Bolty

                               

Today I said goodbye to my dog, Bolt who we fondly called Bolty. We had to give him away to another family. He spend just four short years with us, but what eventful four years they were.

I still remember the day he came into our lives. He was just a few months old I think, bit large for his age. He scampered about the place sniffing new smells and licking new hands. The kids went nuts over his beautiful black and white fur. I admit, I was a bit weary of touching him. I'd always loved the idea of having a dog, but when it happen for real, I was a bit scared. I'd stood at the doorway and extended my arms as far as it could and stroked his back with a finger. And he responded by wagging his tail. Its one of the nicest feelings, a dog wagging his tail because of you.

Slowly, I got over my fear and soon I was spending every waking hour with him. Brushing his hair, using his special powder on him. One time I even put a bit of my dad's lavender talc powder on him.I loved his big soulful beautiful eyes, the colour of honey. The way he would just stare right back at you when you spoke to him, which I did a lot. My nephew decided to name him Bolt because he was in that phase where he'd binge watch the cartoon Bolt sixteen billion times a day. So Bolt it was. Except, it was only later that we realised that Bolty was'nt a "he". Bolt was actually a female dog. But I'd gotten used to call her a "boy" that I refused to acknowledge the sex change. I hope he didn't end up having gender-issues. 

Bolty grew to love us and soon began bringing us his little "presents". Many a times, we opened the front door in the morning and was greeted by the sight of a dead crow or rat at our doorstep. He managed to get pretty much all our chickens too, much to my mom's dismay. But Bolty did manage to prove his strengths soon enough. One of the times that I was most proud of him was when he spotted a cobra and barked madly right at its face preventing it from coming any closer towards our house. I'd never seen him so brave and ferocious before. His nose could've almost touched the snake. After a while, he stopped and sat right there, his eyes on the snake, growling everytime it hissed back at him. I don't know how long he sat there like that, but we knew this dog knew what he was doing. 

Then one morning, there was no Bolty at our doorstep. My dad hunted all over the place for him. We could hear him howling but couldn't figure out where he was. Turns out he had jumped into the well. And had been swimming around trying to keep himself afloat for hours. It took a few hours and lot of effort, but we found a guy who could go down the well and rescue Bolty. A group of men lowered this guy into the well using a rope and he was trying to jostle Bolty into a huge basket. I remember watching with bated breath and calling out the frightened dog's to reassure him that he'd soon be safe. He got into the basket once but scampered so hard that he fell into the water again. After a bit of a struggle, the dog was back in the basket and the men were pulling him up. I remember wrapping my arms around him the minute his feet hit the ground. He was shivering and could hardly walk straight. After trying to dry him as much as I could, I slowly led to a spot with good sunlight and let him dry off. The rest of the day, we lavished him with eggs and milk and all sorts of goodies, while drying him off with my sister's hairdryer. It took many days to recover from the shock of it all, but soon he was back to running around like crazy and trying to knock me off my feet by jumping onto me. I love that he still remembered.

Pretty soon, Bolty had grown up and had a lot male friends visiting at night. My dad was not pleased, so he'd lock the gates and drive away any stray dog that dared to enter. This one dog would stand at the gate and howl away. It was utterly romantic. And I'm pretty sure that that Romeo had something to do with the litter of puppies Bolty gave birth to a few months later. 

I remember waking up one morning and hearing the news. Bolty was lying in a cozy spot with her tiny little puppies scattered all around her, some on top of each other. I had never seen such tiny puppies up close. Nine of them. Bolty looked tired as ever. There was a look in her eyes, that seemed to say "Please get me the hell out of here." I didn't understand then, why she looked like that, but now as a mother of a child, I totally get it. One human baby suckling away all night and day is Nothing compared to Nine puppies fighting and struggling and crying all together to get their share of their mom's milk. Poor Bolty. She would take any opportunity to leave her kids alone and just laze around for a bit. 

After this my life got into a bit of a whirlwind. Between marriage and moving and pregnancy, I did not really get to spend a lot of time with Bolty. But everytime, I come back home, he'd recognize me and jump around me like crazy. 

Towards the end, the time I got to spend with him reduced even more, having a baby to care for. Bolty too produced a new batch of puppies. And this time, having gone through the experience myself, I was in total awe of him. 

So today morning, when my mom told me that his new owners arrived and took him away, I couldn't believe I didn't get to say goodbye. My dad then told me that they are still waiting for their car at the gate, I dropped everything, took hold of my baby and ran to the gate. And he was there on leash, with a stranger, looking confused and scared. I caressed his head and scratched his ear and rubbed his chin over and over as though trying to make up for the time I'd neglected him. I held onto his face and looked into his eyes and said a silent goodbye as tears started pooling in my eyes. I gave him a final pat on his back and walked away because I couldn't watch him getting into the car and being driven away. I couldn't stop my tears as I walked back into the house. My baby looked at my face curiously. And just like that, Bolty was gone.

The night feels silent now. On most nights, after his random rounds and digging, Bolty used to come and settle down right outside my bedroom window. Some days he'd make an awful racket and I'd get mad at him, but I was still relieved he was there. I had felt safe. And inspite of all the times I'd been too busy to make time for him and been a lousy friend, he still sat there... for me, protecting me. I so love that about him.

I hope his new owners treat him well. And I hope he is happy there. I wonder if he'll miss us. I miss him already.  We'll probably never have a dog again, but then I don't think he can be replaced. I hope someday that my child will get to experience all this with a dog of her own. A dog as wonderful and loyal as my Bolty. 

Thank you, Bolty for letting me experience unconditional love. For making me feel safe and for being my friend. 

