About A Cat

Pickles has really grown. It seems like she was born just the other day. She is more playful than any of her older siblings. She is a cat if ever there was one, and I mean more credibly feline, and comparable to her jungle cousins. She started her threatening tiny growls when she was much smaller, whenever she was engaged in a piece of food. It was terribly amusing then, seeing this little creature guard its meal so viciously and bravely, in the company of large humans. I thought she was being playful but my father said she was born wild. I see the truth of that now. She is the first cat we’ve owned that bites, scratches, growls and never ever purrs, not even when we fondle her. She actually detests it because our petting is met with furious assaults; her claws holding on to the target, teeth sunk into the flesh, and hind legs wrapped around it, in an irate display of resolve.

Sometimes these displays are results of playfulness, which is, I can say, plenty. Pickles responds to tiny alien noises like bed sideboard-scratching, ground finger-tapping, leaf-rustling and of course, annoying insect windowpane-buzzing. She sees a finger wagging at a distance and stealthily inches forward in a strained posture so amusing to watch, ears perked up, and eyes keenly fixed. Her limbs move constantly as she prepares to attack. Target provokes a little more and she charges in a swift motion. She hops into the air with her paws up before she even reaches it, does a comical skip, and then all of a sudden recoils and vanishes into some hidden space, ready to be an observer again. It’s a vastly entertaining act. Fly-catching is another one of her favourite pastimes. Be it against a window or in the open, Pickles is adept at snapping with her little jaws and jumping around to catch hold of the poor creatures, and when she finally gets them, which is more often than not, it is a haughty little cat that gnaws the butchered victims, which I doubt even taste good.

Of late, Pickles is starting to lean towards the universal cat routine of sleeping three-fourths of the day. Early in the morning, she gingerly hops into any of our beds and eases her way deep into the blankets where she nestles in extreme complacency. Many a time I have proceeded to make the beds when a little lump in the bedclothes catches my attention; which turns out to be a lazy, content little cat whose eyes look up in disdain and displeasure as I invade her ‘territory’. One of her favourite spots is atop the monitor of the PC, where she likes to settle seemingly because of the warmth. It’s extremely irking to have a smug little kitten doing a Garfield Gaze on you while you are busy playing Free Cell.
Due to Pickles’ wild ways which have resulted in scratches and grazes on all our limbs, her one-time extremely poor toilet-habits which are threatening to recur any day (much to my mother’s chagrin) and which still bring back revolting memories, the fact that she is female (chauvinism in the lowest form) and will inevitably spawn a brood of others like her and add to our burgeoning cat population, and finally, three new kittens from the mother cat which are indescribably cuter and which we long to keep; that are making her days in our house numbered. Granted, she may not be as adorable and goofy as Buzzo, as bovine and steadfast as Dobby, as dumb (?) as Pussy with no name or as pretty as the new batch of kittens but she is all the same the fiercest, most detached and looniest pet we have had. Pickles sure added a lot of spice throughout her reign and hopefully she will continue to do so wherever she happens to land up in.

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I wrote this around two years back. There's a 'Salem' as well now and Dobby's carrying again.

Untitled

Fettered hand in the nude yellow glow
Struggles to break free, and lift
its contained self in an arm
stretched to the sky.

Anxious mind plaqued by a hazy
fear of the unknown, a ubiquitous
dark, dim, dull pain shadowing the
bright light that otherwise is.

But it emerges, stronger, and banishes
the speckle on the sense;
Having partaken of goodness, the taste

of freedom lingers still.

The French Connection

Lachaumiere is a picturesque locality somwhere in the middle of Shillong- a kind of mid-point between Laitumkhrah and Police Bazaar. Pretty houses line the narrow roads that climb up gentle slopes and descend meanderingly, in the way that's typical of Shillong. Quiet and dignified, this residential area spans the entire space from the slope leading up to the Loreto gate all the way down to the old Secretariat, very near AIR. The cross-section at the top of the hill next to the said gate is a vantage point of sorts: a three pronged-fork as well as a peak with what would have been a commanding view wasn't it for the large school wall and numerous residences around it. An air of calm, perfumed with the scent of pine and eucalyptus from the Loreto playgrounds hovers over the place.

It seems that somewhere during the British Raj, a king of Dhaka (under Assam then, now in Bangladesh) had, for his summer house, a little house right atop the hill, adjacent to Loreto, then a school for the daughters and wards of British generals. This king had a French lady serving his household, presumably a governess for his children. Of course, this abode could not hold a candle to his opulent palace back home and so the mademoiselle named it Lachaumiere, the French equivalent for 'Thatch-House'. Perhaps it was such then. What remains now is an Assam-type house where that used to be; sold by the royal, no doubt, long ago. And of course the name remains to this day, spelt and pronounced differently, but no less French, and all the more exotic.