Paws for a cause

“Come here, Choti,” urged the kindly animal shelter caretaker doling out glucose biscuits from a tin can to the prancing dogs around him. “Don’t you want one?”

Little Choti wagged her tail and struggled to keep pace with her taller peers, dragging her deformed hind legs along the concrete floor.

The assorted puppies in a nearby enclosure let out shrill yelps, demanding their share of treats. Mom turned her attention to the clamoring curs who jumped up and licked her fingers through the iron grates. “Let me out of here!” they all seemed to say, while a baby buffalo and a white calf calmly chewed cud and surveyed the din from their side of the corral.

A lot of people I know may not classify a visit to an animal shelter as the ideal treat on one's birthday, but mom is the kind of person who’d rather be cooing at canines and domestic animals than indulge in retail therapy at the closest mall. Therefore, when her sister-in-law asked her if she would like to accompany her to the CUPA shelter in Hebbal to pick a new member for her family, mom jumped into the car with as much excitement and giddy anticipation as the devout reserve for a place of worship.

As they alighted from the car, a welcoming party ran up to greet them, gently poking their wet muzzles into the bag mom was carrying, and sniffing out the cookies she had brought them.

“Hello,” she said, stretching her palm out in acquaintance. Mom was duly rewarded with a light lick and a tail wag as the canine committee accompanied the visitors inside the complex.

“We don’t have any purebred dogs. OK?” warned the supervisor, leading the humans to the puppy pit. About 20 fluff balls of assorted sizes and colors huddled together, some on a dog bed, a few on the wet floor, amid empty steel bowls and puddles of urine, poop and vomit.

Palm-sized puppies slept in cages. Piled one on top of the other, they rooted against their littermates for warmth. Month-old strays of various shades of brown and black looked at the visitors briefly before yawning and settling back for a nap. “We don’t know anything about these pups, so there’s a 50-50 chance that they might not make it,” explained the person in charge, urging potential adopters toward hardier, older pups.

Presented with an array of choices, each one as adorable as the next, the humans stood in front of the kennel surveying the puppies. “Remember, they choose you,” mom recalled reading somewhere.

As she stood in front of the enclosure thinking about the day she brought me home from a similar place, a gangly puppy with lopsided ears threw himself against the yellow bars of his enclosure, clawing to get out. Furiously wagging his tail, he lunged for a biscuit that mom held out, toppling his companions who were similarly begging for treats and attention.

“He’s pretty cute,” the women decided, watching the five-month-old’s antics. He wasn’t the best-looking pup of the lot, neither was he the most graceful, but he possessed a certain charm that convinced mom’s sister-in-law to bring him home.

“What do you think, Terr?” asked mom as I greeted the new family member on arrival. The puppy cowered and stuck his tail between his legs as I licked him on the nose.

Relax, little one. You’re safe and in a loving home now.

Happy rebirth day! May your new life be markedly different from the one you left behind.

Bleddy Love: A brainless bore

“I’m going to New York tomorrow,” announced mom grandly one evening, giving her family the impression that she was indeed making good on her desire to go back to the U.S. to buy underwire brassieres for herself and dainty sandals for her six-year-old.

Before the family thrust a shopping list at her, mom clarified that she was going to be in New York vicariously. “I’m only going to watch the movie, guys,” she said.

The next day, while the rest of Bangalore seemingly commuted to work, mom and five other ladies from our housing complex hopped into taxis to drive an hour away to the closest multiplex to catch a 10:15 a.m. show.

“This feels so decadent,” thought mom guiltily, watching people with grim faces and ID badges waiting on the road to board a bus or fighting their way through traffic. “Who goes to watch a movie at 10 in the morning?”

Apparently, the students at the college down the street from the multiplex did, for the ticket counters were packed with boys and girls who had skipped classes.

New York was sold out thanks to these truants, so the ladies were left with little choice than to watch a parallel-running show instead. “Only 60 bucks, ya. So cheap!” they justified, as they groped for their seats in the darkened theater to watch Kambakkht Ishq.

