"Tale" between my legs

I feel like a popstar. Nervously breathing in the green room with the final show some minutes away from him. He can hear the colossal cheers of the crowd. He is sure to get drowned in the brightness of the eager flashlights. The screech of the microphone, people rooting for him with baited breaths are driving him nuts. Sometimes you can't escape from who you are.

Pikku looks perplexed. He is still too young to have a nose for philosophical crumbles. He has skipped college today for no reason at all. He says that his presence/absence doesn't even matter. Knows not, it rings true for almost everyone in this world! Anyway, I was not anticipating him. When he arrived, he darted towards my bed, drew his chair, chipped a pillow behind his back and said, " You promised every one of us a story!". And then he didn't stop there. He gave me that look which makes me phlegmatic. That is when I started feeling like that superstar I was talking about. He seems to think of me of some conjurer who would pull a rabbit out of his hat. He is growing impatient and is torturing me so that I cough up any story that I can recall. I ask him if a panchatantra story would do. He says, " No, I am no kid". Sophomores are smart these days. He knows he is in for some saucy story from my life. . He simply won't take any crap today. He wants deliverance. No beating about the bush.

I am not very old. In my late twenties. Past that dreadful 25 for almost two years now. I keep sounding grandpaish , I know. When you are ill, on a sabbatical, you think hard. Probably that makes you sound avuncular. Pikku's eyes are reddening. He knows that I am digressing to avoid confrontations with my past. How true is he! When I was a child, we lived in this big house. Mossy, with rusty bars, thick overgrowths of hedges marking its contours, it looked spookish to me. Ours was a comely neighbourhood with every household abuzz with breeziness of children that were as old as me. We were a formidable, noisy lot. The evenings were real fun and there were these bicycle races that evoke special memories. Although we had little feets, our riot raised little clouds of dust, the mists that would block our vision with dirt. Orange nimbuses that would make my face look shabby everytime I returned after speeding . Races always fuel rivalries. There were two of us who never got along very well. Intent to bring each other down, we raced dangerously close to each other. On several occasions our bicycles would brush each other and we would fall. I wasn't particularly bullish but I was not the one who could be downplayed that easily. Although our families hosted dinners for each other frequently and our mothers would throng the nearby shops for grocery together, our parents knew that we didn't like each other. We never really tried to hide it too. He had a beautiful cat. The kinda cat I have always yearned to own. Soft paws, beautiful whiskers, ferocious yet enticing eyes. It was fluffy, overweight and would meow everytime it grew hungry. As a matter of fact, I never saw it content with its appetite. It could eat till eternity. I was so fond of it that in his absence, I would run my fingers across its fur and took delight in its so dramatic and ostentatious prowling across the alleys and corridors. I never really wanted the world to know that the presence of the cat mellowed me. I doubted myself that one day that damn fat cat would lead me into bridging all the rifts that we fiercly maintained between each other . I kept pestering my father to buy me a dog, a cat or even a mouse so that I could love it with all the care that I could muster at that tender age, lest his cat gave me that weakness which love often thrusts on you. But he was never a cat-and-dog person so to speak. He never got me one. It has been years now and I asked him some days back while he visited me here as to why he never really liked pets. Sheepishly he confessed, " I had a dog once". I dug no further. The pain in the eye told it all. Pikku is a bit startled to know this fact. Dad is the one who would yell at the slightest purr. Him feeding nibbles of biscuit to a terrier is something none of us can fathom. The day the cat died, I cried till my pillows got dunked. I bellowed and groaned, shut myself in my room and longed to see it twitch its tail with an earnestness I have not felt thereafter. Childhood likings last for life. Obviously my little foe was also crestfallen. With him being mad with grief, I couldn't risk myself being anywhere near to him. My parents wanted me to go to him and help him sober up. They persisted till I gave in. I know now that I wanted to caress the fluffy skin of his cat more than anything else in the world at that moment. I wanted to see it one last time before it left for an unknown land, the tickets for which I have acquired only some months back. I plan to meet it , up there. Soon.

I don't remember its name. Perhaps it was something out of some comic book. But it was instrumental in bringing two cute little foes together. "Forever" is a dangerous word, I know. But I would use it to honour my sweet cat. It transformed both of us. Forever.

P.S:: Pikku is a bit sad. A bit moist. Being in college, he should resist tears as far as he can. Life is a twisted tale with your darkest deeds teaching you more than any lesson you learn in your college. Where your most ferocious competitors become your best friends. All it takes is a cute Cat!

P.S.S:: My friend still lives there, I hope. We moved out when father saved enough to own a big house. We all move on leaving good neighbours behind. I will tell your "hello" to the cat. I assure you of that.