Puppy love

I’ve been fooling around for way to long now. Ideas for a blogpost have been pouring from my brain ever since it realized the sheer magnitude of boredom I have to suffer during lectures xP So, time for a post served up straight from my heart <3

I miss my dog .

It is funny because just about a year back – I didn’t own a dog.

And I used to hate dogs . Okay hate is a strong word – I couldn’t tolerate dogs – I found them very needy.

Then something changed.

The dog in the basket apparently grew up :')

My brother , who emanates doggie love ever since he has been born , came home carrying a heavy basket. Attracted immediately, I demanded to know what was contained in that basket. And to my surprise it was the cutest puppy which was just a few days old :’) and thankfully it wasn’t gonna stay in our place for long. It was to be adopted by my cousin much to my brother’s dismay.  His lifelong thirst for doggie love wasn’t going to be quenched just yet.  And mine was just about to begin!

poser

One fine day during the summery month of June ( okay all the months are summery in chennai -_- :P ) I heard a bark from MY backyard. What was a dog doing in our backyard? :O Okay , maybe I am overreacting here. Our house being a million years old , attracted all species of insects and animals , stray cats purposefully strutting about the hallway wasn’t very uncommon . Still! Stray dogs barking from the backyard simply took it to a whole new level.

Initially everybody at home ( sans my brother) treated the dog ( which would inevitably be named laika ) with disdain and it was quite obvious that we would chase it out soon. Yaja (bro) didn’t even demand for a dog because he knew the answer to that futile question already , “ How can you take care of a dog , when you cannot take care of yourself in the first place?”. However Laika proved to be a beacon of perseverance , clawing and digging her way back to our backyard and after a point we simply gave up chasing her.  Reluctantly she was enlisted into our mad family .

I must describe her here. Not beautiful in the quintessential way , Laika is ravishingly eyecatching with her inhuman energy and innate naughtiness, which is very contagious . A total ragamuffin – she looked like a little sheep when she joined us. Black spots merge with her white coat seamlessly and she had very silky hair for a stray . She is the first love of my life.

My baby

During the early days , I was very hesitant to make any contact with her. My toleration level permitted me to just about share a room with her. However Laikoos has a natural gift of winning over people she really wants to win over. With her insistent love and boyish charm , she slowly entered seeped into the rock which was my heart . Times I have spent with her since are pure magic and now I can only relive them as memories. Thankyou college L

Owning a pet IMO, fundamentally alters you as a person. Read Dean Koontz’s ‘ A big little life’ , a story of his dog trixie and the various meanings he attaches to her and the role she plays in his life. All that unconditional love makes you feel rightly undeserving and surely irks you enough to strive for improvement. Life becomes a little bit rosier, much more cheerful and optimistic when a dog is in love with you.  The faith they show in you sometimes restores your faith in humanity.

Okay enough philosophy.

Getting a bit more specific , I read this article on Pune mirror which set my thoughts in motion. It was about the increasingly violent behavior of stray dogs in Pune and how they are disturbing the lives of civilians and even killing rare species for their meals. So , the paper feels that dog catchers are right in ‘catching and putting an end to the dog menace’ .

I definitely agree that Rabies is a scary disease but animal cruelty is an uglier one.

The dogs should definitely be vaccinated for their and our own good. But dogs don’t bite for no reason . Yes , there are some mad dogs like there are a few mad human beings loitering  this world. Provocation is a 2 way street. Dogs don’t generally enjoy biting humans for fun – it is usually the other way around . We like torturing them by throwing stones and even imitating them . This attitude must be changed . Children from a ripe age must be taught that dogs and other animals deserve the same treatment as the so called ‘superior’ humans.

Okay getting preachy again. All I wanna say is that people should stop this blind paranoia of hating animals , without even attempting to love. For love is always more natural than hate and if we believe otherwise we are fundamentally flawed in nature .

P.S – Have a pet.

P.S . S – I am turning a complete vegetarian after this post. 

