There are maidens and there are wolves,
And then there are the rescuers.
Big, burly, brave,
They burst in, uncalled,
Unasked,
Dragging with them death,
In bloody trails.

But the forest is old,
I, older still.
I have walked these paths,
Known each tree,
Known each beast,
And held their magic,
In me.

Know hunter, when you kill,
And spill life,
I am watching,
Waiting,
For you to burst in again,
Unannounced.

My grandmother and I,
We are readying a feast,
Wolf is by the hearth,
The fireplace warm,
Outside storm clouds gather.

You are lost, hunter,
Tired you drag
Feet weary and hands blistered,
Fingers caked in mud and blood,
You seek us.

In a lone cottage,
A welcoming light shines.
Inside two women and one wolf,
Ancient and endless,
Wait.

Wait, hunter,
For you.

I have been asked to mourn you,

to feel each thing that I said I did not feel.

Feel grief,

feel pain, feel the tears leave wet trails

along their downward journey.

Feel the despair, the hopelessness, the fear.

I felt nothing when I saw you, dead.

I held you,

hoping to feel warm.

I felt the softness of your fur,

the stiffness of your limbs and the paper thinness of your ears.

I picked you up, my mind scanning for space in the garden,

too full of the dead. I did not mourn.

A creeper, a rose, maybe a herb bush,

or some catnip.

But most importantly, for a few months

a heavy pot, I would have to find a very heavy pot to place

on top, so you would not be dug out, rotting and ghastly.

I did not mourn you.

I cannot mourn you.

My shoulders shrug,

I sigh.

What can I do?

I do not even remember the times together entirely.

You, asleep on my bed, purring.

You, heaped up in a pile of others, a rag patch purring quilt.

You chasing shadows and butterflies.

You hungry at 5 am.

You on my lap,

You, soft and prickly,

jumpy and purry,

crazy and wise.

I did not mourn you.

I have not mourned you.

I hope that it is not important to mourn, for you and for me.

I just hope that it’s a Dr.Who universe,

and you are there,

and a crack in time

will widen

and we will meet.

For a 50 word story challenge from Cafe Muravyets. It has to have the following words in it: downpour, moronic, mercifully, snagged, ripen

In the downpour, the Queen of Hearts mercifully became pulp. ‘Better than getting old and getting wrinkles that will ripen her into a prune’ said Alice. Having snagged the Queen's plans, she now wants to move on and get that moronic Mad Hatter captured and say ‘Off with his head!’


so have a look at: muravyets.wordpress.com for other stuff, wonderful and suchlike.

Lunch in Fridge

I was looking at Flash Fiction blogs and found a 50 word challenge to write a story about 'lunch in Fridge'. So here is mine:

Beautiful Rose is sleeping. Her busy ‘globetrotting on a broomstick’ stepmother has made sandwiches (Rose’s favourite: cheese, pickles and mushrooms) and fruit salad: strawberries, green grapes, cherries and a blood red apple. She has packed it all in Tupperware, stuck a Post It saying ‘Lunch In Fridge’ and flown away.


....I really need to think beyond fairy tale themes.

ok it's not 55 words...

The mirror glowed, the mirror gleamed. The queen looked at her face and screamed. Wrinkles fine ran up and down, the smiling face now a frown. ‘I need blood’, she said, to put back that glow. ‘Find some silly maiden who spins, lock her in your room, and do what you do best; and please, not the skin white as snow type, you know what happened the last time’.

Bluebeard sighed. Maybe one day his story would be told.

You never asked
her
if she wanted to come
back
to walk again behind you,
following
like a faithful pup
the footfalls
up and down
rugged mountains
so that
your feet could crack and hands grow rough
and people could say:
‘Look it’s ORPHEUS,
who brought her back from the dead;
praise his love.
We saw his grief
tear at the earth
till it opened, bleeding'.

The other king,
and his dark kingdom,
lay wounded,
defenseless
so that, to heal,
he yielded.

but
you never did ask
her.

