An excerpt from Onam In A Nightie

Rosie and Shivankutty

It's two days since Diwali, and we are sipping morning tea,leafing through the papers to check the news. Trump wants to stayin power though he has lost the American election, in no small part tomy purposeful journaling in the wee hours of the morning.Boris Johnson has put the UK into a second lockdown andquarantined himself, after coming into contact with a Covid patient,but says he is as 'fit as a butcher's dog'. I warm up to this, his candidnessin calling himself a butcher's dog. Decency in Britain has a fightingchance.The Covid cases in Delhi have spiralled so much that the homeminister of the country had to call in a special meeting. If only hehad paid attention to those messages on WhatsApp predicting thissix months ago, he too could have escaped to Kerala.We hear the strains of a conversation outside. The helper comes tothe living room and points to the garden. She is suppressing a smile.'Shivankutty is here with Rosie.'

We all look blankly at her. My mother peering through her glassesrepeats hesitantly, 'Rosie?''Yes. Shivankutty also asked for a cup of tea.'

 My mother nods a yes to that, but we all look at each other. Rosie,a new being in Shivankutty's life.'He's never brought any Rosie here before,' says Mom to us. 

Shequeries Dad, 'Do you know who Rosie is, has she been here beforewith Shivankutty?' Dad shrugs. 

Rosie, a name with endless possibilities, the name of the heroinein R.K. Narayan's iconic book The Guide. Rosie, the dancer trappedbetween her free-spiritedness and patriarchy, seeking liberation. Rosie,the woman swinging between pain and joy, rejection and admiration,neglect and jealousy. I wonder what Shivankutty's Rosie is like. Wasshe named her after Narayan's Rosie?

The isolation forced by the pandemic adds a heightened keennessto every small development because it can break the monotony ofthe dullest of days. For me nothing is too trivial to leave unexplored. 

I grab my mask and head to the veranda and call out to Shivankutty,who emerges with his cup of tea from near the rear door of thekitchen.
'Can I have a plate?' he asks.
'A plate for cooling the tea.'I go back inside and get him a deep steel plate and hand it to him.I can't wait to check out Rosie. Nothing must jeopardize that.My curiosity is on edge as he pours some of his tea into the plateand blows into it, cooling it. 

I wonder why he should bother to cool it when he could slurp it.The west has taught us that slurping is rude and yet the most refinedculture in the east, Japan, slurps its noodles. Slurping enhances thetaste of the noodles, especially the soba, causing it to linger in themouth. A few years ago, someone on Twitter coined a term for it— nu hara or noodle harassment, referring to the noisy slurping. It createda short social media storm that died out quickly because the Japaneseknow there is nothing more vexatious than coming in the way of anindividual's union with food.

We are constantly told to eat with our mouths closed, whereasit's perfectly acceptable in many cultures to eat with the mouth open.I've even seen a Reddit thread on it, some bloke complaining that hisIndian colleague ate with his mouth open and forty-nine responsesempathizing with his existential crisis. Who gets to decide tablemanners or how we eat? Food, like religion, is intensely personal,and no one else should have a say in this relationship. My stream ofconsciousness is broken as Shivankutty summons Rosie.

Rosie appears. A nice shade of tan, short and otherwise ordinary,except for being a tad overweight. She comes up and stands next tohim.It's then that I notice that her right ear tip has been clipped toshow that she is neutered.Shivankutty sets down the plate of cooled tea. He wasn't going toslurp it after all.'You could have asked me for a bowl for her instead of a steelplate. And anyway dogs don't drink tea. She should have milk.''She is no ordinary dog, she drinks tea,' responds Shivankutty,looking fondly at Rosie, who is looking away from the steel plate inas much dismay as me.'I'll give you the Deepavali laddus, you like sweets, don't you,Rosie?' he mutters, cajoling her. 'She is a bhayankari, she loves chasingsnakes and mongooses. She is very fierce and won't give up.'Bhayankari, loosely translated, is a female who is 'quite something',a force to be reckoned with.

As he extols her virtues, like Raju the guide did Rosie the dancer's,he rummages through a bag he is carrying and pulls out half a pieceof laddu which he crumbles into the tea. Rosie, unimpressed, looksmore terrorized than a terror.I tell him I'll get her some biscuits.I go back in to fetch the biscuits, and I can hear Shivankutty tellingRosie, 'Don't insult me now, laddu kazhikku, I told them you like tea andsweets.'

Rosie doesn't budge. Shivankutty has no clout over hergastronomical preferences. I slip the biscuits next to the plate.Rosie's eyes follow Shivankutty, and he dismissively tells her to eatwhat she wants. She nibbles them promptly. A dog that doesn't likethe occasional sweet glucose biscuit, I feel, hasn't been born yet.They spend the next hour, Shivankutty and her, inseparably. Hestops every few minutes to mumble to her, cup her face and strokeher forehead. She wags graciously and gratefully as he works aroundthe yard.It's all going smoothly, until Shivankutty calls out to my parents,now sitting on the veranda.'Pappa and Mummy, can you tell me the truth about something?'
We know Pappa, Mummy is what rolls off his tongue when he's abit drunk. He has abandoned Amma and Achan.
'Who is smoking here? I saw empty cigarette packets in thebackyard. Smoking is bad for the lungs.'My parents speculate.
Maybe the waterproofing guys who wereworking the roof last week? Maybe someone from the apartmentblock next door chucked it over the wall?

Shivankutty looks at them and points slyly in the direction of theroom on the first floor that my brother occupies.'Keep an eye.'

My parents are trying to imagine how my non-smoker brotherwould have, in his middle age, developed an urge to take up smoking,a habit he loathes even in others.Shivankutty is convinced of the culprit's identity and his face,pointing upwards, is retracing the trajectory of the cigarette boxfrom my brother's window. A shrewd Sherlockian effort to establishculpability, no doubt.

Rosie takes a step forward, with a friendly wag, to defuse thesituation.'Where did you find Rosie?' I ask on cue.
'Find Rosie? She has been with me since she was a pup. She livesat the convent with me. She is a very alert guard, fierce, bhayankari,'he says, scowling, making up for the gentle expression on Rosie's face.
'The nuns have to belt her up when I leave, or she will follow mearound. I got her along today to show her you all.'
'Show her to us?'
'No, her to see you. She should also know where all I go to,' heresponds. It occurs to me that Shivankutty's decade-old relationshipwith us needs Rosie's approval. The empty cigarette pack has alreadyset us back for today, pushed our morality to the brink.I offer to feed Rosie milk. Bribe, one of the quickest ways to get aseal of approval in our country.

'The sisters in the convent have already fed her. She has milk withtwo raw eggs in the morning. And she eats only meat and chicken forlunch and dinner,' says Shivankutty, a light disdain lacing his tone,knowing we are a mostly vegetarian household.
'I see. Does she get enough exercise? She looks overweight.'

 'Of course, she does. You know tennis?' he asks, waving his handin the air as one would while holding a racquet.
'The nuns play tennis  in the convent. She collects the stray balls. She has to run around alot during their game.'
'How come you have never brought her here before?'
'She has a lot of duties. I already told you, guarding the yard,fetching the tennis balls. Where does she have time?' he says languidly.
'In this Corona time, what about your job? Don't you have work?'

'I work. I work from home,' I say defensively.
Busy Rosie, snake-chaser, adept ballgirl, fierce guard dog, is nowchasing a butterfly around the yard, tail wagging, hoping to befriend it.
'Bhayankari?' I ask, pointing to her frolicking.
'No, this is her leisure activity,' and on that note Shivankutty andRosie set off, leaving me with a flush on my cheeks.