Less than two minutes into the movie, mom distanced herself from her brain. As Akshay Kumar strutted on screen in snug pants, she wondered where exactly his mass appeal lay. Was it in his voice that sounds like he swallowed a frog, or in the perma-leer on his face when he looks at women? Could the attraction lie in his bulging biceps or in his golden, hairless chest?

For the amount he makes per film, the man even mispronounced Denise Richards’ name, after sharing screen time with her. Clearly, his attention, while she sat on his lap and rubbed herself against him, was elsewhere.

The movie had as many holes as a sea sponge has, and mom sat through the entire film with a tub of popcorn in her hands, periodically popping kernels into her mouth every time she yawned.

135 excruciating minutes later, she streamed out of the hall behind the teeny-bopper crowd, praying that the men in the audience - little more than boys really – would treat women far more respectfully that the hero-molester does. (The hero gropes and assaults the heroine in a group song in Venice and she predictably falls in love with him by the end of the film.)

“Well, I didn’t go to New York. I went to L.A. instead,” announced mom when she returned home, referring to the city Kambakkht Ishq is shot in.

“Are you going to New York next week?” the children asked a little too eagerly.

"Why?" sniffed mom suspiciously.

"No, these chocolate doughnuts you got us from the mall are nice, but next time get glazed ones," they replied, licking their sticky fingers.

For now, mom has elected to stay home. She has yet to recover from the sight of Amrita Arora's pockmarked cleavage, which was on ample display throughout the film.

Song of the Wind

Having heard much about the power of yoga for body toning, mom signed up for classes earlier this year in Chennai.

“I have to lose weight; I want to lose weight; I must lose weight,” she chanted, as ardently as the priest at the neighboring Ganesha temple intoned the evening prayer.

Despite being born under the sign of the lion, mom possesses none of the animal’s agility, energy or endurance. Physical activity, other than occasional lovemaking, bores her, and she’d rather watch the grass grow than sit through a game of tennis or cricket. To tell you the truth, the woman bears a close resemblance to an Indian buffalo in manner and bearing – she’s slightly slow on the uptake and most reluctant to mooooove once she rests her derrière in a comfortable spot.

A few months ago, a family wedding in the offing finally stirred mom out of her lethargy and motivated her to join a couple of maamis in the neighborhood every evening for what she thought would be light stretching and deep breathing.

“Close your eyes, inhale and bend down while exhaling,” instructed the yoga master instead, watching maamis of assorted bulk tuck in their jingling mangalsutras and guts and bend forward to touch their toes.

“Saar, saar, teach some exercise for arthritis/spondylitis/high blood pressure/sugar, no?” the maamis would beseech, while mom requested tummy toning asanas.

One evening, the master asked the ladies if they were ready for an abdominal exercise that would greatly reduce their girth.

“Yes!” shouted mom, who saw no deflation in her spare tire even after three months of twisting herself into pretzel and challah bread shapes.

A maami of a certain age raised her hand. “One doubt, saar. Is it all right to do it if you’ve had a C-section?” she wanted to know.

After assuring the woman that the exercise would have no bearing on her C-section surgery, performed approximately 25 years ago, the master asked the women to lie down on their mats.

“Tighten your stomach as much as you can,” he told the maami closest to him. Holding a chair for support, he stood on the woman’s abdomen and proceeded to knead her stomach with his feet, as though he were playing the piano with his toes. “This is called abdominal jogging,” he explained to the group. “Very effective in reducing potbellies.”

Mom watched horrified as the woman closed her eyes and allowed herself to be stimulated in such fashion for a few minutes.

“How does it feel?” asked the master when he jumped off the woman.

“Wonderful!” she gasped.

The master then proceeded to knead several other maamis similarly before he reached mom’s mat.

“Sir, I don’t think I can do this,” she suggested weakly.

