Naming pets

I have found, any civilization with a 'developing' tag to it, has largely two types of pet dogs. I will go into a little detail about these dogs in one large and compact agglomeration we know as India.

The first types of these are locally known as 'the paltu', and the other as 'the faltu'. Both these types are usually harmless unless invoked, poked or xxx. The paltu type lives off on various combination of home cooked meal, plus processed pedigree and get almos an equal treatment like a family member who lives inside the house. This type is generally well groomed, clean, like I said earlier, is well fed, usually solemn by face, and prefers solitude probably as he gets used to it. He is the home pet.

Whereas, the second type, the faltu type, also known as a stray, is under the casual collective care of a particular community. For his own ease of life he lives in groups and marks territories un-barbed and unseen. As a part of collective is fed on leftovers or biscuits, and keeps clean - more details are available from the neighborhood, usually from concerned or retired citizens who feed them. In other words, he is treated like a family member who lives outside the house.

I am in regular contact with many from both the categories, and in close relationship with one of the each type. And, from somewhere a divine moment, perhaps artful thought full of love, concern, affection and world-peace has had put into my head that these pets, who ever they are, where ever they come from, whatever size, color, cast or creed they can be named after musical instruments.

So, the Paltu type, the first type, who lives with me most of the time is known as Banjo. A communal cat he shooed off from the courtyard because she made him insecure, for he hated her after I had affectionately started calling her Harmonica. The Faltu type, who I interact before entering my office, and slamming the door close, I call him Gitar, keeping 'r' at the end as silent using accentual effect.

***

p.s. The author has used Masculine intonations for purposes of ease

Animals, Humans and Pets

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Jody, Billy Buck, papa Carl, mama and uncle, and an another ailing uncle who stole away an ailing horse. The art of horse maintenance where promises are made and life goes on, the book shows a life and a people of those times, for there are details which cannot be escaped, and to some/one make fall in love with their pet again. I read the book in pauses because of my other work pressures, and many times I needed the company of my Banjo(a Labrador retriever) with me. The book and him, both felt better while I completed it slowly.

Micro Independence

Solid waste staff, contracted by the Municipal Karupration of the city kept on with their jobs. A Sunday as well, many continued with their work, many would have been attending the ceremony, and many resting with an extended sleep. Today is a day dedicated to all of them, and I agree the call from many fronts that today is Independence Day, i.e. one is officially free; even if symbolically.

In the morning, the dog insisted Jack take him out for a walk so he could take his regular crap, and probably enjoy the walk himself too. He had been insisting Jack for a walk for more than last couple of hours. Patience, one can say. So finally Jack got fed up and took him out for a walk but ensured he keeps to the leash because it is filth and puddle in the extended monsoons. Environs are livelier and greener around, a little muggy but full.

The leash is pulling Jack on the road, and on the left he sees a big hotel. The hotel is famous in the city for its eliteness, and its main entrance many steps up, like the steps you remember from the images of the great Acropolis. The large glass door has a few hands, say ten, one can say ten palms, white gloved palms waving on them, cleaning, fluffing, polishing, rubbing, just to get those spots and that shine out.

Heart Report – 9 months later

This is my Heart Report nine months approximately after it was repaired. Thank you well wishers, I am not in well, I am well. Also, due thanks is due to the life saver cardiologist Dr. Raval who has let me go and has moved on with his booming practice. Post surgical advice is from another well known specialist who has his own hospital. Anyways, these post surgery advices is not much of a routine, so no need to divulge in detail. I will get myself checked before I get on with my next self congratulatory great road trip. Angioplasty so far has been a great technology of benefit to me, and in comparison in my case more effective than yoga. I have become so much used to these two helping foreign bodies known as stents inside my arteries that we have become subjugated to each other. In a year or two, I will give them formal citizenship to my body.

Quitting on smoking and nullifying my exposure to the city fumes by staying and traveling in a micro climate otherwise known as air-conditioning rather than adaptation has helped. I would like to share my doctor’s advice that smoking not for a longer duration provides the body-system with more oxygen supply; which I can certainly feel.

Writing this also reminds to return a book given to me by an uncle who himself was been Angio-Plasted like me sometime before me. This is also an opportunity to mention the book itself for one’s own references - ISBN: 8187111631 written by Pravin P. Shah is titled –“HOW TO PREVENT OR REVERSE HEART DISEASE - : A Complete Step-by-step Guide: Including Tasty Food Recipes for a Healthy Heart”. This is a lifestyle book more or less written in India ishtyle. I would like to discuss the book sometime soon in days to come, for it is a good book. Anyways, one review is here.

Things are smoother now dear well-wishers and water experts.

Salut

Some practice again

With a love for literature which I don’t know where it comes from and not much formal education in it, perhaps it is a good practice to use your other knowledge gathering techniques of other fields of specialization. Such as, copy a paragraph or two, and try to fit yourself inside a Great Man’s shoes using the process called copying. At least it helps improve one’s grammar, I can say; there are other observations too. Page 73 of Mark Twain’s, “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court”, has a paragraph so relevant 150 years down the line. Copied below it goes -

We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when I proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle—a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn’t. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small “independent” farmers, artisans etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respectworthy; and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, aquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be a Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The preists had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet.

I find that buying the Bantam classic is worthier and sustainable than getting the stuff online, although it has its own benefits, available at
http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
I swear, throat twitched, bie-god, I have rewrit the above para myself, just for practice.

Paving corners is useful

The panchayat bench is rough concrete. Not so rough that one cannot sit. It has a nice feel to it. One sits easy on it, turns his neck left, pause and then to right - notices that the wide four to six lanes on either sides of this cross roads has traffic building up. Evening has set in and so has the rush. People are making to their way home from work.

A small orange temple sits next to the bench. It looks nicer than before, perhaps because more people came to visit it during the recent famous recession. The temple has big new orange flags, bigger than the temple itself, and repainted walls. The in-vicinity neighborhood is flourishing. In between the bench and temple is a temporarily built home, otherwise known as shack - houses a family with few kids. There are other neighbouring shacks too, with their one wall belonging to the boundary wall of India’s self congratulatory premier Management institute. Well, all make use of the well done paving. Toddlers and not-more-than five or maybe ten years old are playing in front of the bench on which One is sitting, and are safe on this futpath. Ma is cooking evening food, dealing with fumes of the collected firewood, blowing it through a half inch steel pipe. All this thanks to the corner-side paving.

One, sitting on the bench likes the smell of this freshly cooked home food, so his mood lightens and brightens up. The rising traffic means more fumes, gasoline ones to rise in a few hours to stay about for a few more hours. Enjoying the comforts of this panchayat bench, he notices the owner of the shack, with part curiosity and part pity. The owner appears busy with some important work of his.

“Hey – why don’t you put your kids in school? They are roaming about in this dirt dust doing nothing!”

The owner, a little startled at the question, looks back at One and replies, “Sahib, his leg broke, he'd slipped – injured - so, that’s why he's at home not in school.” continues staring at One with an innocent grin.