Photo credits - Yajur Jayaprakash

Yours

Semi 

ek gaon mein ek kisan raghu thatha! :P

It's been a week in Pune already!! :O
and believe it or not  - I have fallen in love with this city! <3
or maybe it is just another one of my defense mechanisms , protecting me from shocks. Whatever this is , it has aroused me enough, to write a post! So let me finish this before reality sinks in .
( Side note :

hahaha

  Defense mechanisms are pretty intriguing . Do you know that I haven't cried a single tear drop yet? My friends think it is some kind of sacrilegious blasphemy from my  part. But hey! If pessimists argue that I have effectively ended one life , I argue back that I have just started a new one :) I do miss chennai . However , I am not going to go gaga over it. Okay I just did . )
I haven't had much chance to discover the city in its entirety yet. But , from whatever I have seen - it is fresh , green , pleasant and mindnumbingly beautiful :')

So here it is . The elusive list of things I have noticed about Pune and my new life in general :

Not THIS adventurous generally :P

1) I was never a nature loving person or that's what I thought. However , climbing the hill in my college ( yes , there is a hill in my college :O ) changed that perspective. The liberating atmosphere , the refreshing smell of pure , fresh air is well worth the climbing - which in itself is exciting and adventurous! Also , I am for the first time realizing that there are four types of climate in a year :P Living in chennai can easily erase this fact into a mere illusion. Back there it is either hot or hotter :')
And in other seemingly related news I got crowned 'Miss Green' by the Mess Bhaiya ( more like a thatha actually :P ) Don't start clapping already - I got called that because i was wearing a green kurthi LOL

2) My new friend rightly said , " Here in Pune , people talk to you in Marathi . If you don't know that they'll talk to you in Hindi and after that they stop." Yeah that's right. English doesn't work with the rickshaw wallahs . Coming from Tamil Nadu , a state which has fervently opposed Hindi often in the past and which doesn't give importance to Hindi in it's education system - I am at a huge loss here . It doesn't help matters that I hated my L3 hindi teacher and in turn conditioned my hatred towards that subject. To all the young readers out there - Learn HINDI. It is very hard to learn later and in this increasingly globalized world it is good to know 3-4 languages . And learning the 'official' language of your country is never a wrong place to start :)

The fundamental problem with most Tamils in this regard ( I am heavily generalizing here ) can be summed up with one joke in a yesteryear Bhagyaraj film , which sadly is still popular. Instead of saying ' Ek Gaon me ek kisan rahta ta' the hero mispronounces it as ' ek gaun me ek kisan raghu thatha' Thatha means grandfather in tamil and raghu is a common name. And ever since then Hindi has been ridiculed and not learnt -_-

3) I love the food here. My hosts may think I'm being overly polite when i say I love roti over rice. Fact is I actually love north Indian food :') Being open to trying new dishes has finally helped this time. Thank you masterchef australia for opening my eyes about food :*

4) Heavily generalizing , yes. I find the pace of Pune to be much slower than Chennai . Maybe it is the monsoon's cozy feel . It perfectly suits a lazy person like me :')

5) It doesn't hurt that folks back home miss me . Makes one feel loved ,you know :P ( even though this may  only last for a short while)

perfectly put by some random citizen :P

6) Lastly but not the least , I am very proud of my new found independence. I make my own bed , wash my own clothes :O , do my dishes etc. Being self sufficient makes one immediately feel adult like :D I was so proud when I wore the tee shirt,which i had washed with my own hands ^_^  P.S - This doesn't mean that I'll do housework when i come back home to chennai xP Home is where the ass lays ;')

Random realization - Blood clots are very random o.O

Semi

Block and Tackle

For the most of our lives , we force ourselves to some goal . So much so that we drive ourselves mad and end up quitting and consider a life of a priesthood. You can't blame us though , for the likes of nityananda and baba ramdev seem to prosper with fame and money due to people's ignorance . So i have taken the other path , not the rat race nor the path for quitters. Instead , I just don't do anything. I try not to think about the task I have to perform , I try hard to ignore.
I try having fun elsewhere, tucking the task to the fringes of my consciousness. Like pressing one's head deep within water , so hard that some opposing force will push it back. Only problem is you need to make sure that you don't drown or choke yourself with all the enthusiasm. What I am trying to blabber is this , by consciously trying NOT to blog , I have gained the thirst to write more than ever. Our minds are like that of an adamant child suffering from oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) . Do the complete opposite to the instructions given. Break the rules , breed the rebel , etc etc. And it seems to be working quite well!

