Hi! I am Jimmy or so they call me now. I was born in the intersection of a busy market place to an Alsatian father and a mongrel mother. My father took off soon after my birth and I missed out on an absolutely wonderful opportunity to spend time with him or so, I thought for the longest time. My mother though was extremely loving. However, with four of us siblings around and food scarce, life was not exactly easy for her.
She managed just fine as long as we were young and contented to suck on her milk but once we grew up and became even hungrier, she ran hither and thither in search of more food. One such day she went off, never to return. Someone informed us much later that she had been crushed under a speeding truck. We were not even spared seconds to mourn her loss when angry bystanders began to shoo us and separated the litter. We all went on our own paths of destiny. I landed at a fruit-vendor’s stalk who graciously allowed me to sleep under his cart in return of keeping other street dogs away. Life was more or less peaceful for days. I spent the days scavenging for food and nights were spent huddled under that cart trying to protect myself from the elements and other creatures.
Soon, I befriended a kind rickshaw puller who sat and talked to me for hours. I reckon he was home-sick and just needed someone to lend him a listening ear. I was contented sleeping next to him, hearing his tales of far off lands and of his loved ones. My presence comforted him and in return, I found someone to lavish my love and care on.
One cold and foggy night, he asked me to come along with him to the home of two wonderful kids. Their father had passed away long back and it was their mother who ran the entire show at their household. She was fiercely dominant and immensely compassionate and she not only gave that rickshaw puller a shelter but also took me inside the warmth of her home and heart. Those kids loved me to the moon and back and I, for one, became fiercely protective of them.
Every evening saw the mother navigate the notoriously crime-infested streets to run her daily errands and I would quietly follow her to every door-step, wait for her patiently and would bring her back home. I, remember having once chased a petty chain-snatcher all the way to the next alley when he tried to lay hands on her.
I, soon became friends with all the other creatures that dwelt in that hours. The rabbits, the cats, the birds, we all lived like a happy family. Life would have gone on like a dream were it not for the day they had to shift to another city. For days, I waited for them to come back, until one day they did, and they took me also along with their other belongingness to a new city and anew home, but that is another story for another day…
From The Autobiography of a Dog to HOME PAGE
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