55 word story challenge: re-write a fairy tale or use fairytale elements to write a story in not more than 55 words:

Crunch crunch crunch. Baba Yaga was gnawing on a bone. ‘The problem with maidens is that they ask for too much’. ‘This one, for instance, asked me for a mirror’. ‘Now another one is asking me for a glass slipper’. Rumplestiltskin, her son, nodded wisely. He knew maidens and their demands only too well.

It does not seem fair
that the morning should come
with a yawning sun
shivering in the mist,
and everything is the same way as yesterday.

Yesterday when you ran up to me,
there was summer in every leap;
I burdened by woes, imagined and real,
could forget
and see just you, so happy, so alive.

Oh I know,
the flowers over your grave will burst one day
with blossoms;
each will be like a message from you,
telling me that this,
this is life; just one; just once.

And the sunshine on the petals will
touch me too,
and for just that one moment,
you will be here again
prancing, dancing, loving life
as I never can.

But right now,
it is not fair.
The sunshine and the birdsong
go on,
and I wait my dear cat
for you.

Eurydice to Orpheus

Eurydice does not speak to me easily. This is a work in progress.


I want to be here
The other life has blurred;
and though I can feel
the sting that runs like fire
through your fingers
burnt by stringed flames,
its winter here
and slowly, I am forgetting.
Sometimes when my
feet stir a memory
of blazing winter suns
deliciously burning my soles,
I remember
us
as I walk precipices
on midnight days.

Orpheus to Eurydice

On some days it's easier
When the winter sun
Allows for glimpses
Between the mists.
I wait,
And remember
Us,
Walking through these grasslands
You, me,
Dancing in the mist,
Seeking each other by touch.
Your fingers make
Music more haunting than
My calloused fingers have ever brought forth.
We would wait for the sun,
To break, to stumble through the mist,
Till it fell on our faces.
And when in the haze,
Your eyes, delighted,
Saw mine,
You would laugh,
And hide.
So I wait
Outside this cave, for you are hiding again,
I hear the echo of your footsteps,
Fading further and further away
To a place I cannot reach.
So I sing, I strum
Come now, they are gathering around,
Your birds and beasts.
Together, they and I,
Are waiting.

The Human Child.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.
W.B Yeats.

They took the human child far, far away. He had followed them because they had baskets of berries with them; berries, red like the counting beads in his nursery; red like the rubies his mother wore; red like the apples he bit into as he watched autumn sunsets. They told him that he could have the berries if he came with them. They knew a place where there were thousands of berries. So he followed them.

Now he began to cry. Salty drops ran down his face. Laughing, they said that his tears would make a pearl necklace for their queen.

In the moonlight a mother looked for her child. Every rock took on the shape of the child and she would run towards it sometimes in fear, sometimes in joy, sometimes in tears. The white moon shone down on her, quietly, unfeelingly.

The wind rustled, someone giggled. Pale whispery hands gagged the human child. The mother turned. She knew her child was near. But all around her was barren, open rocky land. Hopelessness filled her and she fell.

The human child was taken deep into the earth. “Here he is”, they said. “We have brought you a human child”.

She was looking into a mirror. A barren world showed itself to her. She could see the mother standing against the hot uncaring wind and the blazing sun that had little else but her to burn. Her eyes looked straight out firm and determined. A shiver ran through the other world. She turned her eyes away from the mirror and held herself for warmth. For the first time she felt fear. ‘Cover the mirror’, she said and walked out.

'My son, have you seen my son?' the woman asked the boys who were playing near her house

'Have you seen my son?' she asked the boy who was chopping firewood.

'Have you seen my son' she asked the washer-man by the river.

'Have you seen my son?' she asked the three women who sat begging at the boundary of the village.

' Your son?' asked the oldest woman. 'She wants her son, did you hear that sisters?' she shrieked

'Have you seen my son, please, kind ladies?' said the mother.
to be continued.

‘Wrrroom wrrooom, rrrrooom, rroomm, and now ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts, we will be landing shortly, this is your pilot Ajay speaking’.

