy a greeting and a white rose and say "I love you"? You know: different people - different needs.
You feel you heard this before? Then next time you switch on the TV watch the HSBC add carefully. What I am coming around to say is, it is a give and take policy but only the terms and conditions vary. I wanted love and the dog wanted biscuits.
So I bought Tiger biscuits, the cheapest available in the market. Ironical isn't it Tiger biscuits become dog biscuits. I called this puppy of my street and crush ed a biscuit and watch ed as it ate . It ate the one whole biscuit and wagged its tail. See, It started showing signs of love, cheap isn't it- love for a couple of biscuits. How easy it would have been if girls did not ask all those things they ask for and settled for a couple of biscuits like this cute little doggy. But, i t is a design time decision and you cannot change girls at run time, so let it be. I fed the pup again, I had a whole packet with me and had no intention of eating these biscuits myself, so I fed it with all my heart. It consumed five biscuits and still wanted more. Being a novice with dogs, I was surprised at its ravishing appetite. I could never imagine a puppy eating like this and could not see justice in the expression "gluttonous pig".I fed the pup another biscuit and called it a day fearing the little one's digestive capabilities.

Day two begins, I come back from office , and have the pup with a wagging tail, wait at the front gate. I understand what it needs, after all what love is ? Isn't it all about understanding each other? The day two ends with me feeding the rest of the Tiger biscuit packet to this darling dog. A week passed by and each day of the week I fed it tiger biscuits , tiger biscuits , tiger biscuits and nothing else ( Believe me, I am not Tiger biscuits brand ambassador) . On the 8th day of this love affair, I returned home from office proudly with tiger biscuits in my hand to find my waiting pup. I brought out a piece of newspaper on to the street to serve biscuits to my pup. You see , dining etiquette is must to stay healthy and as a mature adult who understands the complex concept of what love is, I was aware of this fact and so fed my pup,each day, on a sheet of paper and not on roads. So cool and nice of me isn't it? That day as soon as the pup saw the biscuits, its wagging tail stopped doing its duty and I watched in stunned silence. The pup came forward, sniffed at the biscuits, realizing that even the brand did not change showed me its butt and walked away! My plea to call it back on to the dinner table failed. I walked into my room with my own tail between my legs( I don't have a tail, this expression means I failed at something miserably , hmm). I let the day pass and the next day after much thought into the dog's act of denial, I decided to change the brand of biscuits. As it was raining heavily I returned home little late than usual with sunfeast brand. When I came home I did not see my pup( now it became “ m y” with 4 packets of biscuit in 8 days time , this is humanity - being possessive). The pup’s absence did not worry me as the previous night's incident was fresh on my mind . As I was looking around for any signs of my pup I heard faint , dog - like screams at a distance away from my home . When I went over I found my pup lying in the bushes. I was shocked . Then neither did I understand what really happened n o r did I dare to touch the pup because I never touched a pet dog, let alone a unkempt street dog. When I went home to drop my bag and see what could be done, my friend informed me that the pup was run over by a scooter and he did not have any means to help it. I could feel my throat drying up and stood helpless. After exploring all the possible avenues , the existence of Blue Cross society flashed across my mind and immediately I called up the blue cross for help. The attendee said the ambulance would be there in an hour. Meanwhile, for first aid I went around the area to find vets. It was late into the evening so most of them were not available and the one available said he did not have equipment at his home. Time was limping instead of zooming by as it usual ly does on a Friday night. What troubled me the most was the pup was hardly 2 months old and I did not think it would make it through owing to the nature of injuries. I felt like suing the blue cross for the delay but of course I did not. After repeated calls , at the end of three hours wait, an ambulance arrived and I was a relieved man when the dog was taken away, alive, to the animal husbandry. See how love of living things comes with expectation and worry. Firstly, pup’s expectation of feeding it with what it liked and secondly my worry of any danger to the pup.

I did not like this kind of love either because it is not free. Now, I resolved to love stones that don't set expectations, love leaves that do not cry when run over by scooter, and, lastly love any inanimate object that does not return my love and stays as it is whether or not I love it . One side Love - only love that is for free, unconditional and universal - is the best way to stay in love.

PS: Just in case if you find an animal in distress please report at http://bluecrossofindia.org/, HelpLine: +91-9962 800 800, Chennai Ph No:044-2235 4959(immediate action). Despite all the idiosyncrasies, we are still humans aren't we?

