IT

The original aim and plan for this week had been to write about surviving without a refrigerator. But having endured six days of what can only be called an 'ordeal', my previous enthusiasm for blogging the experience has evaporated . And all that I can say, is that it truly is an unpleasant business, this living without a fridge.
And an air conditioner.
And a water purifier.
And a microwave.
And a four burner gas stove and a food processor and toaster and a washing machine and a......................

The entire experience is proving to be rather sordid, full of fast souring milk, wilting veggies, rotting lunch, 38°C drinking water on a 39°C afternoon........... and all such things devoid of poetry, of beauty, of melody.... and of freeze. Since I find words refusing to emerge in such poemless situations, when my third packet of milk soured into a queer smelling probiotic culture, I lay down my pen in abject defeat and retreated. And thus Operation Freezing at Forty was aborted, ignominiously. For good.

Instead, this post is a short one about 'it'. 'it' is a just-arrived-into-our-world cat progeny, the thing that is also known as a 'kitten', those adorable balls of fluff topped with melting green eyes that routinely adorn greeting cards, WhatsApp good morning messages and laptop backgrounds and Profile pictures. I've examined the creature and because I'm unable to figure out whether it is a 'she' or a 'he', it is as of now 'it'.  Now 'it' is tiny and black and incredibly ugly with nothing in the least 'adorable' about it. In fact even its ugliness is not the Shrek kinds which is a 'cute' ugly, but of the Gollum kinds, all big bald head and stick like limbs, crawling in slow motion inside the cardboard box,  just like we saw Gollum do, slinking up and down the grassless black mountain of Mondor. 'it's eyes have not opened yet, the fur on its body is sparse, its tail like that of a malnourished rat and missing bits of fur on the end and if that's not horror enough for you, it was riddled with big fat fleas when I first brought it in. In fact, I had to spend a few sadistic minutes crushing to death about fifteen to twenty obese, self important fleas just after 'it' was installed in my room. I suspect I have now gained infinite notoriety in the cat-flea world as the Butcher(ess) of the Orange Room and will go down in the annals of their history as the perpetrator of the Flea Genocide of '17. Seeing that I have not gained fame of any worth in the Blogger World, this does not sound too bad now. Fame of any measure ( ok, notoreity, if you say so) even if it be in the menial flea-world, is not exactly unwelcome. But issues of notoriety apart, I am happy to inform you that 'it' is now totally free of fleas.

After having installed this thing of ugliness into a cardboard box lined with bubble wrap and a pair of old cotton pajamas, I attempted to feed it. But the fella seemed to be on some kind of a bhookh hartal and refused to suckle on my cotton wick soaked in milk. Fevered internet search for 'kitten, eyes closed, feeding' and frantic messages to my famous vet schoolmate in the UK followed. Thanks to Sabi who responded with a whole page of very, very useful, practical and scientifically sound info on rearing ugly kittens a few days old, I was soon trying to poke 'it' with a small 2 ml syringe filled with a home-made kitten formula feed of Amul milk, egg yolk and a bit of Saffola cooking oil. 'it' is not exactly impressed by my modified feeding strategy but we are making progress. I'm learning patience and 'it' is learning to adjust. I'm learning to stick to routines while 'it' is learning the feel of my human touch. 'it' is definitely a faster learner than me. Over less than seventy two hours, 'it' has learned that its new world is an unpredictable place, that the warm fur ball that gave it food with unerring regularity and licked it to sleep is not coming back, that if it wants to get rid of that unpleasant sensation in its tummy, it has to learn to drink from a hard unyielding tube that ejects tasteless food in hesitant spurts, that the darkness all around has many textures, cold and hard, soft, and warm, that if one yells in suffuciently loud spells, a soft thing might just arrive and tickle it to sleep and many other such useful things.

'it' and I were not supposed to meet. I am quite sure of that. I am quite sure that it was some mutation ( a mutation is a completely random change in the genetic blueprint of earthlings) in the Great Universe's scheme of things that resulted in us crossing paths. Let me explain why I say so.

My after-office routine has, over the last seven odd days, been fixed: return, change, gobble some partially in-edibles posing as lunch and then retreat into my orange molehill not to emerge for the next fifteen hours or so. But that day, after having lunch, I stood at the rear window watching an elderly lady picking washing off the clothes line on her roof. There's nothing the least bit interesting about an old woman retrieving dried clothes, but I found myself watching her without any purpose in my mind, thinking this and that sundry thoughts. Then my attention was caught by the brood of neighbourhood stray dogs sniffing very interestedly at the edge of a fallen eucalyptus trunk. At first I thought that it must be a dead bird but then I saw that the dogs were pouncing and retreating playfully, tails wagging at a moving object of interest. My first instinct was to conclude that it was a snake waving its hood in warning. Alarmed, I opened the window pane and shouted at the dogs. They looked at me surprised but then returned to their pounce and retreat game. As I leaned out of the window, I got a clearer glimpse of the thing and it was definitely not a snake. It appeared to be a baby bird but from my first floor window, it was difficult to be sure. So I ran downstairs, shooed the dogs away and found that to my surprise that the thing was not a baby bird but a little kitten, mewling at the top of its little voice. Hesitant to touch it with my naked hands, I picked it up gingerly with a पोंछे का कपड़ा that someone had discarded and brought it up inside.
So you see, I was right when I said that we were not supposed to meet. For one, I was not supposed to be standing day dreaming at that window in the first place. And second, those strays were not supposed to be prancing around playing छुईमुई in the middle of a furiously hot afternoon when normally they are found at this time snoozing more than 100 metres away in holes they have dug out below various trees.

Though I brought the creature in fuelled by my belief that all life has the right to a chance at living, I was pretty sure the fella would not survive. So I refused to give it a name. Names give things presence and named things have this bad habit of stealthily creeping into your heart, staying there and creating unwanted complications. So it is, as of now, 'it'.

But I cannot help but wonder: was it really a random mutation in the Universe's preordained agenda? It's of course easier for me to believe that it was just so, an unimportant, random coincidence rather than believing that the Universe with its infinite number of infinitely more important issues actually went through the pains of realigning the cogs in its wheels of Destiny to allow this unimportant aimless woman meet up with this equally unimportant (and ugly) kitten.

For now, I think I'll let these important issues be, for there is only so much that my average brain can process. Of course, it would be nice if 'it' survives, though I'm still not too confident that it will. I know the whole thing depends on how well I can substitute for a female feline, how strongly 'it' wants to continue its experience of our world and of course how much Luck is on our side.

I'm very matter of fact about this whole business and find myself not investing emotions or poetry into it, but as I write, a picture flashed into my mind just now :

A wild-rose hedged garden under the hills where a white dog plays fetch-the-yellow-ball with an ugly black cat as a brown dog snores in the Summer sun, all four legs heaven-wards.

It is an enticing picture I have to confess. And it threatens to creep stealthily into my heart.........