I was in my car, parked outside a house in one of the crosses of Bharatnagar. It was a hot afternoon, and I kept the door open for the small, occasional bits of breeze. A friend was in the parlour next door getting her hair straightened. Miscalculating the time it would take, I had reached an hour earlier. Not wanting to be subject to it’s smells; the outdated women’s magazines; the chemically altered, Photoshop perfected pictures of models and the ever critical assessment of perceived physical shortcomings by the receptionist, I opted to stay in the car to wait for my friend.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you can now unfasten your seatbelts, thank you for travelling Ajay air, this is your captain Ajay signing off’.

The voice was coming from the upper floor of the house. I guessed the boy’s age to be about ten or eleven.

‘ Wrrroom!!!’

Ajay, perhaps, was ready to fly another plane. His attempts, however were cut short by another voice. It was an elderly man’s voce.

‘Please stop now Ajay, sit down’ he said. ‘No…wroom, wroom, there are too many passengers, Tatha’. Ajay was obviously in no mood to listen.

Ajay had begun to run now, from what I could gather. The annoyed mumble of the grandfather was getting drowned by the sounds of Ajay’s running and incessant, repetitive imitation of an aero plane. The afternoon wore on. A dog came up to the car and wagged his tail. I petted him and wished that a petty shop was nearby so that I could get him a bun. Hardly anyone was about. The silence and emptiness had a strange, unnatural quality to it. It was the silence and eerie feeling you expect to have at 2am if you are walking down an empty street. Everything seemed so still, the air was heavy; I could almost smell the heat, taste it almost. Trees, I thought. Why can people not plant more trees? All these houses; surely I reasoned, there is enough room in the compounds to plant at least one.

‘Tatha, when will they come? ’ Ajay’s voice was high, complaining, irritated. ‘They will Ajay, wait’. ‘But they have gone so long’. ‘Keep quiet, Ajay, please’. His grandfather sounded angry and Ajay said nothing more.

The house had seemed particularly empty as compared to the others in the lane. That was one of the reasons I choose to park the car there aside from it being next to the beauty parlour. I looked at it carefully now. There were no plants. That was what had struck me. That is what I had unconsciously registered while parking the car. The windows were empty too. There were no curtains. I peered into the driveway. No car, no scooter. In fact it was an upswept driveway, dead leaves from roadside trees and debris lay scattered all around. Glancing at the compound wall, I could see layers of mud on the wrought iron lattice work that once must have had creepers growing through it.

'Honk, honk’ said Ajay. ‘I think the car has come. Mommm Daaad, is that you?’ ‘Ajay, please’ said his grandfather. ‘Sit down, I said, They will come, just wait’.

I looked into the window of the ground floor. The room was empty. There was nothing in it. No furniture, pictures, nothing. I looked up, at the window from where I could hear the voices of Ajay and his grandfather. From what I could see, it was empty. I walked up to the gate. It was locked. Locked!. Why had I not seen that before?

Wroom…wroom…continued Ajay.

The heat was beginning to get to me and the sudden ringing of the mobile made me jump. It was my friend. She was done and was wondering if I had reached. Lunch, she said, was something she could have three servings of. I told her that I waiting outside.
She came out, hair shiny and pin straight. ‘Wow, amazing, it really suits you’ I said, insincerely. I took one last look at the house as I backed the car. It was silent now.

(I did hear a conversation like this. We were waiting in the car while our dog was being groomed. The house outside which we had parked looked empty. At least the ground floor rooms were empty. From the upper floor we heard a boy pretending to be an aero plane and an elderly man's voice could be heard too. When i looked up, the upper rooms also looked empty. So my husband and I, as we often do, made up a story to explain this apparently strange situation)

for Desmond, Socks, Kajal Clone, Casper, Calliope,Charles Bucket, Kalahari and so many more.

'No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two'
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot.

I am no poet, but this is for you.

where have you gone my little cats?
Each day I call your names, and hope,
In vain perhaps, that you will return, if only just
To run away again.

Where have you gone my little cats?
Your food is kept each day, in the spot where
Just you liked to eat. And it stays there,
Till another, delighted at a second round,
Crunches it up.

