Yesterday was World’s Poetry Day.. a day marked by UNESCO to commemorate all those minds who chose to be something out of the box, the ones who chose to speak; not merely by talking! The poet inside me wanted to write about yesterday and it’s significance in our lives but instead I choose to address what my heavy heart wants to convey.
Today morning I lost a friend. A friend who was the first one to teach me about the phenomenon known as True Love.
It was a friendship of eleven years and 3 months! We grew up together. She noticed me grow six feet tall and always made sure I was happy. We seldom spoke but we both knew when we needed each other. We always stayed inside our boundaries, never crossed them. Never regretted it till today. Her eyes sparkled with joy everytime she saw me and though we were a few years apart; she matured way before I did. I still remember the time that we both got scolded for playing in the afternoon and she quietly accepted her fault when my mother scolded us! She knew and understood that my mother was angry while I stood there ready to quarrel with my mother. She loved mother. Respected her from the very beginning. It was maybe because of the fact that my mother took care of her from the very first day she started breathing.
Eleven years have passed us by, yet when I saw her today, lying still with a strange calmness in her eyes.. I could see the flashbacks of our first meeting vividly! It was really surreal. She was beautiful in her own way. Some found her to be too skinny, others found her to be dirty and smelly. To me, her smell never bothered because to her my smell (bad or pleasant ) meant alot! My love for her started from those lonely afternoons where we’d sit on our balcony and leisurely wait for time to pass us by. Oh! It felt like we had all the time in the world. If only I could steal a few more hours, a few more minutes, days or a couple years to spend with her.
I am guilty. Guilty of refocusing my love to others with time. She stood where we were, I slowly got detached. Soon, sixteen pairs of paws strolled inside my house and she became distant. She had a sister who was always a bully. I still remember their eyes the day they saw that we had bought four of their kins and they walked right inside the house, the sacred place they only had the opportunity to enter a few times during those ghastly Diwali nights!
Her name was Sadhu; as in a Saint. An odd name but she loved it. Honoured it with a swift wag of her tail everytime she heard it.
She didn’t know our language but she spoke to me yesterday, through those eyes.. she seemed to say ‘I’ve had a great life. Thanks to you. Now let me sleep. I’m tired’
She’s gone now, due to multiple organ failure and I feel ashamed of every minute that I wasted elsewhere satiating my own needs and unnecessary wants rather than being with her. I may seem overly romantic and mushy but I actually saw a look in her eyes sometimes which just asked a simple question ‘Why do you shrug us off when you’re busy when all we do is greet you in the best way we can whenever your smell enters our nostrils and our black and white eyes recognise you from a distance?’
Do I have an answer? No! But I wish I did. I wish I could go back and be with her but I can’t. I wish I could tell humans to stop mistreating dogs just because its amusing to them. I wish I could kill all those who hurt them. I wish I could explain to them that a dog is a dog; whether they stay inside a mansion of a house or on the streets. They love us in spite of every flaw that we possess. Let’s just love them for everything they do without expecting anything in return.
Rest in peace love. I’ll see you when my time comes. This time when I see those eyes asking me that haunting question, I wish I will have an answer that would satisfy you! Thank you for everything you did for me and the millions of memories you gave me. Love you Sadhu!
This was the Prologue to my story, ‘Dark Lights’.
