30 TEENAGE STORIES

Aruna's Request Scharada Bail

The only good thing about the last year at school was that my parents bought me a moped. Black and shiny, with a steady, healthy engine sound; this vehicle meant a lot to me. A sticker on it proclaimed it to be India's largest selling moped, but I did not care whether this claim was true or false. All I knew was that the unremitting drudgery of being in Standard XII, with endless lectures about the importance of doing well in my exams, tuitions for all subjects and engineering entrance papers, was considerably lightened as I drove my moped down the breezy city roads, enjoying my all too few moments of freedom.

 My books and papers fit comfortably in a small denim rucksack on my back and I could take an occasional pillion passenger, fellow sufferers like Sathya or George, also on their way to Maths tuition. The moped was such a comfort that I decided to call her 'Ranvijay', after the Indian naval ship that I had visited the summer before,when it had come to Vizag port. Of course, this christening was only in my mind. I was not going to take the risk of saying the name aloud and inviting ridicule. I already had a few problems in that direction. Being six feet two inches, with a long neck, and large hands and feet invites its share of comment in the small community of school. Ostrich, they sometimes call me, or simply Yeti and other less complimentary names in Telugu. 

On Sundays I take extra time to clean and gloss 'Ranvijay' pepping her up with soap water and a special polish for the chrome fittings that a man sells outside Vishakhapatnam station. It was on one such Sunday that I heard the whining and yelping of a small puppy. These agonised cries were punctuated by soft, crooning sounds of reassurance, somewhat like the 'kitchie-koo' noises my cousin, Shyamala makes every time she sees even a poster of a cute animal.

 The bathroom of the ground floor flat of our building was close to where I was cleaning my bike and I realized that sometime during the previous week, a new family must have moved in. The earlier occupants were Mr. V.S.N. Rao and his wife, an irascible old couple that other neighbours in our building had happily waved farewell to when they went to join their son in the United States.

The new family obviously had a dog and the ministering voice seemed to be of their daughter. It sounded like she was bathing the animal and he or she regarded it as a torture. 

While I was still figuring this out, the door to the flat burst open at my side and a girl came out, carrying a wet puppy in her arms, bundled in a torn towel. She was slightly built, her hair was bunched into a knot kept in place with a purple cloth hairband. She wore jeans and a loose white T-shirt that had a faded collage of African animals in front, and the statement T am wild about animals, aren't you?' written on the back.

 As I watched over the seat of my bike from my position sitting crouched on the ground, the girl walked to one of the benches set against the compound wall where elderly residents from our building sat in the evenings and observed the children play. She tenderly laid the puppy down in the sunlight and began drying its coat. It looked ill and miserable to me. It was a brown puppy with a black face like millions of others seen in every street in India. Its fur was missing in patches and there seemed to be red, sore spots in places. Fascinated and repelled at the same time, I watched the girl take out some ointment from a side pocket of her jeans and begin applying it to the sores.

 I wiped the bike a couple of times more, then stood up. Immediately she glanced in my direction and I said, "Hello! You have moved in here?" 

"Yes," she said. "Well...it was not much of a move really. We lived two streets away before coming here. I am Aruna. What is your name?" 

"Govind," I said. "Is that puppy a new find from somewhere nearby? It looks pretty sick. 

"You should have seen it last week. You could not even recognize it was a puppy," said Aruna. "Now that it's fur is growing back and some of these horrid wounds are healing, it is quite frisky at times. But the pup is not for me. I am just taking care of it for the Pushpaben Jain Animal Hospital and Shelter. I volunteer for the very sick animals, you know."