Chutki came into our lives exactly two years ago and Manjiree is giving her a birthday bash.
This household will be shorn of a great deal of life and love without her.
Happy Birthday Chutki.
Tag: Pets
Meaning.
Both my son Ranjan and my daughter in law Manjiree go out for appointments and to work on a regular basis. I am then left at home to be the caretaker which duty includes attending to phone calls, receiving couriered parcels, meeting proselytisers, canvassers and sundry visitors besides also as anchor for the two youngsters who may want to know something or the other about what is at home or happening at home.
The one duty that is quite pleasurable is the quiet company that I provide to our Chutki. I dog sit her and she old man sits me. She thinks that she is a human being when she is with Ranjan and Manjiree and she thinks that I am a dog when I am with her.
It is a greater pleasure still when I return from an outing. The welcome I receive from her is like nothing on earth. I was reminded of this when I read this joke earlier this morning in a forward in WhatsApp. “Do you want to find out who loves you more – Your Dog or your Wife/Girlfriend? Do what I did… Lock both your dog and your wife in the trunk of your car for an hour and see who’s happy to see you when you open the trunk lid!”
I don’t have a wife or a girl friend. But I can tell the generator of that silly joke one thing. I will never, ever, for any reason lock my wife or a girl friend if I had one, or lock my dog in the trunk of my car. I don’t need to. I know.
Broken.
I hope that you enjoy reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where six of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic was chosen by Will who is on a sabatical and is unlikely to participate today. The five other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, gaelikaa, Maxi, Paul, Shackman, and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!
I hope that what I share here with you which came to my mind the first thing when I saw the topic, does not get duplicated by that other music lover and LBC Blogger Shackman.
This was a big hit here when it first came out in 1980. A very loving friend gifted me this on an EP as a tribute to my condition and would sing it aloud replacing Lady with Rummy. I had just developed severe immobility due to an as yet undiagnosed bilateral hip joint problem and it was decided by that friend that my hip joints were broken and they could not be mended. That friend is reading this post and will recollect the evening in early 1981 when both of us got quite sozzled and maudlin listening to and singing this song, convinced that I will never be mended.
But another great friend, an orthopedic surgeon mended me alright though I had to wait for five years more for the first hip joint and seven for the second. I have been pain free since then and like the potter mended the vase, two surgeons on five different occasions mended me and have enabled me to live a reasonably normal life.
I was broken, but mended too.
I now have a broken lady at home. She is also waiting to be mended.
This is Chutki. You can see that her left hind leg which was in plaster is completely healed and she is very frisky. She is so frisky that this is the best photograph that I could take of her for this post.
You can see that she has her right hind leg up. The shattered hip is mending but is not completely healed. Once that is completely healed, say in another couple of weeks, she will be even more frisky. She too was broken and will soon be mended.
Chutki.
This is my son Ranjan and the latest addition to our family, Chutki. Chutki means ‘little girl’ and also a snap of the fingers.
Since I wrote about our Sunday outing, some comments and also some personal mails that I have received have enquired about Chutki and this post is set the record straight.
Ranjan and his bride Manjiree are deeply involved with animal welfare activities and are active with rescue work as part of a wide net work of volunteers who rescue stray animals and abandoned pets in distress till some solution is found. They liaise closely with some privately run animal shelters, the Blue Cross facility and the Municipal animal shelter. They often receive phone calls at all times of the day and night and rush to bring some help to animals in pain. Manjiree’s two sisters and a niece are also in this voluntary work.
Over a month ago, Manjiree’s sister Anjali found that a stray pup that she had treated for mange in her neighbourhood was in deep distress after a motorist had hit her. Manjiri and Ranjan brought her to our home to provide with a veterinary surgeon’s attention and it was found that she had suffered a shattered hip on her right hind leg and a clean fracture on her left hind leg, Since then, the pup has been with us and about a week ago, Manjiree quietly came and asked if we could keep her permanently with us and I did not have the heart to say no.
The plaster has now come off and calcification in the hip has taken place and though she finds it impossible to climb steps, she is pain free and mobile but has to be carried upstairs or downstairs which Ranjan and Manjiree do frequently to take her to the garden. She is a cheerful and intelligent pup and I am sure that with time she will develop into to a fine specimen.
When she was brought first to our home, she was being called Pinka which was the name that Anjali had given her but since that name is rather special, I have insisted that we change it to Chutki to avoid embarrassments like I had on a couple of earlier occasions.
I hope that this explains the sudden addition to everyone’s satisfaction.
Things I Don’t Tell About Myself
Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where Akanksha, Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie11, Nema, Noor,Ordinary Joe, Paul,Maria the Silver Fox, Padmum , Rohit, Will knott, and I write on the same topic. Please do visit the linked blogs to get seventeen different flavours of the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by gaelikaa and Anu.
Phew! What a topic!!
If I don’t tell somethings about myself, how do these two ladies expect me to do so in this public forum? But having accepted the challenge, I think that perhaps it is time that I came clean about somethings about myself that I don’t talk about. Not because I am ashamed; I honestly believe that I don’t have anything to be ashamed about, but because I do not think that they are worth mentioning.
So, here I go with a list of things that are of importance to me, but of no consequence to others.
On top of the list is my spiritual quest. This is an entirely private matter and while I do share my experiences or sources of information with like minded people, I do not make a song and dance about it. If anything, I try and make a joke out of the whole exercise. I find that talking about this causes avoidable controversy and so eschew it.
I strongly believe in the theory of Karma. And that leads me to believe that there is nothing called free will.
I am peaceable by nature but under extreme provocation like any harm to my kith and kin, I am capable of extreme violence.
I love good company, good food and good music. Most people do not know this and think that I am comfortable in solitude, which too I am, eat anything on the table without a fuss, which too I do, and I love books and crossword puzzles rather than music.
I am very loyal and highly value loyalty as a characteristic trait in others.
I would love to keep a dog but have been forced not to due to my disability. If per chance a well trained and gentle dog came my way, I would gladly keep it for a pet.
I have a whole list of dislikes which I shall save for another day.
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
~ Lois McMaster Bujold
A Story To Warm The Heart.
My friend Prasad from Sydney in Australia was chatting with me last night on Skype for quite some time. We had not spoken to each other for some time and there was a lot to catch up on.
While we were catching up, I espied something brown behind Prasad that looked suspiciously like a dog. I was surprised because, after the death of his pet and companion dog last year, about which I had posted,I was sure that he would not keep another pet. I asked Prasad if that was a dog and it turned out that it indeed it was. He then volunteered this touching story, which is a measure of my friend’s character as well as that of his lovely daughter Meera.
Some days ago, Prasad and Meera were driving along a major road in Sydney, when they saw a stray dog unable to cope with the traffic and being brushed by speeding cars. They decided to help the dog and maneuvered the car slowly to push the dog to the side of the road and Meera jumped out of the car and dragged the animal inside the car with her. They took the dog to the animal pound and left it there to be cared for by better hands.
After a few days Prasad went to check up on the dog’s condition when he was told that since no one was willing to adopt it, it would be put down soon. Prasad and Meera offered to adopt it and the pound arranged for all the pre adoption formalities including surgery etc, and Prasad brought the animal home a couple of weeks ago.
After bringing it home is when they discovered that there was something wrong with the dog’s vision and on taking him to the animal ophthalmologist, it was found that it had only one functioning eye and that too only with very limited vision. Since it was a genetic fault, there was nothing that could be done and so, the blind dog is now part of Prasad’s household.
I am often stumped for answers to some existential questions like, why this dog, why Prasad and why the whole sequence of events leading to its adoption by a caring family. Karma?