War report

Seargent Sparky reporting from behind the enemy lines....Rat-a-Tat- tat.  Its been 48 hours since I've been at my post here, and nobody has come from base camp to relieve me yet.  BOOM! Duck, enemy fires 45 degrees to the right. Go investigate. Bow, Wow. BANG! Right there behind the curtains, another one. Run to investigate. Bow, Wow, Wow. WHACK!! an airborne missile zooming past the front window. Duck for cover. Bow, Wow, Wow, Wow. WHEEE!! another UFO launched by Charlie. Bow, Bow.

Whew. All quiet. Run to the water canteen. Gulp, gulp, Gulp. Dry throat, need more water. need to lie down and close my eyes just for a second. only a seco....BOOM BOOM! Whaaat? Wheere? Oh, run run, balcony under attack. Gotta save the family. Bow, Wow. Bow, Wow. There, you 2-legged morons. there! BANG! Run for cover. Evac the family, quick, they are closing in.

Pant, Pant. need to rest, cant go on for much longer without replacements. How can I desert the ranks, gotta save my family. Please, Please stop this. Cant you see I am going deaf? Are you not suffocating from the smoke and gunpowder smells? Even a foot soldier needs to rest sometimes. Where are my reinforcements??

Quiet. no sounds for last 3 minutes. hope they are dead, all of them. Cant wait to see the body bags of those ammos.....gotta sleep. S-L-E-E-P. 

BANG .BANG. WHACK. WHEEEEE . BOOM. bow wow wow wow wow wow wow. 

Slurp water. Slurp Slurp.  GRRRR. Who's that? Give me a break guys. STOP THIS NONSENSE. It hurts. 

Mom trying to pacify me. Drugging me. Allowing me in the bed. Extra chewies for the last 3 days. But its no good. I cannot relax when we are under attack from an unknown enemy. Invisible but deadly. Unleashing unbelievable noisy powerful weapons at will. Destroying the peace. Threatening our very existence. Releasing harmful substances- biological warfare.  

This ain't the time to get distracted by love and cuddles and nibbles. 

After all, I am a soldier. Will Dogmatically assert myself till I drop from sheer exhaustion. Will not go AWOL.




Sparky Blog

WORST NIGHTMARE

Preparations are underway for that dreaded time of the year. What humans so joyfully call the Festival of Lights, I would simply put as my "WORST NIGHTMARE" . While they eagerly await the holidays for the sweets and savouries and new clothes and visiting friends and relatives, I am lying on my bed, tormented at this thoughtless, mindless, and wasteful event that happens with unerring regularity every year.

Floors are being scrubbed with more vigour than ever, cupboards are being flung open and re-settled, kitchen jars, condiments and groceries are being re-arranged and everyone is going around in a frenzy. Arguments are on about which snack to prepare, how much sweet to make, to eat or not to eat considering all the health problems that afflict this family, and there is a hustle-bustle that is not seen at other times during the year.

At the best of times, I seem to be coming in the way of this 'autumn cleaning' -jumping over piles of clothes, stepping into wet patches on the floor and being yelled at. At the worst, i get nudged, told to get off the bed - and - other - favourite - hang-outs and ignored. 

That upstart has been coming to sleep here too. It seems that their house is being renovated and the dust and paint smells are harmful for her! Hey!! Her mere presence is 'harmful' for my peace of mind, but does anybody seem to care? No, Sir.  Mom says she has worked out the solution for this. Keep me locked up with G, and the upstart has free reign over the whole house!! What kind of solution is that, I ask you? In my own home, I am  being treated like a step-son? Mom is taking this "Atithi devo Bhava" concept over the top, if you ask me.

Anyway, so the last few weeks I have been a bit down, really. Hence the silence. What with my strange itch which required 3 trips to that hell-hole and 2 jabs by strange smelling humans, what with my appetite going topsy turvy with that medicine, and nobody knew what to do- one day I was as hungry as a Lion and the next I wouldnt want to hear about Food, it was  a really  bad few days. 

Thankfully things have settled down with the itch , I think Ganjoo's Neem bath helped. You should try it if you have the Itch too - boil a whole bunch of Neem leaves and then strain the water. Pour over yourself after your bath. And see the results for yourself!! Thanks buddy! 

Just By the way, and completely unrelated to my woes, Father Figure says its rude, colloquial and crass to say "Ganjoo".  But I have'nt gone to Finishing school, leave alone Dog school, so what do I know about all these things- eh? I just call people what comes to my head first, no exceptions. And Ganjoo has been Ganjoo for all my life, and thats the way he is going to stay, unless he sprouts a crop of hair.

