The Curious incident of the dog in the morning!

Early in the morning today, at about 4:30 am, I could hear noises- I woke up wondering if somebody had entered the house or if the noises were from outside.

Living downstairs is a whole new experience in itself- all the sounds of the neighboring houses, the trees and the birds, the dogs, the cats, the cabs that come to drop people late in the night, the people who come home late after a late dinner or a party – everything is known to us. It is pretty darn annoying at first – especially when you don’t know that the kids in the neighboring house have a habit of creating a ruckus only post 11pm and not one minute before that. For the first two days, I would respond in shock to the sudden shrills that could be heard from their house, I would wonder what the parents were doing to them to make them revolt so violently. When it continued to happen on the third day, I realized it was a pattern, and now it has become the new normal. Being a light sleeper does not help when there so many noises to keep waking you up through the night, but I have gotten accustomed to it.

So, back to this morning. It was obvious that somebody was growling/making noises that the stomach only makes when you have starved yourself to the point where the stomach decides to take over. At first, I ignored the noise. (That’s what happens when you have woken up more than a dozen times to the wind hitting the gate giving you a feel that someone is knocking, or when you feel there’s some problem only to realize that the baby in the behind house just decided to wake up and scream it’s lungs out or some such, so hey, don’t blame me!)

The noise persisted. I had successfully managed to turn a deaf ear to the persistent noise until my brother said, “Don’t you hear some noise?” Now, my brother is a deep sleeper. He is an early riser, but if he says there’s some noise that needs to be looked into, it usually means there is something that needs to be looked into, coz he just doesn’t react to anything so quickly. I immediately woke up. We lit the flashlight of the phone, and peeped through the kitchen window ( from where we get a view of our portico) to see who our visitor was – if there was anyone at all.

Staring back at us with eyes that shone in the dark was a dog, and I was left wondering how it got in in the first place.

My brother went away to get ready, he doesn’t have any business with any of these dog beings. I slowly opened the main door, put two khakras and kept a bowl of water, assuming it was hungry. (In my defense, I didn’t have anything else to feed the dog, and hence my strange choice of food. Not to mention that it still was 5am or something in the morning.) The dog stared at me for a while, came closer, sniffed the khakra, deemed it inedible, and just moved aside from the gate. I took it as a cue to open the gate for the poor thing, and left the gate open. It immediately walked out, and didn’t look back. Strange thing was, the hind legs of the dog was twisted – didn’t make me feel any better. I kept the khakras out hoping that some birds or worms would pick them up, and walked back right in, where my brother applauded my courage to open the main door and go close to a dog that looked like it could have eaten anything or anyone that went close to it. But I guess the taste of freedom is sweeter than the taste of food!