Where have you gone my little cats?
Far away from my lap, the tickles and cuddles,
The slaps and fights with the others,
To a place I cannot reach,
To a wonder only you see.

Where have you gone my little cats?
Can you not hear me? Are you so far away?
I wait each day; attend to each sound,
Hope and perhaps pray,
That you come back today.

Stray dogs, poverty, instinct and madness

The mauling to death of Prashanto, the one year old son of a labourer couple by a stray dog was tragic and reminded us of a fact that is undeniable; that dogs have a pack instinct. They hunt what they perceive as easy prey though the motive may not be to eat it. To my knowledge no stray dog has eaten human flesh.

Prashanto was the seventh child of this couple. They have six daughters and he was the seventh child, the youngest. This couple had come from Orissa, are below the poverty line and were living is shanties constructed by a building contractor. It is reported that there were no doors or windows in any of these shanties.

Imagine everyday life for this couple. The daily wage for a labourer is meager. It is certainly not enough to feed a family of nine people. Their house has no door and therefore no protection, against dogs or anything and anyone else. It is probably not even enough to comfortably house nine people. Obviously the daughters do not go to school. Being migrant labourers, education, especially of daughters is out of the question. Warm meals, warm clothes, steady income and other basics are things they have no conception of. Theirs is a day to day existence.

So, what was Prashanto’s death really a failure of? The contractor who failed to provide them with a secure house? The parents who had seven children despite knowing the abject poverty they were living in? The Government who could not provide for families like them? The government again who has consistently failed to provide a humane Animal Birth Control Program and humane euthanasia of rabid, aggressive and diseased animals? The apathy of all of us who do not care for either families like Prashanto’s or the many animals who live, suffer and die on our roads?

We are so quick to react and mass kill stray dogs when incidents like this happen. A few years ago when a similar incident occurred, professional dog killers from Malabar were called in and they killed hundreds of dogs in the most inhumane manner imaginable. Did that make any difference to the dog population? When hundreds of dogs were poisoned to death all over the city, did that help? What good did it do to beat a stray dog to death and drag his body in triumph? None of these methods have worked to reduce the stray dog population.

Yet the government will not allocate adequate funds to sterilize and vaccinate stray dogs. It will not co-operate with Animal welfare Organisations to work with them to humanely reduce the stray dog population. This same government will not work towards the welfare of its poor either. It will instead arrest innocent people like Mr.Yadav who allegedly looked after the dog who killed Prashanto. How is that an answer?

Let us not become irrational and cry out for another bloodbath where hundreds and thousands of dogs are needlessly killed. We are, I hope far too civilized for that. Let us instead look at solutions that work and benefit all.

The Rejection...

So this got rejected for the sixth issue of an online magazine called The New Fairy Tales.

Moral of the story: don't think you or your story is so great!

The Wicker Basket.

The basket floated down the weed green marshy stream, got caught among the gently fermenting reeds near the woodcutter’s hut and lay there quite still, a wicker basket among brown, green and cloud grey water.

The woodcutter, his wood chopped for the day, went to the stream to wash his splinter bruised hands. On seeing the basket, he waded in to have a closer look.

Inside lay a baby, perhaps a few months old. Black, curly ringlets spilled over her eyes and ears, little drops of water clinging to them like fairy lights. Her eyes were green, a dark mossy wood green. Around her neck was a thick chain of gold with a pendant of green stone. In the twilight it lay on her tiny throat like a leaf with the first hints of autumn on it.

He quickly took the pendant and its ropelike chain and waded out of the marshes.

The baby began to cry as night slowly filled the spaces between the trees.

The woodcutter sat by the fireside and smiled as the stone glowed green and gold. He knew this stumbled-upon stolen treasure would fetch a high price in the market.

The next morning he did not take any of the bundles of neatly chopped and bundled wood to the market. Instead, he took with him a small bundle and on reaching the market, sat at his usual place, opened the bundle and spread out its contents.

'Oh, what a beautiful pendant!' exclaimed the woman. 'My lady', said he sadly. 'My lady, it was my mother’s, she took it off the day my father died and could never look at it again. Now that she too is gone, I cannot bear to look at it', he added.

