Chottu, this one is for you!

It had been raining since morning but I still had to go to school, tuitions, music class and when I got back home, I was fully drenched even if I had a raincoat on (sometimes I wonder what those raincoats do, coz they are extremely uncomfortable and actually limit your movements), but anyway, so I was completely drenched and went straight to the bathroom to take a warm shower.

After a nice hot dinner, I perched myself on the swing outside in our covered verandah. That's when I saw him. He was completely drenched, barely able to keep his eyes focussed because of the rains thrashing wildly. He just stood there for sometime, staring intently at me, before he took a few steps towards me. I stopped the swing abruptly meeting his gaze and trying to get a good view with the dimming lights of the road not helping me. Suddenly, he came a few steps closer again but that is when I saw the limp, as I got nearer, he just kept staring at me. I thought he would run away, after all that's what squirrels do when they see humans so up and close. But, he (I named him chottu- meaning 'small' and 'tiny') didn't budge, not even when I picked him up softly. He looked tired and weak, but I could feel his heart thumping in my hands. I ran inside and grabbed a rag to dry him up. I also got an old shoe box that I lined with a soft towel. I put chottu inside the box and ran in the kitchen to get some milk. Fortunately, I found an old mustard bottle cleaned and put away by my mom in one of the cabinets (This was the only- first and the last- time that I've had use for an empty cleaned up mustard bottle- more on that later~!). I filled it up with a little warm milk and held it up to chottu. He didn't seem interested. But, when I approached him a few minutes after, he eagerly lapped up the milk, and I could see how hungry he was. I could almost see a satisfied smile at the curve of chottu's mouth when he was done with the milk. Nah, that wasn't my imagination!

In about two hours though, I could see chottu closing and opening his eyes intermittently. At almost midnight, he closed his eyes but I could see his heart thumping inside the shoe box. I slept with a satisfied feeling.

When I woke up the next morning, it was sunny and beautiful...exactly like those days when the rains do a clean up job of the entire city. I eagerlty went upto chottu's small bed but he was still sleeping; the only difference was that I could'nt see his heart thumping. My heart skipped a beat. No, this cannot happen. Chottu is fine I told myself again.

Chotu was put to rest in a nice flowery corner of our garden, though my association with him lasted for just one evening, I missed him. Chottu was the first loss for me. I had never seen death and this was the first time that I had seen a living being alive one day and then dead the very next day. This was the very first time that I realized that how much ever you try and wish for few things to be alright and always with you, God sometimes can take them away.

This is also the time I realized why my mom never wanted me to have a dog as my pet. She knew it would be fun for me all along the way but maybe the eventual loss would be too hard on me. As I grew older, I've learnt to deal with loss much better but still think about Chottu sometimes...some connections have no logic to them, let's not spend time analyzing them, let's just enjoy their memories, for years to come.