“Nonsense! Look at the others, they all enjoyed it,” said the master dismissing her fears. “Even C-section maami didn’t object.”

“Yes, but sir …” protested mom, unable and unwilling to stomach a grown man’s body weight on herself under such circumstances.

“OK, I’ll put only one foot on you,” said the master. “We can try the advanced technique when you’re more comfortable.”

Mom closed her eyes and clenched her belly. She felt the master’s heel through her shirt.

“Ready aa?” he asked and lightly pressed her belly button.

A sudden roar filled the room, sounding exactly like the revving of the master’s Yamaha motorcycle parked outside.

“What the ___?” thought mom, before she realized that the sound was emanating from her - the pressure on her paunch had quite literally released the wind out of her.

The master recoiled from her body; the maamis in Shavasana lay still as corpses as mom, unable to regain control of her gluteus maximus, expelled the intestinal gases from her body in fits and starts like a coughing engine.

“Sorry,” she whispered to no one in particular, thankful for the sea breeze that blew into the room and the incense sticks lit under a photo of Sai baba.

Just as her face turned the exact shade of her ruby red T-shirt, the master mercifully called for the class to end. Even before the Om vibrations receded in the room, mom gathered her mat and ran out the door. When she reached the far end of the street, she heard a low rumble behind her. Clutching her stomach in dismay, she stopped abruptly, startling the stray dogs snoozing in a corner.

Mom need not have worried.

It was merely the master’s Yamaha, firing up to take him to his next destination.

Accident ho gaya rabba rabba

Since she started driving, mom has discovered that no two driving days are alike. There might be little to no traffic one day, while the same route at the same time the next day might take a good hour to navigate.

“It’s not that hard to drive here,” says dad. “You just need to figure out the traffic patterns.”

“You mean the traffic here follows a pattern?” asks mom, firmly of the opinion that India needs skilled transportation engineers as urgently as she requires bakers who can make authentic bagels instead of pandering a bun-with-a-hole-in-the-middle for a hefty price.

Most drivers seem to carry a death wish on their heads, which explains why so many of them leave their brains unprotected and travel with their helmets swinging from their arms.

For all the chaos that reigns on the road, one would expect accidents to happen as often as power cuts in the city. But to our immense surprise, we’ve only witnessed a handful of accidents in the last year.

The latest one occurred yesterday almost in front of mom’s eyes. As she waited behind a long line of honking vehicles and irate drivers on her way to the grocery, a mob gathered out of nowhere and began running toward the collision.

A car had rammed into a bus full of passengers. Nobody seemed injured, but there was a lot of shouting and jostling as gawkers quickly surrounded the two vehicles in idle curiosity.

It never fails to amaze mom to see the number of men in India who stand near tea stalls doing absolutely nothing. While the women seem busy and are always going somewhere or doing something, the men seem preoccupied mainly with their balls. It's almost as if gravity pulls their free hand southward, and one suspects these men would be genuinely bewildered if they were forbidden from seeking comfort in their crotch.

When the vehicles collided, some of these very same men loosened their grip long enough to run to the scene. In a matter of minutes, the mob swelled to a few hundred people, making it impossible for mom to gape from the comfort of her car.

So, she did what anybody would do in a similar situation - she drove away.

It was not the collision that unsettled her even though she’s come close to being mowed down by a bus herself. What frightened mom was the mob and the melee, capable of stripping a crashed car and its dazed victims of money and valuables.

“What do I do if I find myself in an accident?” she asked dad.

Never having been involved in one in either country, my humans are clueless. If they were in the U.S., mom would have waited for a cop.

What should she do in India other than pray?

55 (give or take a few) Worder

It’s wet, messy, smelly and cold.

She hates the way it drips down her body, making her want to wipe it away before it dries to a flaky, itchy trail.

And, yet, despite her utter revulsion, she endures it. In fact, she’s the one who initiates it - every single time.

Do you know what I’m talking about?