'What is your price?' she asked.
'For you, dear lady, so lovely, so fair, it is only five pieces of gold. If you take it with the chain, it will befive more gold pieces'.

She smiled and gave him a bag of coins. He took out the gold, bit a coin and satisfied, put it back in. She laughed and clasped the pendant around her neck and walked away.

That evening, the curiosity of the guilty made him wade into the marshes to have a look at the basket again. The baby was there still, alive, perhaps sustained by tiny droplets of water that fell from the reeds that surrounded her.

Something in the basket caught the last rays of the sleeping sun and glimmered. Feeling around in the basket he found a mirror. A tiny mirror, just the size of his palm. Framed in gold and blood red stones it glowed, setting the last rays of the sun on fire.

The baby let out another wail and he waded back to the shore,

'And for this, oh lovely one, I ask you for fifteen pieces of gold.' he said the next day, back in his stall in the market place. The lady, too, was back.

She took the mirror and looked at her reflection and smiled, her lips as red as the red stones of the mirror. 'Oh your price is so high!' she said sadly.

'My lady, it pains me to see you so sad, so I will ask for only twelve. This mirror was my sister’s. She died you know, dragged down by water sprites when she went bathing in the river'.

She gave him a bag and laughed gaily at her reflection.

When he looked at the basket later that day, the baby was still, either sleeping or dead. He unwrapped the white embroidered stole that someone had lovingly, perhaps sadly wrapped around the baby to keep her warm.

The stole was made of fine soft silk. It was hand embroidered with beautiful flowers and fairies. Each delicate wing was in shadow stitch and each pink, yellow and red rose so real, he tried to smell them as he allowed the cloth to brush against his cheeks.

'And, my lady, this is for your fair shoulders. A gift to me from my grandmother, should I find a lovely maiden to marry. Alas! that is not to be, and so I must part with it.'

'What will you take for this?' said she. Green eyes and blood red lips tantalized him.

'For you my lady, just 20 pieces of gold'

'You ask for too much.'

'Fifteen then,' he sighed.

That evening he took all the three bags of coins out of his box to look at them again, to count the coins, again, and to lick his gold.

He opened the first one and screamed. It was filled with dust. He emptied it and the weightless dust spilled all over the table. In a terrible rage he tore open the other two and shook them. Dust.

Screaming he ran out and waded into the stream. The basket was there but there was no baby. He picked up the basket and crushed it.

Nearby he heard laughter. Lying stretched out teasingly with green eyes reflecting the green stone around her neck, the silk stole carelessly thrown over her naked body she lay looking at the red stone encrusted mirror, seductively biting her blood red lips. Her hair, wild and curly fell over her breasts, her hips and teasingly touched her navel.

He felt himself sink, as the reeds choked him. He did not fight, there was no struggle. He sank, slowly, looking at her all the time and she looked at him, laughing.

a haunting?

In a way you could have called it a haunting.Whenever I would walk down the corridors of my childhood house, I would feel as if I was being enveloped by a dampness that made me shiver even in the warmest of summer days.I would also feel a black shadow that seemed to walk behind me, constantly.
In those childhood days I had no name to give it. I would turn around several times in an attempt to catch whoever it was that walked so quietly behind me.

Of those years I remember no winter, no summer and no spring; just occasional days. Days when I crawled into the canopy of the lemon bush to lie down and read (Now, so many years later, I am surprised to find that lemon bushes have thorns, for I never remember having been scratched or having to avoid any when I hid inside the bush), days when I sat by the pond with my feet in the water, days when I made mud pies and decorated them with flowers torn off bushes ( I regret tearing those flowers now), but mostly I remember the days as days spent with myself, endlessly weaving stories to keep myself amused. I do not remember telling my parents about the other girl. Many years later they asked me about her, because they said, I would tell them about her and the games we would play, the adventures I would have with her. Amused though they were, they would tell me that I had a lively imagination but I must not let it carry me away. I would insist she was there, they said, waiting for me, and she that would play with me every day as surely as I spoke to them.

