“My Lucky charm..Pepper!
A lot of times I find myself confronted with two or more raised eyebrows whenever i mention...”oh!yes I have two sons”!
He was eight weeks old when we had first seen him.”Pepper”quite an unusual name for the four legged domestic animal proved to be man’s best friend.....is what many of the Homo sapien prototype have posited.But for us...all he was “the quintessential spice for our monotonous life”.
A whole lot of moments when I look in his eyes,i have wondered to myself ..”are we really the most intellectually sane and viable creatures walking on the “blue planet”?Well,there is so much to learn from these amazing little friends of ours that callling us the most superior,for me,to say the least seems a little bogus!
They say,animals do not have emotions,they cannot communicate and neither can they ever apply logic or understand to think and make choices.
But I have never –ever been able to completely convince myself for this disposition that a million people of my kind hold!...Ever more because everyday with my little one seems to teach me at least one,if not more,new ways to look at and live life.
At the age of 8 weeks,a human baby can hardly open his or her eyes to make sense of the world around them,let alone of ever making it to the world outside of their mother’s lap...ALONE!!......But this little one,kuddos to him,did and most of his kind,do.His mother Avery had a litter of four pups of which he was the eldest and quite a bully ,I must admit.The first time,I ever carried him,he felt like mine!Clinging on to me,trying to make sense of this new found unknown world around him with occasional whines,eyes watery yet curious to know about his new found envionment with this innate habit of discovering the world around through his tiny mouth..
We took him home and the most immediate thing was his series of never ending spurts of “pee”all over my spik n span urban dwelling.What seemed like a trivial everyday messy-smelly habit this little pups never seem to get enough of,is actually the most effective,though primitive yet least expensive way of tracking.Puppies do not need a GPRS or a satellite navigator to track their food,or their kin or even their way back if ever they get lost.They just intelligently use their sense of smell.I nfact,all of us might be a little suprised to discover that even we as humans make sense of the food we eat not by our sense of taste but rather through our sense of smell.If today we would eat food with a nose clip,the taste of most of the savoury world might go for a little toss and that is probably why,most of us grow a little distasteful during an episode of cold where we usually have blocked nose!
Pepper soon became the “talk of the town...rather my neighbourhood”.Labradors are known for their innate ability to gel along with children and my little one knew how to display that to his bestest best!Soon my house became a playground,with children of all variations and not to mention their ever cautions moms,at various...visiting episodes.Pepper was the newest”ROCKY BALBOA”..He was smart,adventurous,sensitive and had moves that children seemed to love!!People I have grown up with have had an everpervasive sense of the fear of the unknown.For everybody if,things seemed unknown they meant unchartered too.When we had got Pepper,the most commonly given comments were...”now you will know,how difficult it is to have a pet!!!”....”My good Lord!aren’t you guys planning a family....how will you manage?”.......”it must be so difficult having pets around kids...what if they bite?”.....”you know what pets around means living with infections around!”.....and so on and so forth.....the list never stopped!
What all this really made me wonder was why is that people feel the way they do?I mean looking at the world these days..us humans are the most threathened and made vulnarable by our fellow homo sapien counterparts...not animals. We are constantly living under the probability of some unknown barbaric fanatic group or believers who live with the sole purpose of challenging and destroying our space,mind and body and yet,we all seem to be so callous and casual about all of it saying and believing that that is how it will be for any ever changing society moving towards modernity. I seriously question myself andmy world around that why is it us people donot have have any problems accepting and living with the unknown inhumanly challenging enemy..?Is it because they are in some way more stronger rather powerful than most of us are and we are,at least seems to be at their illogical disposed will?....But with animals the connotation is the other way round i guess..they seemed to be at our disposed will!!!....Showing our strenght to a weaker kind..isn't strenght enough.Sad but this seems reality.
I have often heard it from people,though the intensity gradient swings,that animals are the most unpredictable beings to be around!Funny! is what i call them.Its been almost 2 years and 2 months with Pepper and 8 long years with Cherie(my german spitz,who is my parents’youngest daughter!) and not a single day I know,I can say that I havent been able to read whats on their canine minds.Start to finish,all our little best friends want is “love”.Everything that these creatures do are to get your attention,sometimes needed and sometimes not needed.But admit it who doesnt want it?So then why stereotype them?
Yes ,although i must be completely be honest and admit that i did have had my occassional bouts of “the temper storm”,when i used to find my furniture chipped-chopped-ripped,shoes amazing shapely chewed and those newspaper bits all over the house....and not to mention my biscuit coloured puppy turned “tan-brown”,courtesy Pepper’s adventure with my hubby’s shoe-shine!!...But then these are episodes,episodes that make us tickle and laugh...and think of how exciting our monotony had suddenly turned into!
The one think that I discovered from all of this,is that, all they want is you to be there around.That touches my heart,because in today’s world where people treat people as stop overs, or befriending you for a purpose;this is an amazing quality of making you feel wanted and needed.
A lot of times I have seen a lot of stray animals on the road,with a helpless look...sometimes for food sometimes for roof and even at times to just care.Many a times i have seen passerby drop food items on to bins and dustbins....globalisation does give give us the chance for the”oh! I dont think i like that “moments,but never ever have i seen some kind soul ever stop by to buy a hungry puppy some eatery.A beggar on the road,pretending to be invalid with both hands and limbs,liar eyes...can at times touch our humanity but those aging,homeless,wandering souls never strike the chord.
My 16 month son,thinks and hails of Pepper as his elder brother,for which i feel very proud.Though at times,during their boyish play,i have seen my Sonny bulling my elder one,to which all his eyes say”you are my little bhai...what could i possibly do to stop you,because i know all you do is you care and love me true!”....and so is their bond that every morningthat my little one wakes up,after hugging us, he has to rush to and kiss Pepper goodmorning,whatever we give him he shares the bigger portion with him and proudly introduces him to any one visiting our home in his baby-talk diction”Pe-eh-perrr”....And believe me all this we havent taught him,its Pepper who has taught all of us that the best way to love is to give and not ask.
A lot of times i have noticed kids hurling stones at animals or teasing them and to my dismay their sane guardians laughing it off saying”kids will be kids”...and i pleasantly wonder so who is the animal here?
I guess for the future generation the least morality we can leave behind is to love all...human and animals and not become one thyself.
