Thursday, May 22, 2008

A Story

In 1986, when I used to reside with my parents in Kolkata (then Calcutta), we had a little kitten stumble upon our front door, weak, hungry, skinny with hardly a Meow escaping the poor creature. The first few drops of milk that we fed Kitty were consumed with everlasting gratefulness. The Meows became louder and more distinct as the cat grew in strength and even became a regular member of the family, much to my mother's annoyance and thrilling me and my sister to the hilt.

After a few years we grew ever so used to the cat hungrily calling out for its morning breakfast. We would dutifully leave its share of milk if we ever had to go out. We would battle any other cat that happened to invade the property, protecting Kitty as though she was one of our own.

Then one day Kitty disappeared. She simply left without a Meow or a trace. We tried looking for her but to no avail. Sure, we were kind of hurt, sad and her absence was inexplicable. Many months passed by and slowly it seemed like Kitty was forever gone, even that she had never existed.

Then one day Kitty appeared out of nowhere. She stood by the kitchen door eager to lap up her favorite Mother Dairy milk again. The whole family was upon her in a flash. A thousand questions seemed to explode all at once: "Where the hell did you go? How dare you leave without a noise? What if some dog had killed you? What did you do all this while?"

But believe it or not, not a single noise was raised at that point. The cat promptly took to her mat, the milk was served in a very relieved fashion, Kitty hungrily lapped it all up. And then over the next hour she brought her three extremely cute kittens into the house.

They were welcomed with relieved hearts, even a moist eye or two, big smiles. It was good.

Dear Anonymous: It was heartening to see at least one person miss my writing. I believe I am back and I do apologize for my silence, if it really matters anymore. Life was kind to me, spraying me with a high degree of attention and I was trying to be attentive for a change. But I will swear that I have not been producing kittens during my absence from you all. I turned a year older in April. No feelings there, but the beautiful cake I was crowned with on the 10th of April was more delicious than I could ever make it sound here. I finished an acrylic on canvas. Wrote and composed the music for my own song. And oh yes, I did go to work very religiously. Everyday. Ahem.

I hope and pray all my readers or ex-readers have prospered much better than me in the meantime. Cheers!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome back!!!!the kitten has no idea how much he was missed!and yes its just not one person there was a whole lot of them.
So good to know that life's been treating you well.
BTW there is an unwritten rule in blogworld that every blogger writes a birthday post.and how we love to hear more about the cake any everything else.oh yeah!and the song too.

Deepika said...

It would be extremely cliched to say that it was a " nice post ", and it seems clear that you swapped places with the cat for a few odd months. Now, there can be two reasons, why the cat refused to give any explanation for its absence. For one, ' cats lack the power of speech ', and the second one as i see it, is that either, the cat has become rich, powerful and rather cynical who now looks with narrowed eyes at the poor virtuous fools of this world, or, it has now become a creator, who mostly prefers silence.
Anywayz a belated happy birthday to you and when are u showing us the stuff that u created while under suspension................ from the blogosphere of course. But at times the functioning of the virtual world leaves us absolutely helpless................coz at the end of the day we all know each other by some id's and when there's no response, strange thoughts start crossing the mind..............but its nice that you are back. Good Luck

Anand S said...

Anonymous - thanks for your inspiring words. I apologize for my ignorance of that blogworld rule; though it is too late for this year to make amends now, I promise I shall write one next year :) Thanks again.

Anand S said...

Deepika - that was a serious comment but I am again honored by your lavish words (also to Anonymous). As you say I have no idea who everyone is, but my readers who I do not know do enough to make me feel I do know them. Enough to make the cat come back to blogworld that is :) The cat neither became cynical, powerful nor the creator you allude to. It was simply being the cat it was and is :) Contented on its couch with the wisdom box of a laptop. Thank you for the birthday wishes. No reason to panic and please banish all strange thoughts at once from your sphere.

Anonymous said...

chalo aapko maaf kiya!!hey ye no what????it was just a cheap trick to hold you on so that you dont go into your one of another hibernation!!!! waiting for more.:)