But what of this black shadow that would walk with me wherever I went, once I was inside the house? Oppressive, heavy, cold, once frightening, once thrill inducing, yet never harmful. Just walking, walking, walking ceaselessly behind me, making me want to run, making me want to stop and turn abruptly, making me wrap my arms around myself for warmth.

Two men wait for me in the kitchen, dressed in carnival costume; Punchinello, except there are two of him, tall, very tall, lanky with arms and legs that seem wobbly at the joints. They walk towards me, jerkily, grinning and I cannot escape. One of them, pushes me, hand on my face ‘Beauty Queen’ he says and laughs.

I wake up in a panic. I never ever want to enter the kitchen again. Never alone anyway.

I smell blood. The cold wind blows in and brings with a blackness that can be felt, can be tasted, and it wraps itself around me, chokes me and a knife plunges into my bed, stabbing it and then there is blood everywhere.

I wake up knowing this was real. This happened. Now I never want to enter that bedroom again. Thankfully it was never mine. Just one of the many spare ones I had wandered into one afternoon and fallen asleep.

And still, this house haunts me, so many years later. In my dreams I walk, relentlessly walk up and down those corridors, feeling the same black shade. I search for the lemon bush, the pine tree, the mango trees, I roll in the grass and let the hot sun burn red and brown blisters into my skin. This too is a haunting.
In my teen years, my mother once showed me a poem she wrote and I loved it so much, I made it my own. Now only bits of the poem come back to me

The fragrance of roses,
My garden pervades,
And the moonlight shines,
In silver cascades,
…a sudden movement,
A creaking of the gate,
Is it you that comes,
At this hour so late
Memories food,
as I rush out to see,
Ah! but it’s just a shadow,
Your spirit is visiting me.

Who then did my childhood self see? Who walked behind her? Who was the other girl? Who haunts that house? Is it me? Is it the other girl? And what of the black presence? Of Punchinello? Of the knife and the blood? I don’t know. I don’t know.

She had been left in the animal shelter because she was old, incontinent, had bladder cancer and cataract. For someone, she had become too much of a bother to look after. I saw her in the distance, tied to a pole. She looked at me with an intense expression that I tried to ignore. I was not intending to take her home. I had just lost my German shepherd and looking at another one was too much to bear.
As is often the case with me in animal shelters, I walked up to her anyway. ‘Do not touch her’, said the shelter manager, ‘She has already tried to bite three people who have wanted to walk her or adopt her’. I looked at her. She was a huge black and tan German shepherd, with large wolf like eyes and enormous ears. She was really staring at me; I had not imagined it when I first saw her. Her tail did not wag, and in her eyes I thought I could read a deep sorrow. I went home and told my mother about her. The next day both of us went to the shelter and were told again that she was a biter and it was best not to go near her. When she saw my mother, she wagged her tail and jumped up and down. So, despite my protests, my mother walked up to her, with biscuits and to the astonishment to all those around, this dog ate out of her hand. I was asked by my mother to unchain her which I did with my eyes closed in fear, expecting a bite right on my face any minute. Nothing happened, she was unchained and I began to walk her outside the shelter. She saw our car, ran up to it, dragging me behind her, climbed in and sat down and looked at me with her tail wagging.
We took her home, I sat next to her and she licking my hands and face throughout.
Whether she would she adjust to the cats was my next fear and I told her that if she did not, she would have to go back. Once home, she settled in with cats like it was the most normal thing for a dog her size to do.
Three months later, my mother took ill and passed away. I, overcome with grief, became withdrawn and began to live a reclusive life, my only outings being the daily trip to work and back. Leela, as we named her, insisted in moving into my bedroom and she would cuddle with me through those pain filled nights. I would spread a rubber sheet on the bed because of her incontinence and feel grateful for her warmth and love.

