My mind becomes a soup of despicable hues as words aimlessly seep onto the paper. It is hard to decide what to write about. But I took hardly any to realize that it was what occupied most of my time.
Reality cannot be dug deep or left to decay. It never will. The more we attempt to leave it behind, the more it surfaces. And it simply grows till it becomes too thick to digest. I’m afraid that I can never make it scream its meaning. Despite that I type down a precious chunk of my memory, so it may not remain confined to someone who has had enough of it already.
It took me days to look beyond this aversion to recall. But certain realities are dear to lose. Life around this time was seemingly unfair to me. But I knew I was wrong. The chimes of destiny went on ringing to a lot many unexpected tunes and I was living by the only constant wind. That of change.

The tyres rumbled across the municipal road. Its condition was something evidently nasty. But those wheels were least affected as they eventually slowed down in front of a single-storeyed military accommodation. They were like any other. But the mention of the national capital sent across an awed expression on curious faces. Facing the block’s exit was a flyover. The idea of a busy highway such as that in days of a ‘smog filled Delhi’ was choking, had it not been for the yellowness of those blossoming bushes. Over the years I had seen those white and yellow acquaintances in every cantonment I’d been to. I never knew their names, but I was glad. They set about an air of familiarity in that city I was much biased about.
A plane flew overhead. That was to happen every fifteen minutes as I later perceived, and it wasn’t the most pleasant thing.
Husky gazed at the skies. They were grey. Or maybe it was me seeing more of the greys than him. I languidly dragged myself up the stairs but stopped. They didn’t creak like the ones I had know before, neither were they maroon. And they didn’t lead up to a balcony that would be facing cypress trees, concealing sparrow nests in the wall behind.’ Homesick for a home that no more is,’ I had once written.
The day it all began was another blessed one in the much cherished hill station, sunny and precious more than anything that mattered. It was silent and yet boisterous beyond explanation. The blooming red rhododendrons, the pines, the sunshine, all spoke at once. But they all fell dead silent the day I was reminded that I didn’t belong there. It wasn’t something out of the blue. When I had first seen the Himalayan bungalow on that exceptionally windy night, I knew that leaving would be a nightmare, worse than those on summer afternoons. The much delayed words unleashed a fear that would haunt me for many weeks that were bound to follow.
An immediate burst of saline blurred out my vision of the valley underneath that October afternoon. I stared at the skies blankly as the notorious shadows of the conifers messed with my eyelids, not the least concerned. Those mean things.
And here I was now, amid the din and my bushy acquaintances whose warm, blossoming smiles I was too ignorant to acknowledge. But what were my home weeks ago was not confined to clear blue skies and oak wood. I had found a vision, a way of looking at my reflection that I’d never known before. And I knew that this magic had followed me all the way to the capital.
Husky Cross was a doggy angel despite his satanic behavior in the initial days of our amity. His company was pleasant and smelled of anti tick powder. We trekked on weekends along with my ‘devil of a sister’ who was the perfect company at most times. But now, Husky couldn’t suppress his hollow due to her absence and neither could I. We now felt the absence of her annoying ruckus that we were both so well accustomed to. And further still, we lacked mamma around, as they both brooded in mink thousands of miles away in Oregon.
All this inhabited me as a parasite, giving me an occasional feeling of worthlessness. If this doesn’t satisfy the description of my situation, hold for more.  And as I saw all this flash before me, I forgot that at the other end of my leash was an insecure German shepherd who attempted to voice his perplexity with a bite off a human’s flesh. That hapless man screamed as I got hold of Husky and ran upstairs. Of the many things I’d never forget is the mad look on the victim’s face as the unloading truck rode by, eyeing me.
After taking a considerable amount of air inside and giving out what could be called a sigh, I peeped down the terrace. Our neighbors down below had a pretty little garden with a mat of grass that had not a single spike bent or trodden. Fenced with bushes, the house was too quiet for a ‘beware of the dog’ sign. Deception of looks wasn’t epigrammatic in this case. The white frangipani tree stood blooming by their entrance. The kitchen garden at the back was rich in the edible way and firm in front of the sluggishly approaching winters.
I couldn’t question Husky’s fidelity after the bite. City air along with the smog of my situation and otherwise choked me every second. My thoughts strangled me every time I stared at the dog, pleading to be let loose, get used to the local stray’s spoor and chase pheasants. Who was I to cry?
