don"t go by the title of the post and judge it as something about real rubies or gems.... this is an anecdote of our family"s pet dog called RUBY, no less of any gem...and all the rubies on this earth are not worth it"s weight ...no...no....she was not an extra -ordinary animal, nor given to any sensational feats,or such adventures...just an adorable little doggie who caused so much pleasure to many people,and received so much love in turn too.
she was barely five or six weeks old,as she was carried and deposited at our paved court yard between the kitchen quarters and the main house,at bandar.the little pup tottered around on it"s wobbling feet ,sniffed at our feet,and even went exploring till the pump head and tulasi kota at the end of yard,..came back ,and curled up at the feet of SURI BABAI
We leisurely picked it up and inspected the nails....or ...claws, if you want to call it that way.She had nineteen claws....which, according to babai was a so and so case........Twenty would have been better,,..he said..as the proverb goes..."iravai gollunte illu baga kastundi".Then we went into a conference on what we should call her. Babai decided to christen it as ruby.
He brought her from BACHUPETA,.one of .our aunt"s marital home.....Her mother lived there...sadly no pedigree lineage for ruby.....Her mother was a stray, or..at the best could be called as a cross bred jagilai-( a kind of tracker species..a wild dog.)...Babai, who would never settle for any thing inferior,unilaterally pronounced it as jagilai.....of it"s father, no body knows any thing..."male species has no value in the animal world"..my dad heard it somewhere and hugely tickled, was fond of repeating it always with a twinkle in his eye.."it's role ends with the act of procreation and is not required further.from then on they are quite expendable"..........may be to be sent on war fronts to die i suppose ....well....Ruby"s mother was said to be sagacious one.....it seems once she was taken to THALAKATOOR, a village, 20 miles or so away from bandar,and returned on it's own, just by scenting the track.....
so,...Ruby came to be living with us and proved to be a delightful and disciplined pet even at such a young age.Once forbidden she would not step inside the kitchen and exhibited an alertness at every new thing and earned good remarks even from our grand dad (who never liked pets , and would swish his towel at the advancing puppy) He said she used to perk up her ears and bark during early mornings from the bedrooms, as he walked past them....In fact, as days passed, it has become a habit with Ruby,..to get up with grandpa...at four in the mornings...go down stairs (our bed rooms were on upstairs) .........As he sat in his office hall(he was an advocate) she would hop on to the ARUGULU or thinnelu..of the house and harry anyone who dared to cross our part of the road.Later she even developed a weakness for a bit of lancham and would allow only those milkmen who would offer her some of it.
Rearing a pet is a joyful experience, i can vouch for you,.Just like watching a baby grow up.......the first joy being able to play with it all the time...At that time i was staying with my uncle and aunt in our grandpa's house and babai still had no children...so i and babai could play a lot with Ruby.......He brought balls for her which she would retrieve and bring back faithfully when thrown in.....When her teething began,the first casualty were our shoes and slippers....she preferred them to the rubber cube babai brought for chewing...The way she would grapple with new things, biting., and ferociously tearing to shreds was so cute ..the funniest moment was when i decorated Ruby's ears with my bangles and showed her a mirror.she would be so flustered at the mirror image....kept looking at it uneasily.
You will never know what is boredom with pets....Just watching them ,...grooming themselves,...yawning...stretching, ...or just squatting placidly gives one a sort of peaceful feeling.one of my cousins keeps an aquariums at home and daily spends at least a half an hour watching the fish. He says it is a sort of therapy for him.
... .......My dad used to say that everyone should raise pets....He himself used to have pigeons, rabbits, and we always had at least two dogs at any time in our home.I think most of us in the family got that streak.....recently, one of my aunts rescued a baby squirrel as it fell down and hurt it"s legs....it used to play around her, even hiding in the sari pleats.
Then due to some problem at home babai had to send ruby to an advocate friend of his...and i was heartbroken...But two months later, to my utter delight,babai again brought her home one fine morning...it was as if she never went away. though it had been a while, she was all over us in exuberant greeting,..ran around the house sniffing around it"s previous haunts.
The best thing was to see her looking so healthy .....in about just five months, Ruby grew up to it"s full form....she was not a very tall dog.....just about average...with a shiny , tawny, golden brown coat of short fur....and white extremities..The tips of her legs, snout, tail ears were milk white, even a dash of white on the forehead which looked like a tikka..she always looked neat, like a finely shod convent going kid ,..never got dirty even when she went out......Everyone thought she was a beautiful little doggie......Our cook CHARI went into raptures describing her with "amma, mana ruby chandrakala laaga untundi kadoo". Chandrakala was an yester year actress, and i am afraid she would go drown her self if ever she gets to hear this....but one very disappointing thing for me was her ears did not hang down as we wished for.
Giving a bath to Ruby was a tumultuous affair......she hated baths , would strain at the leash (without leash it would run away) and only a stern reprimand or a swear word from babai or seshu(my brother) would tame it.She still showed it"s protest by low growls ,though would surrender never the less.
Giving it a non-veg meal also was a special event.Us being brahmins, it could not be cooked in the house ..so ..our maidservant ,who was a muslim would be commissioned to bring in the meat or our peons if it was at dad"s place.they always brought beef for her....A temporary oven would be be arranged in the backyard,.. they would prepare it....just rice and the pieces of meat...i don't know if salt was put in....one has to see Ruby as the scents of the cooking reached it"s nostrils... ....she whimpered, whined, howled and made all sorts of noises....The worst part was when the rice was spread in the plate to cool down...finally she would be released and she would tiptoe up to it as if any noise would attract enemies.....may be the instinct of the wild animal.....silently she would squat down and started to eat with ecstatic, half closed eyes.It was funny to watch a natural carnivore at it"s meal.
