Silver saves the summer holidays

Kavitha Mandana writes about the kids of Aranya Nagar and their new pet

The holiday homework assigned to Grade 6 was boring beyond words. ‘Read the newspapers and write about two positive stories every week!’ Rao Sir had written on the board. Grade 7’s was worse — they had to write up THREE positive stories per week.

“All I can find are dreadful statistics. Like ‘Bangalore experiences hottest April in history!’” Ranveer grumbled.

The mention of high temperatures was deliberate. Divya quickly jumped in, “It’s too dangerous to even go out and play… Amma, maybe till this heat wave passes, you could increase our one-hour-only screen time.”

Amma glared at the kids over her glasses. “I can think of umpteen other things that can be done indoors… How about my darlings fixing us all some fresh lime juice.”

The ‘darlings’ groaned. Last week Amma had somehow figured out that her kids hanging out at Veena’s house wasn’t because of a ‘developing friendship’ but because that house had no rules about screen time!

She declared, “If you’re there for the whole afternoon, I’ll count that as your entire quota for the week.”

Later that day, as Divya and Ranveer cycled to their tennis class, Ranveer almost got knocked off his bike by a large, frightened dog that came sprinting past the park. Divya noticed it had a collar but didn’t recognise it.

They followed the dog from a distance, not wanting to scare it. Divya knew every dog, pet or streety, in their locality — this one was definitely lost.

She eventually got close enough to the dog to click a photo. And since the neighbourhood pet-lovers were a passionate lot, she shared it on the FurOn4Legs Whatsapp group. If it belonged to anyone in a 5 km radius, this group would track the owner. She also shared the location — right beside the Nandini booth at the park.

After tennis, Ranveer and Divya rode around the park twice but the dog was nowhere around. Divya checked her phone — there were many messages from FurOn4Legs members, but no one recognised the dog. Divya was waiting for the lady who rescued dogs — Vrindha aunty — to reply. But she hadn’t commented.

“Let’s ask Nandini uncle if he saw the dog,” Ranveer said. Yes, unfortunately, that had become the default name of the man running the milk booth. But he hadn’t seen the dog.

Then, closer home, Ranveer spotted the silvery dog, wolfing down rotting food at a garbage pile. He almost unwound the long chain he used to lock his cycle, to hook onto the dog’s red collar and drag it away, but Divya stopped him. Since last year, when she’d begun following Vrindha aunty around as she rescued injured streeties, she’d learnt that frightened dogs could bite.

She remembered she still had the butter sandwich Amma had packed for post-tennis hunger pangs.

So they left a trail of butter sandwich pieces leading away from the garbage, towards the park.

The siblings knew that persuading the old park maali to allow the dog in, would be easier than convincing their parents to keep it at home till its owner arrived. Luckily, the old man agreed and the siblings went home relieved the dog would be safe overnight.

Over the next week, Amma didn’t notice when things began disappearing. Two weather-proof cushions from the upstairs balcony. A couple of plastic bowls. And a lot of food!

Soon the siblings roped in their friends to share responsibilities. Vikram who lived opposite the park shared breakfast duties with Narain’s mother, who walked there every morning. Evening meals were Ranveer or Divya’s task — with Nandhini uncle on emergency stand-by in case someone was travelling.

Soon, Ranveer began dreading opening his WhatsApp messages — he now adored Silver (that’s what they’d named her). And did say aloud that he hoped she got reunited with her owner. But he secretly couldn’t bear the thought.

After a month, with no one claiming Silver, Vrindha aunty got her injections done — for rabies, tick fever and leptospirosis. The vet told them Silver had already been operated on to prevent her having puppies. That was a relief.

So Silver became everyone’s dog. She slept in the maali’s shed, both snoring peacefully through the night. Maali uncle boasted that this was a special ‘jaati nayi’ (highly pedigreed dog!) — though no one knew which breed, exactly.

And Amma might have never known that her dog-loving kids had finally acquired a pet. But one stressful day, she slammed her laptop shut and decided to join Narain’s mom as she walked her dogs. And on their second round, as they passed the maali’s shed, Amma exclaimed, “Oh! Those look like my balcony pillows! I wonder how they got here?”

Narain’s mom soon gave Amma all the details about Silver’s group adoption, and laughed heartily at how generous Divya and Ranveer had been with a lot of Amma’s belongings!