Slowly Leela began to look after me. She would go to the kitchen and wag her tail, so I had to go there too, to give her a snack, and so would eat as well. She would flop down next to me when despair would fill me. Few things can equal the peace and joy that comes when you hug a dog, especially one her size. She began to screen everyone who came home. Some of my friends were fine according to her and she liked them, others she hated and as the years showed me, were well worth her displeasure. She would not leave my side when I had repairmen at home and they could hardly talk to me because she would bark continuously not letting them come anywhere near me. She bit one or two people who tried to come too close to me when I walked her and soon had the reputation of a ferocious dog. An excellent reputation that she worked hard to build I am sure, to protect someone who was living alone.
Three years passed and she grew weaker and more incontinent. Her kidneys failed and she was dying. I begged the vets to save her. I just could not lose her. I could not. After fifteen days of dialysis, her creatinine count came down to a near normal level and she came home. Once home, she resumed looking after me, protecting me and bossing over me.

More than a year passed and then she began vomiting blood and I knew that she would not live much longer. Around that time someone called me and inquired if I had a kitten that he could adopt. I said I did and he said he would come over in the evening to have a look at her. I warned him about Leela when he rang the doorbell and waited to se Leela’s reaction. She walked up to him, sniffed him, wagged her tail and walked away. I was relieved. Usually anyone new would be barked at for at least fifteen minutes, more, if she disliked the person. ‘She likes you’, I told him. He took the kitten home and Leela died a week later. Once again I was devastated. My lifeline had been cut again.
But Leela knew something I did not know. It was as if she had been waiting, just as she had been waiting all those years ago to be taken home. She was waiting for this man who came to take the kitten. It sounds rather dramatic, but I married the man who adopted the kitten from me. We have adopted many dogs and cats since but I will always remember my special friend who looked after me like a parent does and even made sure that I got ‘settled’ in life.

Peggy the pigeon was found on M.G road outside the Deccan Herald Office almost two years ago. An employee of Deccan Herald found her and went to my husband who was having breakfast in Coffee House next door, to ask for help. We were looking after the coffee house cats at that time and the regulars there knew that we help out animals in distress. So my husband packed up the pigeon and took her home. Now came the problem of putting her in a safe place in a house full of cats.

We put her in the dressing room, called the vet, described her condition and asked what she could be given to eat. It turned out that she had a B-complex deficiency and all we needed to do was add B-Complex tablets to her food.

Because the dressing room was between the bathroom and bedroom, Peggy, as we named her, had to put up with us going back and forth through her room several times a day. She would flap her wings indignantly, fly up and perch on the curtain rod and look down at us, annoyed.’ You smell of cats' she would say.

It did not take long for the cat network to get to know that their humans had brought home something different for dinner. They ran into the bedroom and sat outside the closed door of the dressing room in anticipation of being let in to the feast inside. Some tried to break the door down when they found that we were of no help. Others, in rotation, kept a constant watch at the door. Inside Peggy would flap her wings furiously each time a cat mewed. This only frustrated the cats more.

One day they got in, five of them, Peggy flew up to the ceiling and flew from one end to another. Poor thing, she must have been terrified. The cats were trying all they could to get at her, but there was no way they could. They were shooed out and the door was shut. We realized that it was time Peggy was released. It had been close to three months, she was getting very fat and she seemed fine.

I did not want to part with her despite the permanent bird poop stains on the floor, despite the difficulty of preventing cats from running in, despite her not making friends with us. But she had to go, there were pigeons in the area and she would surely find friends and live happily.

So we opened the window and hoped she would get the idea. Promptly a cat walked in from the open window. I had forgotten that they could climb from the parapet below the window. Peggy flapped angrily till we locked all the cats away and waited. By the evening, she had flown away. I looked out for her for many days after that, hoping to see her on some tree, somewhere nearby. I scattered grains into any likely area where pigeons might roost but I never saw her again.

I won’t forget her, little Peggy, the pigeon among the cats.

The graveyard of the ants.

I will never know why there were squares cut into one of the compound walls of my childhood home in Lucknow. The squares were small and ran along the length of the wall, right in the middle. Perhaps they were meant for lamps. One day I discovered ants in one of the squares, hundreds of them and they were all dead. As I watched, I saw a procession of ants bring a dead one into the square. It was carried across the other dead ones and left in a corner and then the others went away. I had found an ant graveyard!.

