MALGUDI DAYS REMEMBERED …(PART 1)

This is a popular misadventure and actually it takes a bit of jumping around the room and shouting and howling to create an atmosphere for the narration. But let us give it a try without those melodramatic exaggerations. Since this is rather an unusually long series of inter-related events, I am forced to break it into parts.

Story goes back to the time when I was this five year old curious kid who couldn’t stop himself from getting into trouble every now and then. Even with an ever-vigilant caring group of attendants (comprising of my mom, grandma, four aunts and a strict grandpa) to look after I managed to smash my toe-nail, burn my fore-head and get myself almost electrocuted all within the age of five. Accomplishment isn’t it?
That summer a special surprise waited for me at Grandpa’s house – a four month old Labrador dog named Blacky. I can’t assure you ‘America’s Funniest Videos’ standard of fun, but yes we had fun. A trainer had been hired to teach Blacky and it was hilarious to watch a dog trying to chase its own tail or trying to walk only on its hind legs or trying to chase the monkeys around the community space. Once the poor little dog got too overconfident and challenged the honey bees – the result was a tortured puppy stung all over with a swollen face that that gave it the look of a tennis ball stuck between its jaws.

A slight digression is important here to explain the special friendship between me and the injections. Just 3 hours old, I caught infection from a used bed sheet and thus experienced the first touch of injection. The close friendship continued peacefully due to my regular injuries and plenty of tetanus injections. But friendship was best strengthened when I was 3 year old, my good doctor due a silly mistake in diagnosis made me go through the trauma of 2 injections a day for 21 days. (Ouch!) And of course, I don’t remember a single thing – but my mom told I used to shriek for 2 hours prior to the injection and 2 hours after the injection. It took hours of cajoling, counselling, cursing and God-knows-how-many-kilograms of Cadbury Dairy Milk to make me take those injections. Even the doctor himself said, it was a tough job to administer injection to a kid like me.

Now back to the story. I used to intently watch the trainer, trying to learn every possible trick from him. I used to observe the strategies he adopted, the ways he would raise his voice to catch the dog’s attention, the movements he made with his wrists for instructions.

But my mom always forbade me from going too close to the dog. She was always anxious and used to tell me numerous times: “You are our only son. What if something ever happens to you? ...” And my grandma used to tell me stories of how a man in their village died due to dog-bite to scare me away from the dog. Despite all warnings or requests I spent a considerable amount of my boy-hood with Blacky. Many of my happy days and sad days are tinted with memories of this dusky beauty