The P Word

I haven't blogged in the longest time. That is because I won the lottery and so decided to travel the world. I'm writing this from a tree house in South Nambisia. Ok, no that's a lie. I didn't win a lottery. I'm writing this from the foot of my bed, at home. I haven't blogged because I got pregnant and had a baby. Surprise!!!!!! Well for the readers who aren't my friends or family who didn't know about it. That is if I do have readers who are my friends or family.

This is sort of part 1 of my whole pregnancy-baby series. I've run out of people who wants to listen to me go on and on about the whole thing so I'm just going to force you all to read it here.
Pregnancy, for me, was wonderful. I did have a tiny bit of throwing up and bloating and all the icky factors going on. But, for the most of it, it was pretty nice.
Here is a bunch of stuff I liked and didn't like so much about being pregnant.

Food  - I came, I saw, I ate... And then I ate some more. I ate more than I had ever eaten in my whole life. I like to think I maintained a nice balance between healthy and not-so-healthy food. ( H (my Husband) is probably going "Yeah, right!" ). H did try to keep me off junk though as hard as he could. But he wasn't very successful though.
"Are you telling me I can't have a chocolate doughnut? Me, the woman who is carrying life within me, the life of your child, who I have to push out of me. All by myself. One chocolate doughnut?"
It wasn't like I was eating like some sort of unstoppable monster, but this one time we went out with some people and I ended up eating off my plate, H's plate and everyone else's plate.  I don't think they minded though. I had my baby to take the bait for me.
Once when I had finished a pack of Kitkat,
 H says : You finished the whole thing???
Me: No, I gave you two and I ate two."
H : Uhhh, it was a pack of five.
Me: Uhhh, the baby ate one, duh!
Which is technically not true. Baby had two, I just had one.
I stopped watching MasterChef or reading any books or watching any movie that had any association with food, because it literally pained me read about food that I have no access to. I may or may not have cried looking at a picture of a cupcake.

Belly- I loved my belly. My big round belly which was so so big around the end that people would just get uncomfortable looking at me. I loved it. While some people choose to hide it, I loved to flaunt it. Sure, there were somedays where I felt like a big huge whale, especially when I once took a good 5 mins trying to get up from bed, trying to roll myself out.I also got stuck on a swing once and had to wait till somebody could come and pull me out. But on the other days, I felt beautiful. Like I had never felt before. I haven't done a lot of things in my life that are mindblowing and that takes a lot of responsibility. But this, growing a human life inside me was one of the hugest and scariest thing I had taken up. And it made me proud. And it make feel beautiful.
Plus, I love maternity clothes! I don't know why I haven't been wearing them my whole life. Super comfortable and really cute too.

Mood swings - I had some really bad mood swings. My first trimester was filled with paranoia and fear and a lot of bitchiness, especially towards H (Sorry!). The second trimester was more mellow and less like a deranged person. It was more of random bouts of crying and laughing, so basically pretty much like how I used to be before I got pregnant. This one time though, I was showing H this really dumb, not-even-that-funny meme that someone send me, and I just couldn't stop laughing. H laughed along with me for a while and then stopped and just sat there waiting for me to stop. Except I couldn't. I was going on and on that I literally couldn't breath. And that scared me and so I started crying before I had even stopped laughing. Poor H. I don't think he had any idea what was going on but he managed pretty well.

Life within me : There is literally no way to describe how it feels when the baby kicks. Like someone inside you poking their fingers or toes on your insides, so hard that you can see it from the outside. Freaky.As.Shit. I once described it like aliens and said it looked like how it would if you had a snake under your blanket, and then felt really guilty about having compared my baby to aliens and snakes. Its precious, it makes you feel wonderful, it actually is when I felt certain that ok yes, there is definitely a baby inside me, these guys aren't like pulling a prank on me or something. I have so many videos of my tummy moving that I send to my folks until they're like "you really don't have to send us nineteen 20 minute videos of your tummy everyday! we get it!" You're so happy and emotional at each kick.. And then, the baby discovers your bladder. And thinks "ooh look, a trampoline!!" And literally bounces on it so hard that you feel that you'll probably be giving birth to your bladder first. Bladder kicks and backbone kicks are Not fun.

Niceness : I love how everyone is so nice to you when you're pregnant. My dad didn't yell at me even once during the whole nine months. H put up with me and all my nonsense cravings and mood swings and didn't say anything even when I annoyed the hell out of him. I got pampered like hell. I think the only two times a girl really gets pampered by everyone is when she's about to get married and when she's about to pop a baby. Everyone is like oh Don't stand too long, sit, lie down, relax, eat whatever you like, sleep, smile and listen to music. Things that I'm really good at doing!

Whats in a name? : I Hated picking baby names. It was by far the most stressful thing during those months. It is so much easier when you're looking for names for your friends' kids. But when its your own, nothing is good enough. I would absolute love a name one day and then it would make me want to throw up two days later. I must've gone over a thousand names, read through name books and browsed baby name websites. I started paying close attention to the credits that roll out at thr end of movies, scanning for nice names. I made my cousins and nieces and nephew list out the names of all the kids in their classes. I even had a dream once where I have the baby and then we name her a particular name. And for a while we decided on that name because it seemed like a sign, me dreaming about it and all. And then that name made me sick after a while too. I also had a weird habit of typing out a name I like on Facebook search and seeing if the people with that name look like nice people or not. We finally managed to pick one boy name and one girl name, after picking many many chits. And I'd randomly call out those names when I go out for my walks. In my happy voice and my angry voice. We finally ended up naming the baby the first name my husband had ever suggested.

And thats all for the first part of this preggy-baby series. Pregnancy was actually quite nice. I really wouldn't mind being pregnant again if someone else would do the delivering the baby part for me. There was nothing "fun" about that part. But more on that next time!