141..........Had a farm, eyaa, eyai o!!

“Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck!” My pet hen would come through the backyard leading to the veranda near the kitchen and stand next to me, looking up at me with her head cocked to one side. I would pick her up, hold her close to me and gently stroke her feathers and speak to her in a soft crooning voice, “Oh, my little baby. Come I will place you in your nest.” And she would close her eyes in my affectionate gesture. My pet hen, whom I could never really give a proper name to and I, as a little girl used to share a relationship I probably cannot describe in words. My love for her and her equal reciprocation has somehow made my neighbours think I needed ‘help’. But this regularity in her clucking before she laid the egg and after, I placing her in the straw nest I made for her was a routine I could never afford to do without, even though people thought I had lost my marbles. The bond was too strong for me to heed anyone’s sarcastic comments. She stayed with us for several years till one day Dad called me up in Shillong to say that she died of an unknown disease, when the floods came. And she was the same hen my uncle got for us to savour, when I was spending my summer holidays with Dad.  

Dad, being the artist he is, was the most sought after in his department when he was serving with the government and he used to be a regular at the Trade Fairs in Delhi, more so because he designed tableaus and also the Assam pavilion. Once from his return to Guwahati from one of the several trade fairs, we were surprised and shocked too to see that he had got a monkey in a medium sized cage. Mom was like, “Why on Earth have you got a monkey? What’s wrong with you?” Dad, nonchalant as usual, carefully placed the cage in a safe corner of the back-yard and said in an authoritative voice, “I had to get him ‘cause he was abandoned at the Trade Fair. I couldn’t leave him to die. He will stay with us from now on.” Over several years, the petrified monkey from the first night, Molu, as we started to call him, became a part of the family. We spent a lot of time in front of his cage as this was the first time we actually had an animal, supposed to be in a natural environment, as a pet. We were apprehensive about letting him out lest some stray dog attacked him. So, Molu stayed inside the cage and entertained us endlessly with his antics. He would eat, drink, do his potty inside the cage and Dad would use a hose pipe to clean his cage and give Molu a shower. Molu loved Dad like anything but somewhat had a strained relationship with me. But anyhow, I loved him and his ‘monkey’ acts enormously. Even Mom started loving Molu after a point of time and would make balls of rice for him, which she passed through an opening in the cage while he looked up at her adoringly. However, after a couple of years, one fine morning, Mom announced, a little more than sternly that Molu must go back to his natural settings, maybe in a zoo and find his own mate. I had no scope to protest. The day he was taken by a person from the zoo, Molu held onto Dad’s legs and pleaded in long and short squeals not to let him go. Mom was sitting in the veranda, crying, while I with tears rolling down my cheeks implored, begged, cried with all my life not to let Molu go. Sooner than I thought, the man from the zoo decided to put an end to the dramatics in front of him and roughly pulled Molu and shoved him even more roughly into a gunny bag, placid faced and left the place quickly, leaving the three of us to fend with our emotions!

Apart from these pets, I have had many dogs. Jinny, a blondie, with long flapper ears and a tail which fanned my face and a cross between God-knows-what, was a pup I bought from a small Khasi boy in Shillong, who just wanted some pocket money. Jinny gave birth to Jerry and I got both of them to Guwahati till one day, Jinny was ‘dog-napped’ by one of my good friends in the neighbourhood. I had met her later but I never got back to my warm old self with her again! Rocky was a pup off the street, who grew possessive about me over the four years he stayed with us. However, one fine morning, he disappeared never to return again.

The two pigeons my aunt gave me stayed for a couple of months in the boxes my Dad built for them but flew off one day. I guess they had other plans in mind.

So now, Tirus wants a pet ever since I have been telling him endless stories of my pets. At the slightest pretext, he would adopt any animal, no, insect that came his way (read that as mosquitoes, spiders, house-flies, grass-hoppers, lady-birds, beetles and I am yet to know what else is next in his list). The last time I was out of town, my heart broke when I got back and heard Tirus’ story about John Cena, his pea moth caterpillar who died in the little dental floss plastic box after five days, refusing to eat cabbage leaves. Tirus bid adieu with respect when he dug a small hole in the ground and covered John Cena with the soil.

Finally, I got Tirus a fish tank, with around ten different fishes. Initially, he would  spend hours naming the fishes with his cousin and then getting all mixed up with the names after a couple of days. After a year and a half, there’s just one fish left in the tank but Tirus makes sure to regularly change the water and feed it morning and evening. However, now Tirus wants to have a chameleon soon. I am perplexed! Having pets was never so worrisome and complex than now when Tirus wants to domesticate living things which were ‘alien’ to me as pets when I was a kid.