To the brave queen of my heart - Rani

There is no love more unconditional than that of an unloved, uncared for, grubby, hungry stray dog! Phew! And I can say this from the 8 years of loving I have been showered upon by Raja and Rani. It’s almost a morning ritual – getting a loving stroke & lick on my toes by both these wonderful creatures. They don’t care if I’m late to work coz I refused to wake up on time, or if I wore the same trouser just last week.

Raja and Rani go back many years. I don’t know if they’re girlfriend-boyfriend. Or soul mates. Or ‘just good friends’? I just know that I am a pivotal part of their life. The only time I shamelessly overestimate my existence is when I describe my importance in their life!

The guys at office have many nicknames for them. Tripod. Since Raja has 3 legs. Pradyut had one – Rickshaw & Taxi. Rick for Raja, obviously Rani was Taxi. Vicious. But I’m sure Raja, Rani wouldn’t mind. Simply because they don’t quite get the drift of English. Hanging out all day with the security guys, milk store guy and cobbler, they are more like MNS recruits.

About 6 weeks ago, the security guys from the building seemed all ruffled when I got off the cab. Apparently Rani had hurt her eye. Given that I already had 3 calls from the client on some insanely trivial job, I chose to ignore them and ran up to work. But as I turned on my comp I realized that I’d behaved like a client. (Prioritizing all the aaltu faaltu jobs and ignoring what really mattered). After half a day of frantic calls to WSD, SOS and the Animal Hospital, finally I arranged for someone to attend to her, take her to hospital.

But I hadn’t seen her myself. In the evening I went frantically looking for her. My poor, scared child was huddled under an Indica V2 (our client). Her eye dangling out! Such pain she must’ve been in. Getting her out of hiding and into the animal van was such an arduous task. She yelped as though I was this mindless bitch trying to get rid of her. And half of Nariman Point gathered to watch. I had to bribe that moronic van driver 2,500 bucks so he’d take her to hospital and not misplace her.

Cutting the 4 weeks in between…Rani lost her eye. In the time she was in hospital the security guys would enquire about her every day. And Raja was like this forlorn thing- almost like an art director separated from his copy partner. Quiet for want of words.

And when she was back, the whole place was abuzz. ‘Rani aali, Rani aali’ (‘Rani’s back, Rani’s back’, as Baba Azmi would say). Poonam’s mom brought her back. Poonam also shared Rani’s hospital bills with me. God bless her.

The doctors had done a pretty good job of her. Her left eyelid was shut. And it seemed like nature made one more attempt to make them connect better. Raja and Rani – made for each other. Raja missing a leg and Rani an eye! Not something I’m making fun of at all. Just baffled at the irony.