When it's not yours anymore

When you wake up to the light in the morning, it is always hard to realize it could be the last day of your best days, a final straw of innocence, the terminal point of dependency and love, the closing curtain of your untrammeled faith, the last vapour of your hope such that the ultimate day splits your life calendar – before and after. This realization of time split takes a lot of time - through maturity, reasoning, and altered life journey. To illustrate this transformation, I will share two stories - one of vicarious loss, the other, a collapse of myself. Both stories are about losing a non-human, yet both shaped humility and the absolute sense of overt innerness—the qualities of a sub-god in humans. Qualities that every rascal sprints toward in the spiritual race and every knave mimics in self-realization mumbo jumbo, once their personal debauchery and debacle are behind them.

My first story is about my fears, the longest, and perhaps eternal, fear I will carry for the rest of my life because I learned the profound value of what was lost. It started off with a slight envy at first to a passionate love at the end towards this black creature when I visited their home. The house had a warmth, a sisterly bond filled with joy, interdependence, and above all, affection for this canine- Its playful jumps, love for food, and merry-go-round energy made it an inseparable part of the household. It drooled affectionately, obeyed commands, yet had a charming unruliness when it chose to disobey. The way it rested its snout on his mother’s lap and picked up cues from his father’s morning walks made their bond feel almost sacred. Penning down their vivid dailies could be textworthy for an award-winning happiness essay and finding joy in a two-century old publication house of the maudlin west. An untrammeled happiness as such, who far by knows, can be shattered by a monstrous conflagration that burns this adorable life to dust.

Every passing minute has built this family; each pixel of memory is rooted in the vault of reality, witnessed only by a few souls

I still remember how welcoming this boy was to a stranger like me on the very first day. Conscious and confused, I never knew the boy could tag you with his few sniffs and pass you as “lovable,” the depth of the sniff is layered with faith and peppered with acceptance. The mighty arrogance of any guest with typical human-centric thought would be yelling inside for “give me some space.” However, in the canine world, it is the warmth of the shower that accepts you as a guest until you choose to leave their house, and it’s a deep trust that you won’t harm their parents or darken the bright loyalty of the house with your regular humans’ centric selfishness. Over time, my initial reluctance turned into something unexpected pointless envy. Watching my sister pour more affection on this boy than on me, I found myself simmering with childish jealousy. However, as hours turned into days, my distant watching became an intimate understanding - I witnessed the blissful bond between the pup and his parents.

He conquered the house, he conquered his parents, and he conquered his few visitors. He even conquered his posterity with the idea of only reflecting himself—where nothing new should ever be tried.

The black boy’s eyes were ever charming. They reflected my presence, yet they truly saw his mother—not just through sight, but through the ears. His tongue was almost always out. When he pulled it back, it was only to let it out again - this time with more slobber. I saw my own reflection in his thick, luminous black fur, always gleaming, thanks to his mother’s care. His fur was everywhere - more on the floors and furniture than on his own body. It was either proof of his omnipresence in the house or a sign that his parents carried him everywhere they went. They spent more time with him than with any human. His father would take quick breaks from work just to pet and pat him. His mother found comfort under his watchful gaze even while cooking. Every activity revolved around him, for him, and because of him. This bonding depicted a deep feeling on non-human love. I have been raising one at home, and my longing for this tail grew steadily and merrily.

I admit my view towards non-human lives had been massively shaped by this sisterly and I learnt my own ways of attaining wisdom that such lives make a true loyal and dedicated bond than any humans attempt to make so. Trust in non-verbal beings is always deeper and more truthful than the deceit of verbal shenanigans and turncoats. I detest anything is verbal. Its very nature is built on lies, manipulation, and the distortion of facts. Verbal entities, from selfishness to narcissism, thrive on sin. They are close to bigotry, clandestine, and ruthless opportunism. Verbal matters stink with needless embellishments, treacherous scripts, malevolent intentions, and clever way of maneuvering for their personal selfish goals. From drawing a CV to political speeches verbal abilities stink and cheat, a real cancer that deeply strike innocents with their powerful venoms. From invention of money to disparities in society, verbal power is the core reason for failure of humanity, and the explosion of humans in terms of population with a smattering of humanity in them. On the other hand, non-verbal beings are straightforward, and candid, be it showing flagrant love and loyalty, or bestial strikes against enemies. You can read them their eyes. There is no affectation and no blurry intentions.

Thus, I had a wonderful lesson with this sister’s family, and see their cues, by minute delivery of thoughts between the souls in the family, their gibberish vocabulary nurtured among themselves, their foolish attempts to spot each other in a closed space, their inseparable routines for themselves, their dine and binges together, their volumes of noises but heard as dulcet for themselves, another human guest who complain about them is both alien and awfully loveless creature. I have learned happiness despite not taking part in their activities; I have found the wisdom of joy through the boy.

All of a sudden, on what seemed like just another day, I woke up to the news that the boy was no more. This strikes me with fear still date about the concept of death: any calls I receive could it be potential death news, a sudden missing of my tail from my home could be the last sight of him, is it going to be one final take off for me in a flight journey, will it be the last message from my loved one, and further they carry only my unread messages. The fear is pervasive, eternized, and deeply rooted in the nerves of heart muscles.

Here is another story – the story of mine, the story of losing a non-human that shaped my childhood. But you to read it in my next ink flow.

In penchant memories, where my alphabets wobble in search of calmness

Anand ¥¥