This time I wanna talk about contradictions. We teenagers thrive on it , don't we?
When I first stumbled upon blogger , I met with an empty 'about me' column . Without even thinking for a second I filled it up as "Hey this is semi. And contradictions is the word defining me". I didn't know why I filled it up. the more I think of it , the more sense it makes now.Only when i was reading this other blog called 'shh diaries' (which i find to be a very gutsy and cool blog) and seeing the blogger's profile , i realized that everyone of us are filled with contradictions! :O Call me dumb or use 'You don't say' on me! But it was only then that i realized that every one of us are riddled with contradictions.
The blogger there , Shruti described herself as

"Not yet another teenager calling herself to be full of contradictions " 

or something like that. Her latest description is also hilarious :D

"Bullshittery is a way of life here."

Coming back to contradictions! Our lives are riddled with them. Every coin has a flip side pa ;  The toughest conflicts are between two undesirable decisions we have to take ( or avoidance avoidance conflicts ) says my ever trustable psychology textbook. Eg. don't go to the dentist or have tooth decay , Don't eat junk food or become fat or something like that.
For that matter , every issue has right and wrongs. It is usually our inclination to one particular stand or our fervor to one ideology which overshadows the other. Lets take one of the oldest topics , where both sides fight vehemently for their cause. Veg vs Non Veg. Basically vegetarians are of two types : Who don't eat animals because they genuinely love them or because their culture demands them to do so ( and they have never really tasted meat) The non vegetarians are basically humans who really like what they are eating and find no qualms about what they are eating as long as it is tasty.
so simply putting it . There are a few factors like taste , culture and love for animals . Whichever dominates or finds more importance in the individual's value/moral system it will play out as his attitude , action and behaviour towards a situation. This is a simple fact which many of us can't see. I actually know a friend , who loves animals like dogs and other pets , yet being a non vegetarian from birth her taste buds makes her eat chicken and turkey . This is a classic contradiction and we cannot really say that she is wrong or right .

Why cannot we judge a person who are true to their contradictions?

I just had to put this up :*

It is simply because they are being themselves and acting according to their set of ideologies. How can you question their ethics with your set of ethics? it is like correcting a history paper with a science key. All this , you must understand is applicable , only if it doesn't hurt some other individual and their possessions. We can not say Dexter is right in killing people , just because it is okay to follow your  ideals. He is taking another Human's life  , whether that man deserve to live or not is another matter altogether.
After reading what I have written till now , I find a major contradiction which you might have missed. Being a NV myself , I do not mind a hen being killed , even if she is good or bad . But I just cannot accept that an individual ,whether good or evil , can deserve to be killed. This is because I do place more value to a man's life than a hen's . How many of you can really ready to accept this IF you feel so?
I find humans astonishing . Really. Before studying the history of world wars , we surely  expect some big reason to be the cause for all the calamity. Alas! It is because of this slight distortion. This inability to accept that 'hell! WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER.  Everyone has a life with their own right and wrongs , which i admit must fit into some sort of general  framework right and wrongs, but No! Our egos say we are ultimately doing the right thing.
And every side fights for what it thinks is right.
 grow up! You cannot blame anybody, Not even your ego . the poor thing is trying to defend yourself and your decisions by calling it the best. Doesn't mean it is...it is just to make your decision making easier.

What I am trying to convey is  :

• Stop trying to judge someone's actions  when you don't even know them. Give them the space , so that you get their moral code to decipher their actions. Eg. People who don't get sarcasm think the other person intends to be rude . 
• Don't go around boasting how your decisions are the best. 
• Maybe I am confusing enough to be the next spiritual leader!! :D 
• All the wars which were ever fought and will be fought are pointless.   

War does not determine who is right... only who is left

Samyuktha (semi) Jayaprakash