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Taj Mahal in my hands

...that is how my romance with wisdom teeth ended.Before I tell you about the end I should tell you how it really began. It was a fifth standard class room.The lecture was on general science and the topic was "TEETH". I was one of the students in the class. The teacher told us that human beings had 32 teeth and dogs had 42 teeth.As soon as I heard the number of teeth I started counting the teeth present in my mouth. This was an exciting exercise because never it occurred to me that I could count my teeth till then. The exercise told me that my mouth bore only 28 of them and I was worried about the missing four. Before I was driven away by any crazy thought the teacher told me that young boys only have 28 teeth and the rest four are called wisdom teeth which grow in teens as a mark of maturity. And also these teeth will not grow in everybody and now are vestigial organs. This confused me, if they do not show up in everybody then why are they counted to make number of teeth 32? Was it not completely subjective? Well, I passed my fifth standard science paper marking the number of teeth in human beings as 32 and anticipating to have both wisdom and wisdom teeth.
I would jump several years from my grade five for the sake of wisdom teeth. Now, it was my pre-university classroom. I could feel pain in my upper left jaw. When I tried to locate the source of pain, it led me to upper-left gum space after the molars. I rolled my tongue over and felt a hard bone like thing still covered by gum. I used my tongue to press hard at it and the pain made me feel good. It was not the eruption of wisdom teeth that excited me. I always found excitement or enjoyment in a little physical pain. Pain in the mouth gum and pain after forcefully removing a small part of right-leg-second-toe nail being some of them. I felt the pain good and repeatedly pressed my tongue against it for sheer pleasure of feeling the pain. All the while I did not notice that I was being observed by the lecturer in the classroom and the end result was I was thrown out of the class. I never really minded because,after the expulsion, I had all the time for myself to poke at my painful gum. I did it all day and increased the pressure with which I pressed my gum by nightfall. So, what happened? In the morning pain grew to unbearable levels and I had to stay away from classroom. On the evening of that day I could feel a tooth like thing forcing its way out of the gum, realized that it was wisdom teeth and felt intelligent foolishly. Foolish because I always thought wisdom teeth gives intelligence.
In a weeks time I had a full grown wisdom teeth that made my teeth count 29. Perhaps after just one week of time my right upper gum started paining and this time I was careful enough not to trouble the trouble. As a result my second encounter with wisdom tooth was a peaceful one. Two wisdom teeth and I now jump into my graduation. Half wisdom is more dangerous than having no wisdom that is a fact and I set on to prove it once again. So how did I manage to do it ? Ha .. I fell in love. Isn't it the a dangerous thing to fall in love? But I had support. As if to allay my fears about aftermaths of falling in love and declare its support, my lower left gum started showing signs. Supporter of my love, the left Wisdom tooth struggled for space with the molars,and the molars said "look mister we already are jam packed we cannot accommodate you, so please stay away and find other ways to convey that falling in love is symbol of wisdom not foolishness". The tooth twisted and turned and grew in an angle into my cheeks. And, meanwhile its partner the wisdom tooth in lower right jaw is too happy with the girl i had chosen and decided to bestow the status of complete wisdom upon me.So it started showing up. But this time it was met with force and had become meso-angular. That is, it had taken a 90 degree turn and grew towards the molars.
Then, I had 2 sets of teeth. One full grown set and the other half grown to purely signify my wisdom: wisdom of love. Three years into my love life, these half grown symbols of love started giving me trouble. Not of course in my love life. They wanted more space. Whenever I ate food the left wisdom tooth bit my cheek skin, occasionally leading to bruises, and the right wisdom tooth held pieces of food in its crevices. I bore with these symbols of my love for an year. But the left had become aggressive on my left cheek and the right had become greedier. I had decided to get rid of Taj Mahal of my mouth and went to a dentist to get this job done. The dentist suggested me to go ahead with the extraction of left tooth first. The first one that corroborated my decision of falling in love and I heeded to the advice, because this was the pioneer and the most troublesome of the two lower wisdom tooth. The exercise of tooth removal was painful, both physically which is obvious and psychologically because it was my Taj Mahal. The painful exercise went on for a quarter short of an hour with the dentist removing the white marble to leave a stitched cavity in my mouth.
Today, after a week long medication, the sutures were removed and I get to hold my Taj Mahal, a Taj Mahal bathed in acid and preserved in brine by the dentist who made me undergo and went on to understand the pain. Whatever, I miss you my Taj.

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