Mom has another way to keep me calm, as she calls it. AC on. TV on- LOUD, She in room. And me, allowed on BED.  Windows- firmly shut. Doors - ditto. And just because I dont mind the extra attention, I would not like to point out- that my ears are made of stronger stuff, and a few centimetres of glass and wood are'nt going to block out that awful noise. This futile effort would be really funny if it was'nt so traumatic.

Sleepless in Marredpally

I haven’t slept all night. Neither last night nor the 7 nights preceeding that one. I am so tired. Yawwwn. This makes me lethargic, weak, and snappy. A dog needs to get all the sleep he can. That’s when we dream of a better world for all.

So, you may ask, what’s keeping me awake? It’s a no brainer, really. Have’nt you seen or rather HEARD the louder- than -my -ears can –handle music, drums, the bright lights that are constantly going past our house every evening? Big trucks with people covered with pink and blue colour, loudspeakers, big colourful and shiny statues of an elephant being driven by our house? And for some reason they always stop just outside our house and light those darned crackers, bombs really as far as I am concerned. Just when I think the worst is over, another round of music, drums and lights starts to go by. This goes on till early morning, and every single night in the last week.

Mum says that is the Ganesha processions being taken out for immersion in the lakes. She says actually they are supposed to go every other day for a 10 day period, but people either do not know or simply do not care, and 'party' whenever they want to. Maybe it depends on when they can rent the trucks and lights and drums she says. Basically its now more a 'party thing' rather than a religious event she says.

She is also tired and sleepy, poor mum. Having to open the door for me every few hours because I cant sleep and need to be with her [which is why I almost scratch the door down] and having to put up with the same noise cant be fun for her too.

She was telling G and Ria that this year instead of having lesser idols and smaller ones [ which , according to her, is much needed to save the planet and the lakes] there seem to be many more plaster idols and more processions. So instead of trying to improve our environment, this government is helping to run it to the ground by giving more permissions for Ganeshas, and by not implementing the eco-friendly rule where all idols should be soluble in water etc, they are causing grievous harm to the lakes of this city.

On the other hand they are spending millions of rupees to plant trees for an upcoming world conference on Biodiversity [ don’t ask me what that means] and trying to quickly repair the roads and potholes before foreigners see what a mess we live in, and not to forget raising the electric poles and cutting off branches which come in the way of the Ganesha processions!

Its like cutting off their own hands to spite their faces, only they seem to not mind it one bit.

Forget about all that. What about the noise pollution. And what about all the electricity that is wasted during these processions, for which we have to pay by going through long power cuts? So long that the battery also died yesterday! And most importantly What about my ear drums? And those of my fellow 4 legged creatures who must be surely suffering like me these 10 days?

Don’t ask me anything. I need all the forty winks I can get before the next one starts.

comfort blankets and other sweet smellers

I love old stuff. Old toys, old blankets, old bath mats, old pillows, old socks, anything that’s not just been bought [ except of course my chewsticks!] . Ohhhh …that gorgeous sock that I stole from Ria’s shoe many moons ago….that rubber toy that I carefully hide from Mom lest she washes it …and that blue blanket which I came to this city with 5 years ago- heaven!

The joys of sniffing around these relics, snuggling against their old comfortable smells that evoke memories of my childhood are to be experienced not discussed.

Of course Mom dosent agree. She is the only one with a cleanliness fetish that borders on madness in this home. Neither Ria nor G are like her. We flock together the three of us, siblings- in- arms. We love Mess. We adore Junk. We thrive on Piles of Clothes. We like the comfort of having everything around us.

But Mom? She is from Venus I think [ that’s what Snookers says].  She goes batty every few days, and cant stop yap yap yapping at the other two. ‘ clean the bed’, ‘ clear the table’ , ‘put away your books’, ‘why is your wet swimsuit inside the bag still?’, ‘ why are the vessels not put away yet?’, ‘Separate the garbage, Separate the garbage’ ‘ why is your half eaten sandwich from yesterday still in the fridge?’,  I could go on and on and on. She wants everything ‘just so’ [ she says a clean home makes for a clean mind, whatever that means. I am a clean dog, but I don’t like to keep my stuff clean] The rooms have to be dusted, cleaned, everyday and the garbage HAS TO BE SORTED.

We have a big box in G’s room which is filled up with newspapers, plastic bottles, caps, milk bags, tetrapacks, old shoes and old clothes. Every week she rummages though Ria’s cupboards and probably her own too to throw out old clothes, shoes, papers, magazines. On those days I am safely out of sight, protecting my old treasures. I don’t know what I will do if she takes them away one day.:( So the box gets fuller and fuller and then one day Driver takes it away. After some time he brings it back, empty, and Mom starts filling it up all over again. This goes on week after week, month after month. I envy those lucky few who must be getting all those goodies from that box!

Recycling, is what Mom calls it, Separating garbage and putting it to good use, creating livelihood for the poor, clothing those who need it most. She says plastic dosent ever go away and will stay on earth for millions of years.

