jabberwocky

then came rosie-the street dog; mangy weak cur we adopted her, named her and looked after her
rosie, rosie, rosie.. tch tch tich... tch tch.. we called out every night after dinner.. to give her the left overs.
And, no matter where she was.. next lane, a block away..she came bounding, leaping over short compound walls and jumping across fences.On sundays, we left a lot of meat on our bones during dinner, so that rosie could get it.
rosie had many babies.. and we looked after them all...One rainy morning she gave birth to four pups..they all looked cute as usual
after a couple of weeks we realised something
3 were fine.. there was a lone guy with useless hind legs
when he walked.. the hind legs dragged on lifelessly behind him thin, weak legs... maybe dog polio.
then the rains came.. he slept in the gutterwe thought he would get washed awaywe cried and begged,
could we bring just that one lame guy home
well... what did we expect.. it was NO as usual
so after the murderous rain stopped vinod and I ran out to look and...believe it or not..
floating in the muddy waters lame duck was alive..well... mi felt bad too..
and gave us an old bedsheet for him we took him out..
put him in a dry spot in ourcompound and wrapped him in the bedsheet after some time the idiot left the place and was sitting in the muddy gutter with the bed sheet entangled between his hind legs..
all wet and dirty
well coming back to future perfect... which it never is anyway
lame duck died.we found him dead one morning
sukanya, latha, shanti, ammi, seena, vinod and i
we all cried for a while, poked him with stick,
checked hundred times for heartbeat...
and so on and so forth.at 2 in the afternoon we decided to give him a fitting burial all of us together.
we carried him on a plate to the empty groundwe dug a hole..
all of us got to dig and then we lowered him in...
all of us put little mud on topand then we put flowers we had brought..
lose flowerswhen the hole was almost covered.. only the last bit was left
all the girls howled one last howl.. like we see relatives of dead peopledo in real live and in the movies...
same-same we did.The we prayed all of usthen we sang a kannada song one that all of us knew
then seena and ammi went to their house and got us one glass of fresh milk(they had 5 cows)
we poured the milk on the newly dug earth and cried again.
Then I made a speech.. i said.. lame duck was our friend and we will never forget that he is buried here and that every year
for as long as we lived we would come on that day, from where ever in the world we were and pay homage to our friend
and pour milk on his grave.
needless to say that was the first and the last time the ceremony took place.
next year puppy wandered into our streets and lives