Wisdom by Hindsight
My day started with a message from a friend greeting me for International Dogs Day with this image included.
Till then, I did not even know that there was something like this in existence despite having been a dog lover all my life.
My friend did not know about my recent loss and I had to send him a link to my post on Chutki.
I am yet to get over the loss and that message and a few more later only made me more maudlin. I miss her terribly.
Chutki came into our home nine years ago. I had written in detail about her in my post in December 2013 and you can read that post here.
She has been a cheerful part of our family all these years and was also popular among many visitors to our home as well as in our neighbours.
She has been ailing for the past few weeks and slowly deteriorating. She even had to be hospitalised for a few days but, was so unhappy there that we brought her home.
She started to moan and groan this morning and was taken to the vet who diagnosed liquid in her lungs and suggested that we let her go. We did.
She was cremated with due honours just over ah hour ago.
Satgathi Praaptirastu. Om Shanti.
Joared from Along The Way has a detailed blog post on her problems with power outage. Her post has inspired this post.
I have considerable experience of being without electric power due to outages and the most important thing that one needs when there is outage is some form of lighting in the nights. I have experienced all the following choices during those difficult times.
A Hurricane Lamp so named as once lit, it would not go out even doing a hurricane as long as there was kerosene in it to fuel it.
A Petromax lantern with a Mantel that gave much better lighting.
Does that need any explanation? We used to have them in all the rooms in our homes along with boxes of matches alongside till cheap use and throw away cigarette lighters came into the market.
Then came computers into our lives and we needed electricity to use them before battery operated portable ones came along. So we opted for these:
Honda Portable Diesel Genertor. These were noisy but gave electricity for a few hours that could operated lamps and electric fans.
And finally, a simple solution came along:
An inverter with a battery that could offer enough power to keep some lamps and fans working as well as a computer powered for up to eight hours depending on the usage. Totally noiseless but requiring distilled water replacement once every four months. While the inverter is not in use, the regular power supply charges the battery and so there is little need for any attention to be paid to it.
In our home, the inverter also provides a warm bed for our cat!
The inverter is on top of a movable case on castor wheels and is stored below the staircase. I have checked that it is quite safe for the cat to sleep on the inverter. As I type this post, the cat is just five feet away from me to my left. The two little lights on the panel of the inverter indicates that regular power supply is operating. When the top one goes off, it would mean that the inverter is supplying the power to the home.
I wonder how many of my readers would have ever used the first two lamps shown above. Have you?
Yes, I got bitten by a dog for the first time ever in my life.
I have grown up with pet dogs and have almost always had a dog or two at home and have also interacted with many pet dogs of friends and relatives. I have however not experienced what I did two evenings ago when a pet dog of a friend of mine decided that it would not be friendly and bit me hard on my hand that I had stretched towards it to pet and make friends with it.
It has been a very painful experience despite medication and treatment. I now realise how difficult it would be for someone with only one hand to manage alone in today’s world.
A great lesson learnt and to be thankful for what I have. Also gratitude that I have got away so lightly compared to some others who have paid greater prices for being careless with dogs.
This is the current state of my left hand. Swollen and with two band-aids covering the deepest of the wounds. There are eight more that have dried up which do not need band-aids any more.
Have you ever been bitten by a dog?
No, that is not a typo in the Title. Please read on.
When I opened the refrigerator this morning to take some milk for my morning tea, I saw a cardboard box in the bottom shelf that is normally used to pack cakes. I thought that my son or daughter in love must have got a cake for some purpose and left it at that.
Later on, I was totally engrossed in my morning newspapers when my son appeared in my peripheral vision with the same box opening the front door while mumbling something about cupcakes. I did not associate the box with cupcakes.
After some time, I asked him where the cupcakes were and he said that the box that he carried out in the morning contained them and I was zapped. He went on to explain that the cupcakes were for a friend who was celebrating her dog’s birthday and she was treating all the dogs in the park in the morning. (There is a park about half a km from our home where dogs are taken to play in the mornings and evenings by their owners living within its vicinity.)
When I probed further, it transpired that it was quite normal for people to bring such cupcakes for some reason or the other to distribute among the dogs and many dog owners were running successful home businesses baking these and that they are called pupcakes.
I was able to get photographs of the actual pupcakes distributed this morning to eager dogs.
Something new learnt today! Have you come across such pupcakes?
I was peacefully reading a book in my room when there was a knock on my door and my DIL asked if she could come in. I said “of course” without looking up and heard her say “I will just quickly give you this injection and go away.”
I was jolted out of my peace and asked her why she is giving me an injection when I had just been given one two days ago in her presence.
I then heard her say, “I am not talking to you.”
“Good Lord, who else is in my room?” I said and turned around to see her injecting Chutki our dog with her insulin shot. Chutki who is under treatment for canine diabetes, had quietly come in and was lying down behind my bed. I had not seen her coming in and the misunderstanding.