I don’t understand all this really. I just want her not to discard any of my stuff [ and to be fair to her, she hasn’t yet] But one cant be too careful, can one? 

To draw or not to draw- that is the question

Cartoons are a great thing. Mom is always giggling away at the daily cartoons like B.C, Garfield, Snoopy [ who is far more funny if you ask me, but I may be biased?]. They sometimes accurately portray what we think or feel and laughter is the best medicine anyway.

Now there is a new breed of cartoonists, I think, carefully cultivated, nurtured, and trained by devious politicians and other persons in power only to create disturbance, panic, uproar, affront, and shock value for their own personal or political gains. I hear Mr. A.T is one such homegrown  cartoonist. His recent attempts at being funny didn’t go down well with the powers that be and the fellow was jailed only to be let out shortly after. What exactly are his credentials that have rocketed him from total anonymity to extreme fame in just over a year, when truly great artists like R.K. Lakshman, Sudhir Dar, and Ninan have taken years of creativity and understanding the Indian psyche to attain their status among the Gods of cartoons today? Beats me.

My point is this, or rather I have several if you have the patience….

One, why do the people in power give so much mileage to such people. With due respect to Mr. T, his cartoons are neither terribly clever nor roll-on-the-floor funny, so why is a mountain made out a molehill?  Getting righteous about insulting an emblem whilst quoting a pointless law ‘State Emblem of India- Prohibition of Improper use act 2005’ is just attracting more attention to something that would have been otherwise ignored and forgotten as quickly as the paper on which it was printed.

Two, why do we Indians have such ridiculous laws which stop us from simply laughing at ourselves? Most other free nations today have no such impositions on speech or other forms of expression and it hasn’t especially harmed them or their culture or their governance in any way that I know. I’ve seen foreign models walking the ramp with colours of their national flags painted on their bodies and nothing else, but if we Indians even as much dare to use our tricolor in any manner except flying on a post, we will be prosecuted. And I can give you so many more examples to illustrate this point. But you get the picture.

Three, if the powers that be focused on important matters like a clean governance, above all, rather than spend time debating on whether the image with the ‘loo’ was worse than the one with the ‘three wolves’ or the other equally forgettable drawing, then it would only bring back the spotlight on themselves and their shortcomings and their total disregard for taking the nation forward. From their point of view, I guess its easier deflecting that spot on some poor fellow and breathing easy for those few moments before the dirt is aimed back at them.

And lastly but never in the least, these archaic laws against sedition were made for people who “do not respect their elders”. That simply means the government thinks of  people as errant children who should be punished for raising their voices or questioning wrongdoings rather than treat them as grown-up citizens. And they get their knickers all knotted up when cartoons appear in the press, which poke innocent fun at them!

At the end of the day, its all politics, isn’t it?

Bed-times

Secretly mom loves to have me on the bed. You will never catch her admitting this to ANYONE mind you…. No Sir, she wants to be considered a strict disciplinarian , but what she does not know is that all of us, Ria, me and of course G and Ganjoo, even Snookers - know that it’s a sham, a façade carefully built, but so easily crumbled !

All day long she nags me to get off the bed, the sofa - I mean consider this, every single night a white cover is put on the sofa, so who is she kidding? Its for me to sleep on,isn’t it? Then why she goes on about “get off, sparky!’ every time she spots me, I just cant fathom.She knows I sleep there, she makes sure the white cover is on each day, and yet this drama!!

She has tried for 7 long and delicious years filled with jumping on her bed, Ria’s bed, the sofa, the balcony bench, at every given opportunity, but she does not call this particularily inane game[ of trying to stop me] a day yet. I’ve even stopped snapping if they accidentally kick me or even so much as nudge me when I am up [ well, almost but not quite, its not an easy habit to give up you know. But I am on the wagon, I’ll get there yet.] 

You should have seen me at my worst, this was years ago, when I had to be taken to a dog psychiatrist to sort out my ‘alpha male dominant behaviour’ That lady made Mom put away all my toys and bean bags away for a long long time till ‘ I was cured’ and then they were brought back. I was in severe withdrawal for days, but eventually I got over it.

So this is what happens on any typical day. After lunch when she snoozes, and on weekends when Ria joins her, obviously I want to get in too. Then there’s this ‘go away sparky, go to your room’ drama that goes on for a bit, and then I leave the room,  looking back dolefully. They nod off. I wait for the right moment and slowly creep on to the bed, sometimes from mom’s end, sometimes from Ria’s. I know she is awake, from her breathing, but this time she does not say anything and lets me get on. Then slowly but surely, her hand or her toes will curl up on my back- as if she is in deep sleep, and I sigh in contentment.

Drama is her essence, my warm and cuddly Mom’s.But I've got her genes too, ha!