From that day on, I would go there everyday to observe and check if I had indeed found an ant graveyard. On most days it lay there silent. The dead lying there naked, exposed, vulnerable. What if the gardener decided to clean up the squares? All of them were becoming collection points for dead leaves and mud and would soon become too obvious even for him to ignore. What if he decided to clean everything up? Where would the ants put their dead? I kept a vigil from that day on. I made myself the protector of the ants and their graveyard.

I even kept flowers there. Purple bougainvilleas, tiny wildflowers whose names I did not know and covered their bodies with leaves. At least twice more, as far as I can remember, I saw a procession of ants carrying a dead one and depositing it in the graveyard.

Ant graveyards do exist. Most of what I have found is anecdotal evidence. Ants graveyards in kitchens, in the bathroom of a hilltop home, in some shed and other such places. The people who have discovered them have been as surprised and fascinated as me. I would love to have a scientific explanation for ant graveyards but I have not been able to get much.

Little Red Riding Hood loved the forest. Spring or winter, autumn or summer, she would take her picnic basket and spend many hours there pretending that she was a woodland creature . Her grandmother who lived on the other side of the forest would often tell her stories of her own childhood, when the forest was thicker and a person would have to be very brave indeed to go into it at all.

'If you go into the very heart of the forest', she told her granddaughter, 'You will find the cottage of the lady of the forest'. 'She is very old and her hair is silver like the stars and her eyes are as green as leaves. 'We never dared to go anywhere near her cottage, for we were very afraid of her.' said the grandmother to Little Red Riding Hood, who listened with terrified fascination. 'Did she turn people into toads?' asked LRRH?

'Maybe she did' replied her Grandmother,'Who knows?'.

'Was she a wicked witch?' asked LRRH

'Witches are not wicked, my dear' said her Grandmother. ' Not always, anyway, only if they have to be' she said and smiled.

One day LRRH was in the forest pretending to be a witch. She had a pile of berries in a little pot of water and was very seriously repeating a spell over and over again.


Red, blue, green and gold,
Cherries, berries, leaves and mold,
Cook, bubble, steam and stew,
Make me a delicious magical brew.


'May I have some of your magical brew?' said a voice. LRRH looked up and saw a tall handsome huntsman. 'Why?' she asked. 'So that I can become the best hunter in the entire world' he said and smiled. 'The forest is dangerous you know. A little girl like you could get eaten up by a wolf'. 'If I get magical powers, I can protect you, I can kill the wolf and any other animal that tries to harm you'.

'My grandmother told me that the animals in the forest are not harmful', said LRRH indignantly. 'She has a wolf that comes every evening to be fed'.

'Your grandmother tells fascinating stories , it seem to me' he said and smiled. 'Now, may I have some of your brew?' he said and moved closer to her.

LRRH shrugged and gestured towards the berries.

'What lovely green eyes you have, little girl' said the huntsman and he picked a handful of berries and inched nearer to her.

LRRH shrugged and said nothing.

'What a lovely tiny nose you have, little girl' said the huntsman and he bit into the berries in one big mouthful and moved closer to her.

'And what lovely little ears you have' he said and he tucked a dark curl behind her ear.

'What soft hands you have' he said as he took them into his rough scarred hands.

LRRH tried to pull away but he held her firmly. Smiling. Chewing the berries, lips staining red with their juice.

'What lovely......

Before he could finish, a look of terror came into his face. He seemed to be looking at something beyond them and his face twisted into a plea of forgiveness, of anguish, of immense pain. He his mouth frothed and his hand loosened the grip he had on her.

As she ran towards her grandmother's house, she could hear him screaming in pain, in fury, like a dying beast. She ran till she could hear him no more.

She pushed open her grandmothers door and found her knitting, her silver hair had just been brushed and she looked up and her green eyes were twinkling.

'Did you have a nice day in the woods, my dear?' she asked. 'I have made you some cherry pies and a mug of chocolate.Wash your hands and dig in'