Meanwhile, we kids, huddled around to watch all this.
"is non-veg food so tasty?"i would wonder.."it must be or why else people prefer it to the veg?" i reasoned..."come on.since we do not eat it we don't know but the people who eat both seem to prefer it".
"No" my brother , who was just two years younger to me said with the air of a knowledgeable person"that is only because they eat it only once or twice in a week.if one eats regularly there won"t be much difference."
we all would ponder over this weighty point and conclude that seshu might be right after all.
It became quite a nuisance, with Ruby,when we had to go out...never being kept on chain,she insisted on accompanying us every time we stepped out..Daily, as i went out to school,i had to chide her several times in the middle of the road to vainly send her home.she would still steal in.The first person to hop into any rickshaw or vehicle that we happened to call for, was Ruby.Then would follow a deal of cajoling, threats....to make her climb down...
Usually we think that human beings have become too self centred and hardened and do not care for others and much less for mere animals...but the truth is there are many...many of us who do care...Ruby was a proof to it ....In no time she became so popular in the neighbourhood .....once i was surprised to see a shy lad from a neighbouring biscuit making household, get down from his cycle before our steps....he opened a packet of biscuits and put it on the steps saying"ruby did not visit our house this day sooo"....She was hardly ever kept on leash .. so the rascal was busy doing the rounds...making a visit at every house... once or twice jhansi aunty, whose husband never returned home in time whenever he sat for a game of cards...., would take matters into her own hands in a novel way.. She would call for Ruby and both would go up to the club. she waited outside and Ruby went in ..and an abashed uncle would close his game and meekly returned .
As i said earlier ruby was a normal dog , no extraordinary one. and uneventful as her life had been ,.. still two interesting events happened in her life...
One was....when we took her to Chinthalapudi, a taluk headquarters near ELUR, where my father has been posted as a munsiff magistriate ,...For her second litter ( i think so)..ofcource i was not there. I was at Bandar,doing my high school.Our quarters at chintalapudi were on the outskirts of the village,sparsely popullated and peaceful...with an occassional deer or fox appearing from the bandamcherla forests nearby.......Only thing was a dog, called RAJU, one eyed(he must have lost it in previous fights) and battle hardened,roamed around freely and infested the surroundings with his harem of wives and secondary males....This gang regularly, provoked and teased ruby daily,...posing challenges, and trying to waylay it , at every chance.....He knew Ruby was there with her pups and one day,managed to scale the walls with his murderous goons and descended upon her.
Though she was still weak with littering and lactating,..it seems Ruby..just by herself went headlong into the melee , single handedly took on the the six member strong squad and pushed them back in defence of her pups..It was said when last seen, raju safely escaped while one of his colleagues was howling with pain, as Ruby dragged on holding to it"s neck....she herself was badly wounded but chased the intruders till the gates.It was an exceptional show of courage, and both dad and babai were very proud of it as i remember....being masculine themselves , they were amazed and thrilled with this heroic display of feminine valour .Generally we do get to hear of the ferocity of cubbing mothers, but here was a live example.
While on this.....how many us know..how...under our very noses , in streets and cities dog gangs operate with an ease which would put even our feudal vendetta films to shame.. .Usually these are strays, headed by an alpha male and it"s cronies and molls, ....they are tough, fighting fit, and though would not harm humans , a menace to each other and a nuisance to the householders.
The second memorable incident happened in 73, when the holy mother of jillellamudi chose to come to Bandar and graced our house to stay for two days.Babai was an ardent devotee of her.Since the upstairs were allocated exclusively for the use of mother and her party,....the downstairs were full of us, and visitors who arrived for her darshan,,we shifted Ruby to a house behind our own...The street before our home used to be thronged by hundreds of people waiting for a glimpse of Mother.....On the second day .,a little girl of her party saw Ruby and suggested why we did not show her to mother."mother loves the poor animals' she said......so,..we took her in and tied her near the staircase, where mother could see her as went up and down.
It was the morning of VUNDRALLA THADDI,..a festival day celebrated exclusively by women..just like KARVA CHAUTH.... swinging on OOYALA is mandatory that day. So our swing in the courtyard was decorated with marigold and kanakaambaram flowers, my cousin Hyma laboriously sat weaving through out the previous night... a pure white dhovathi of my grand pa was spread on the plank..... At about eight thirty in the morning ,,mother came down stairs and sat on the swing for few minutes , Looking resplendent in a violet and yellow silk sari.. she received her children as many of them came up to bow....She was leaving Bandar that day.....as she got up to leave,...someone...my jellathai. i think...pointed Ruby to mother..Mother"s eyes softened as she saw the dog....Her love for the mute little lives was boundless...she spread her hands invitingly ,..murmured NEE KANTENA? in a low tone,....went and patted Ruby for few seconds....Terrified by the sight of so many people, Ruby dropped her ears and stooped low at her feet.
I went to stay with my parents soon after this and later got married.I could see Ruby only when i visited Bandar,,,and as usual she would crawl all over us, smooching and gambolling in an exhibition of affection....I last saw her in 76...she was already suffering from cancer but all the same greeted me uproariously.. but not for long...i could see she was very weak...She reached the happy hunting grounds soon after this.
she was "A LUCKY DOG: i should say....lived a good life... a better one than some of our human beings, i am both ashamed and sorry to say.....loved and received love...and best of all fortunate enough to receive the merciful touch of MOTHER.
