The Tenants Of Shanti Villa

Chapter 2: The appearance of the dog

A dog, quite large, seemingly searching for something.

A German Shepherd, it hit Sridhar immediately. What is a German Shepherd of all dogs doing at Shanti Villa?

Questions, so many, raced through his mind.

Sridhar slid and bent below the balcony railings, watched the dog jump into the building porch without making much noise and start sniffing around.

At first, Sridhar thought it must be the dog of anyone living nearby who had gotten away.

But as more and more time passed without any owner arriving to call it out, and the dog kept sniffing around, out of sight to the backyard, things got more and more suspicious inside Sridhar's mind.

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It has been a tumultuous day at school for Sridhar. The thoughts of last evening, as to the dog's appearance have kept lingering in his mind.

Now, on the building porch, he tries exploring a bit, looking for signs of the dog, or the dog itself, who knows if it had lingered behind.

Soon enough though, he had given up hope, and was standing there with a small tree branch in his hand, lost in his thoughts.

As Sridhar turned around, he found Mr. Mittal coming down the stairs. He has been quite fond of him. If one of the people Sridhar has managed to form a close bond and friendship in only a few weeks at Shanti Villa, it has to be Mr. Mittal.

Not much is known about him though.

All everyone in the locality knew of him was he was a bachelor man in his early thirties, who had started residing at the Villa, just a week or two before Sridhar's family arrived.

No one had much of an idea where he worked or the whereabouts of his family. But the man for sure, had such an extremely well-polished ability to make his way out with people by talking that he had become the apple's eye of every person.

"Hello, Mittal uncle!" Sridhar shouts out with a wide smile on his face

"Hello, young man! how have you been doing? Searching something here in the backyard?"

Sridhar gets a bit hesitant, should he talk about him seeing the dog last night, or just not bother and make it wider news? He knew he could trust Mittal's uncle after all, he was such a good person with a happy face.

Sridhar's hesitations fly away the moment Mr. Mittal throws one of his warm smiles at him. He begins narrating how, he came to see the dog last night, its mysterious acts, and how it disappeared without any trace.

Mr. Mittal's expressions went from a very smiling to a more sober and serious one, and by the time Sridhar had finished accounting for the incidents he seemed rather expressionless yet in deep thought over something.

"I will be on my way Sridhar, got some very urgent work today afternoon"

"Let me know if the dog shows up without fail!" saying this he quickened his pace towards the front gate.

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Mrs. Darshan is having quite a hard time climbing up the stairs, the very definition of a news channel on wheels, there is no such news of the locality that manages to escape her eyes or ears.

It may seem from the description that she is quite the quick mobile lady on the street, however quite salt to the imagination her obesity has only increased with age, and now with arthritis eating up her legs, she finds it difficult to climb the stairs to her apartment at Shanti Villa.

She looked up as Sridhar ran past her up the door of his apartment and promptly pressed the bell twice

"Ding dong!" "Ding dong!"

Quite unexpected to Sridhar, Mrs. Darshan began shooting off as soon as his mom opened the door.

"I saw your son up to not really some great stuff in the backyard!

You, better keep a watch on him, boys these days have got extremely careless and unhinged about their activities

It won't be long before he lands in some huge trouble..."

Sridhar was quite accustomed to these by now, having endured them from the day he arrived at Shanti Villa, what surprised him though that Mrs. Darshan did not possess any sort of information on the dog that appeared yesterday.

It would been a mention without fail, trying to scare his mom about him wandering off.