Crazy Birthday - Part 1

March 5, 2007

As promised earlier, this post is about my craziest birthday till date. This happened when i was staying as a paying guest 2 years back. The owner of the house was an old widowed lady who was as cranky as any person could get. However, I got along well with her during the first few months as I was the only person beside her in the house.

I used to get back home around 9 p.m. after office and I guess she was glad I didn’t hang out till the wee hours of the morning. Even if i had wanted to, I couldn’t have, as the entrance to my room was inside the house making her open the door every time I came home. This was really inconvenient but it was all I could get when I started looking out for an accommodation, having a week’s time at my disposal.

I had moved in during Nov and within 2 months or so, it was time to celebrate another year of my glorious existence in earth. I usually don’t like to be disturbed by phone calls when I am sleeping and I keep my mobile in silent mode just before I goto sleep. I figured my birthday didn’t warrant any exception either and I promptly exercised my ritual. I don’t know how long it slept but I was awakened by some hard knocks on the door. I opened it to find my owner appearing perturbed. ‘Shriram, I think something has fallen into the well. It sounds like a cat. Can you come with me to check it out?’ It was 5 a.m. and I was too irritated to be woken up just to check out some stupid cat that was trying to take up early morning swimming lessons in our well.

Staggering with great difficulty I reached the well which was covered by some cardboard sheets inside the compound of the house. Only then did i realize that there was a well in the house and that the water from the well was pumped to the overhead tank to be consumed by us. Surely, there was an animal inside the well splashing the water and trying to climb up though we couldn’t see what it was as it was pitch dark. My owner switched on the flashlight and we could see a stray dog looking at us pathetically and sounding the same. It could’ve fallen while trying to jump on the cardboard that was used to cover it. My owner suggested ‘I have a rope and a bucket. We will try lowering it inside’. I nodded still feeling sleepy and we lowered an iron bucket and it appeared to have hit something and it became heavy. Heave ho ! All we got was a bucketful of water. So dazed I was that i didn’t realize that if the dog was too smart to jump on the bucket and sit smugly in it, it wouldn’t have fallen into the damn well in the first place.

It began to dawn slowly and the sounds of birds was subdued by the cacophony this dog was creating from inside the well. We went back inside and i didn’t know how to take the dog out as i had never been in such a crazy situation ever before. Luckily my owner called up some army commander she knew and that guy suggested calling the fire brigade. I figured out what the term presence of mind meant then. We called the fire brigade and gave them our address. I meanwhile went outside to check what was happening. It had dawned completely and the howling attracted our neighbors. One of them came outside and hollered ‘I think something has fallen in your well. Is that your dog? How did it fall in? Are you doing something about it?’ ‘Yes smart Alec. It is our dog. We love it so much that we thought we’ll marinate it in our well water overnight and have a hearty repast.’ I ended up saying ‘It’s a stray dog. We’ve informed the fire brigade.’ Jeez! I wonder why people can’t mind their frigging affairs. I should’ve woken her up at 5 a.m. and asked her to do something about it.

(to be continued here)

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