Sammy had once brought home, a pointless yet appealing picture book that read in bold yellow, the title ’Moving is hard’. For five of the years that followed, I couldn’t meld in with the content of the girl and her now-restrained dog. The girl (who I thought was a boy for all these years) moves to a typical metropolitan from the countryside as she begins to love the city. Her dog after all, isn’t an Alsatian who is misunderstood at large. And the book was supposed to have a happy ending. The later, I guess, explains all of it.
I viewed Delhi as a narcissistic city that shone greatness for the sake of it. The location of my house was seemingly comical too. On the left end of the colony’s boundary was a flyover behind which was a metro line. The window panes rattled at the aluminum that had replaced birds. The locality was otherwise defining the reputed order and foliage of cantonments the best it could.
This perhaps could never be enough to gratify my canine company. One pleasant Sunday morning, I couldn’t see him on a leash anymore. I then gave way to an asinine act that I often recall with a grin and some levity. I put on an olive green off shoulder sweater over my denims and pulled Husky along to the park. The dried Bougainville and Copper pod gave some privacy although my sight found its way to the neighboring gardens. My eyes would occasionally meet with some of the zealous gardeners which was followed by a slight bow and a staged smile. I looked about and let go of him.
I waved his chewed up piece of plastic as he inspected his new found freedom. And that was when he regrettably spotted a spaniel behind a rotund woman in her pajamas and pounced on them. The rest was fast forwarded in my memory. I shut both of us in my room and cried. That creature, bound by instincts, refused to take that as an excuse. I could see him pale under those sheets of beige and black fur. As I drew breath in, there was a knock at the door and for once he didn’t bark. He instead went deeper under the bed. The man stormed inside inquiring about us. That evening, I made up the worst juvenile excuses. My quivering speech formed part of the sumptuous apology that all adults sadistically relish. But I was desperate and lonelier than ever before.
Days flew past. I had seen the neighbor’s German shepherd, an immobile and pitiable old dog who passed his afternoons in their garden, agonizing over flies. A minion had to lift him from the sod under the frangipani to clean underneath. I once asked him the old dog’s name. The name merged in with the minion’s accent and wasn’t understood, but I knew he was thirteen and an inch from death. The second time I saw him was on a windless and silent afternoon while he stared at all the blank around him. I then looked down every afternoon but wasn’t fortunate enough to see him a third time.
Husky found a golf ball on a day that he thought would be humdrum. People say dogs don’t grin. He grinned and I could see it. Whenever I have a bout of insomnia, I imagine him grinning at a bowl of gravied chicken, with a curvy tail and a leg in the air. I consider this the best thing I ever did imagine. His grin lasted a day, when his dimpled ball was confiscated with the fear of his choking. I’d rather choke, read his face. I then made a ball out of my socks that ended up in the neighbor’s flowerbed. His good karma soon landed him a tennis ball that I inquired about too late. It was the old dog’s. He had died a month ago, submitting to senescence while I wondered about his whereabouts. From then on I failed to be at peace seeing the rugged fluorescent sphere, held under Husky’s grip with a pleading face, waiting to get playful.
Despite all, Husky went on walks long enough with papa weekly. But I refrained from handling him anymore. Life was about moving on and currently also about waiting for mamma to be back. School was a replica of seventh heaven and often hell, depending entirely on my day. I first stepped into the stream of the school’s extracurricular record with a poetry competition. That day, I realized that poetry wasn’t about writing but being half drowned in tears as you speak. In an attempt to conceal my dismay, I framed it behind a smile and portrayed it as a wise student’s inquisitiveness. “A lot to learn for the next time”, I said, which I regretted for the later half as it returned with a ‘who-the-hell’s-taking-you-the-next-time’ face.
So trying to limit my Himalayan bungalow dreams, I kept an outlook for getting more involved in the present. My cousin had once sensed my loathing for metropolitans and said something that stood humming for a long time in my skeptical mind. “You will find some worthwhile company there, cool guys and girls like you.” I wonder how he knew it that precisely.
Curiosity is supposed to be an obvious instinct. When it can no more fetch answers, it disappears. At some place, it got lost amid the frondescence. It was now that it bothered to look up and ask, “What tree is that?”
Out of nowhere that day, my sight landed on a book that read ‘Trees of Delhi’ in a library that I discovered the same day I pondered over the identity of my footpath companions. But for a first, I had the best possible bucket of book worms at school and we could raid bestsellers together.
I’m bound to turn fourteen the next two days. The family will be perfected the next few weeks. Maybe giving in to the ‘sometimes moving is hard philosophy’ is the right thing to do. The ending is always uncertain. But whichever point one considers being the final has one sure fact. It always is happy.