I-gon..

Her name, they told me, was I-gon... She was a month old. All I could see was a brown furry bundle in a shoe box. Someone had torn out her eye and thrown her in a gunny bag on the road. She'd been picked up and taken to Krupa Animal Care.
I'd never held a puppy before and been scared of dogs forever...didn't even know why I'd volunteered for the Pet Adoption camp... didn't know anything about pets or adoption.. Being a whiner, I've always whined about not finding any 'meaning' in work and what I'm doing and all. So a volunteer programme sounded like the best way to test the waters for 'meaning' in doing something. I guess I was hoping to find something that would make sense to me, but honestly I had no clue what I'd do there or how I'd make myself useful.
She was the first puppy they brought out. I watched as some of the volunteers held and handled the pups like they'd been doing it all their lives.. I leaned over and watched with my hands tied behind my back (the perfect volunteer) as they put them in little baskets, tucked rugs around them, fed them and tied ribbons around their necks. I-gon, they told me wasn't running around coz she was dizzy and tired from the surgery and the medicines. Stroking a sleepy, tired, dizzy puppy didn't seem too dangerous a task and I decided I was up for it.. She was all curled up with her tiny tail brought around her to cover her nose...
Eventually people started coming in to look at the pups.. Somehow I-gon was returned pretty quick back to the hands that held her out and they'd move on to look at the other puppies.. Somebody handed her to me and seconds later she was sleeping in my lap and didn't seem to mind that nobody wanted to take her home coz she wasn't perfect enough... And thats when the picture started forming in my mind.. Sitting at home with a sleeping pup curled in my lap..
I called up my roomies and begged them to come take a look at her.. and then pushed my luck and wondered if WE could take her home.. Prompt refusals and reminders of my general carelessness and the impracticality of the whole idea were drilled into me in a matter of seconds.. Moped around the whole day coz I couldn't have her and nobody would take her home .. actually mostly because I couldn't have her.. All my promises to be a changed responsible adult fell on deaf ears.. They'd known me too long to believe I wouldn't get bored of something in a week...
Its amazing how an idea can get into your head and root itself there and then no matter how many times people tell you its not practical and that its not going to happen.. you still keep wanting it.. And I wanted it.. I wanted to take her home and I wanted it to not matter that nobody else wanted her coz of her eye... Stupid shallow dumb blind people... Nobody took her and the Camp was over.. Some of the pups had been adopted and the ones that were not were put back into the van to be taken back to the shelter..
Sometimes its really difficult to remember you're too grown up to cry over a puppy. And I don't care if that sounds silly or brainless or girlie or immature.. I don't care.. And now that I think about it, somebody told me a while back that if you want something badly enough, the whole world conspires to get it for you.. It was supposedly from 'The Alchemist' (which I haven't read) ..I guess I must have wanted her badly enough for fate to hand her over to me to keep her till she got properly adopted. The people from Krupa didn't want to take her back to the shelter after all that she'd been through. I alternated between laughing and grinning and promising that I'd take good care of her and asking them how I should do that.. Bread, diluted milk, biscuits.. newspapers on the floor.. water.. it all seemed simple..
Warned my roomies, caught an auto in the rain with a basket in my hand and a puppy sleeping inside and felt like a very lucky special person who'd just been granted a wish from a genie .... Got home and spent hours cleaning up after she'd messed the floor for fear my roomies would throw the two of us out... She's the sleepiest pup I've ever seen.. she'd wake up every now and then.. and we'd play with her.. She looked like one of those brown and white toy dogs that run and jump and roll over .. She'd chase anything you dangled in front of her nose.. No barking.. no sounds.. just running after things and climbing into the nearest available lap and curling up and falling asleep in a second... Nobody wanted to call her 'I-gon' .. even if we didn't get to keep her for more than a week.. We decided we were going to change her name.. For now she was'Puppy', 'Chakkumani', 'Kingini', 'Da', 'Di','Tutu' and an assortment of several other little squeaky noices...
She slept in the hall in her basket with newspapers over the whole floor and I put my bed a little away from her.. prayed she wouldn't wake up and pee on me and fell asleep planning toilet training lessons for her and wondering at how amazing it was that she'd been hurt so badly and yet she trusted us to take care of her and protect her while she fell asleep in our laps.. The fastest I'd ever fallen in love...
She was taken back for a visit to the vet the next day and adopted the day after that. Hadn't thought it'd be so soon. I'd hoped for atleast a week to watch her play and grow healthy and get toilet trained and run around and come to me when I called her.. I promised myself I'd keep visiting her and watch her grow up and she'd recognize me and I'd do it after I came back from my hols.. But I couldn't... coz she'd died. They explained that she'd been sick. Had an intestinal infection. I guess she's not a big loss to anybody. Just a puppy.. A one eyed puppy even sounds like a joke. So does a 21 year old female crying over a one eyed puppy she'd seen for a day..
I guess there's something funny about it, when you tell somebody (some of the more macho of my good friends) the puppy's dead, that makes them burst out laughing and then quickly stifle it.. Its funny I guess that I'd gone totally nuts about her overnight and then she'd died.. I guess Its funny that I make such a big deal over something thats of no significance to anybody.. Maybe there's something here I'm not seeing... But they're right in a way .. I'm not mourning her forever.. She wasn't a person.. She's not a big loss..
There's a picture in my mind I can't forget.. I hope I never do.. The night that I'd slept next to the newspapers spread out in the hall with a basket in the corner, I'd woken up at night with something pawing on my face and I opened my eyes to a furry one eyed monster that was looking at me.. Even before I gained my senses and lifted myself up onto my elbow.. there was a brown furry ball curled up by my chest burrowing her nose under her tail waiting for me to pull the blanket around us.. I know it doesn't make sense to get mushy .. Its not a big loss.. Its no big deal.. Just a puppy.