Of the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, & Of Love.
By: Niniva Ghosh
Tags: Pets, Love, Losing A Loved One, Losing A Pet, Sadness

To,

The Sun, who saw our love bloom,

And,

The Moon, who knows the rest of the story.

Subject: It is never better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.

She used to walk by our fruit trees in the sun-laden afternoons of the longest year of the century. The bond the ripest of the fruits shared with her taste-buds was the strongest I had ever seen. Not a day went by, when she did not stop by at least once to taste the fruits we would accidentally drop for her to pick up and eat.

She started trusting us enough to claim a small shaded area of our garden as hers. We began spending our afternoons gazing at her mud-caked-but-still-somehow-pristine form curled up for a siesta.

Then, she disappeared for days on end. We knew she would come back with a visibly reduced underbelly, tired and wired only for food. And she did. Frantic for the fruits she had once loved just for the taste, looking over her shoulder for the faintest sign of trouble from all the others who coveted her beauty or detested her for the same.

We bought a full packet of food that would be the best for her and her kids. She began dropping by at nearly the same time every day, ears at half-mast, eyes almost closed into a squint, her hunger visibly dripping from her jowls. The crinkling of the plastic bag that held her food was the sweetest music to her ears, the rustling of the newspaper that would carry her food to her tray the sound of impatience itself. She never stopped worshipping at the altar of the sweet garden fruits, though. She may not have had time to appreciate the taste of the ripe fruits, but she could never do to part with them.

Her fur coat seemed fuller two weeks later. A few days after that, we chanced upon her on an empty circuitous road, a favorite haunt for animals and humans alike, who wanted some peace of mind and an unobtrusive existence to be their reality for a while. She and her kids were happy and well and that was all that we could ask for.

We now had 6 stomachs to feed, and our packet of food was running out. An online parcel brought 4.2 kgs of our commitment to these creatures and we could not wait to see the day when we would be ordering in more of these, a day that would inevitably stand for the trust and love that we shared mutually with these canines.

One late morning, as the 3 of us toiled away in our garden, she came by for her daily fix of fruit and food. This was the first time she stayed past her dinner. She stretched herself out about a yard from our hunched-away-from-the-sun forms and watched us weed the garden and plant new seeds into the fecund soil. She planted in our hearts the longing for a companion who was as free as she chose to be, but as close to our hearts as she possibly could be.

A week or so of sneaky visits once in a while to her roadside haunt and her usual visits to our garden went by. We now loved her too much to ever see her walk away, and it was perhaps then that the Moon sighed her lovely sigh, knowing that stories like these were always ill-fated.

One of these days, my mother fed her for the last time. Even the Sun couldn't have known that this would’ve been the last time she would come bounding into the garden, her tongue lolling out over a set of teeth that was only over bared in self-protection.

Today, a week after the last visit, we went to check on her, at what we had christened ‘Lali’s spot’, after the name we had given to her, a name that she had learned to stop and to turn around at to look at us. Even as our eyes took in the barren landscape with no hint of a mocha-latte furry ball of joy dotting the scene, our hearts refused to believe that something unspeakable had befallen this petite dog who had never even barked at even the ones who could’ve meant her or her pups harm.

A security patrol car that seemingly materialized out of nowhere in the twilit darkness, came rushing toward us, realizing that we meant to stop here and not cruise by as other cars during this period of confinement-within-homes tended to do. With a roughly-handed dismissal and a heavy heart, we came back home, the realization of what must have happened to her and her pups dawning on us as does the comprehension of the death of a dear one several days after they’ve passed, when a buried memory of them resurfaces, reminding us abruptly of the lost happiness.

The Moon looked on, sending a wave of pearly-white tears with hints of starlit sadness sparkling in them, knowing that the twists and heaves had finally brought to us the story that we never wanted to see an end to. The Sun will rise on yet another day that will hold no hopes for the story that once was the most hopeful one I had lived through.

There are a thousand endings that we can put to this story, but they all read the same to us, who live on the mud-plunged end of the rainbow with the 4.2 kgs of the responsibilities we failed to shoulder. We have lost her to humanity who loves to hate everything that breathes, and we have lost our love to commitments and promises of protection that we never could fulfill.

To the end of my existence, I will remember how we failed her, and the five new lives she had brought into this world. I will remember how a cruel fate and some unconcerned, unfeeling strangers shook our lives and dictated the way we began analyzing who we give our love to. I will remember Lali, her love for ripe papayas, and all the love we shared.

Waiting to never love again for a heart can’t break twice,

Yours sincerely,

A mere loved-and-lost mortal.