Review of Kiran Nagarkar's novel, Cuckold

At the risk of jumping to conclusions – this being my first Nagarkar novel – I will say that the author is already one of my favourites alongside Manu Joseph, on whose recommendation I read him. Can’t say I’ve been disappointed at all. Let me also confess that I was biased towards this book even before reading it because it deals with the story of my ancestors, who have traditionally been neglected by the genre of historical fiction. One of the reasons I picked up this book – other than its catchy title – was to learn more about the Rajput kings of Rajasthan. This book isn’t classic historical fiction, since the language is contemporary and the author doesn’t necessarily strive for pinpoint accuracy in depicting social customs of the 16th century, in which era the book is set. Having said that, it is loaded with invaluable information about the statesmanship and philosophy of Rajput kings, methods of warfare, internal and external power struggles of Mewar and surrounding kingdoms, and Babur’s conquest of India. I disagree with those who think this book is primarily a love story, or that its central theme is the protagonist’s failed attempts to win over his wife, Meerabai (not once referred to by this name in the book). Agreed, this is indeed a leitmotif of the book, and has a profound impact on her husband, Maharaj Kumar, but this isn’t what the book is about. The quote below should put an end to this debate: "My wife, Kausalya, Leelawati, my friends matter to me, but the meaning of my life doesn’t revolve around them." Which brings us to what this book is actually about – a deep dive into the meaning of Maharaj Kumar’s life. I have hardly read something that explores a character’s heart, mind and soul in such excruciating detail. Often through deeply revealing mental dialogue, Cuckold unveils the different roles he plays in life – that of a husband to two different women, a lover to several others, a son to a father who suspects his son will unseat him someday, a brother to those who incessantly plot to have him killed, a visionary warrior who considers peace and commerce to be more important, and an ambitious statesman. In the end, the book reveals an endearing man who’s tough on the outside but deeply conflicted inside, constantly questioning his actions and decisions. I suspect, though, that this is a book written by a man, based on a man, and for men. Depiction of female characters solely from a male perspective, physical and sexual violence, and excessive details of battle strategies (which I thoroughly enjoyed, including the bit about jihad’s importance to war) give me the impression that it would put off most female readers, but then I could be wrong. And oh, keep a dictionary handy while reading Cuckold. Hardly have I come across a book which had so many unheard of words.

Answering the question - What will my legacy be?

A few days back I was out till late night with a bunch of friends, looking for chicken roll for two of them. We finally located a roadside eatery where they began to chomp. The eatery had three child labourers, none over 14 years old, doing most of the cooking and serving. I wasn’t eating, so got busy mollycoddling a stray. He was cute and won’t stop leaping on to me and soiling my t-shirt with his paws.

I moved away a tad bit to keep the t-shirt clean and got busy chatting with friends. He hung back. In about another minute or two, I heard loud wailings. I turned to see that his left hind leg was curled up off the ground and he was limping away to the other side of the road as fast as a three-legged creature could. Why? Because one of the child cooks had hit him with a steel rod that was probably kept there just for that purpose.

I was morally outraged. Why hit an innocent creature who wasn’t even being intrusive? I ran towards the dog and saw that, despite the brutal intent of the assault, he’d escaped serious injuries and would soon be able to walk again. I turned back and unleashed my moral outrage against the child attacker - “Tumhe koi maarega faltu mein to kaisa lagega?”, and variants of it.

The guy was unfazed. Completely. In previous similar experiences, I had seen the guilty at least murmur justifications. This kid didn’t even bother with that, just kept looking down at the plate he was garnishing. I got my friends to pay up quickly and soon left the place in disgust, reacting typically like a morally outraged person would.

After physically abandoning the crime scene, the next step for a morally outraged person is to abandon it mentally, too.  I was in the process of blocking out horrific memories of the wailing dog and the stoic child, when I was reminded of something the inimitable Manu Joseph said – “If you’re morally outraged by something, get closer to it.”

Given that going back to the child and digging calmly into his reasons behind committing the act would most likely have proved futile, I chose the next best option - trying to figure out why a human being, a child no less, would do such an inexcusable thing.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. All these evils are a direct consequence of population explosion. We’re breeding like maggots and there are not enough carcasses to feed on. Why is unprovoked physical violence an abhorrence for you and I, but not for a teenager who’s had no education and probably sleeps on a half-empty stomach every night? Well, for one, you and I need to realise that what we think of as innate is often a byproduct of the environment one grows up in. A child who grows up watching his alcoholic father grab his sister’s ass and beat up his mom without reason, is often thrashed by his employer, must steal food and learn to land blows to survive on a daily basis, can hardly be expected to empathise with an animal. Physical violence, for this child, is either a way to vent his bitterness or a survival mechanism.

All those mob lynching incidents that we hear of these days? Sure, to an extent the spurt could be explained by the present circumstances, but never underestimate the fury of a group of people who’re underfed and underpaid. For them, it doesn’t take much of a leap to go from cobbling street dogs to lynching humans, especially if they’re paid for it.

That largely explains the depravity of the deprived. So, if the poor clamped down on producing more like them, surely the world would be a better place?

Hardly.

As white-collar crimes by Ivy League graduates, sexual exploitation by the powerful, female foeticide and infanticide by educated and urban Indians, and money laundering by chartered accountants suggest, physical violence is perhaps the least destructive form of depravity that has come to characterize human beings. The educated avoid physical violence simply because they don’t need it for survival and they have too much to lose by engaging in wanton violence. They channel their depravity into ugliness that’s more rewarding and easier to hide. The wealthy and the uneducated, however, don’t have similar inhibitions about it. Salman Khan and the Gujjar community are living examples.

In short, it’s pretty clear that making the poor educated and/or rich, or reducing their numbers, isn’t going to change anything, except probably making things worse.

To get rid of the problem permanently, I propose a radical solution – VHEMT. Started in 1991 by American environmental activist Les Knight, VHEMT stands for Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.  As its motto - “May we live long and die out” – suggests, VHEMT calls for all humans to stop having kids, so that the human race is wiped out for good within a generation. There’s no violence, no suicide involved. We just have to stop making more of us.

Many would argue that adherents to VHEMT are a bunch of misanthropes. Except for a few like me, that’s not really true. Most of these guys can be perfectly described by Lord Byron’s “I love not Man the less, but Nature more”. VHEMT guys believe, and rightly so, that a planet sans humans would mean its biosphere can revive and restore to its former glory again.

This makes perfect sense for the climate change radicals as well as for the hedonists who don’t care about the environment. For the former, not producing another resource-sucking creature would mean they’re doing their utmost to save the planet. For the latter, there’s a more subtle reason to adhere to VHEMT. If the entire human race decided to eschew kids, it would give us a guilt-free passport to the planet’s loot and plunder for as long as we live - not more than 125 years. So we could fire up all those coal plants again, shelve the boring EVs once and for all, and extract oil without worrying about ‘peak oil’. Once we’re gone, the planet will heal itself in due course. There are other less obvious benefits of VHEMT. College admissions would become easier. There’ll be more food for humans and stray dogs. No longer would women drop behind in the workplace due to pregnancy-induced leaves. Divorce settlements would be much less messy. The pro-choice vs. pro-life debate would end instantly. Above all, the most vexing question invented by humankind – what will my legacy be? – would become redundant.

If we can’t go as far as VHEMT, let’s begin by celebrating those who’ve already embraced this movement. For every Father’s Day, let’s have a Not-a-Father’s Day. For every Mother’s Day, let’s have a Not-a-Mother’s Day. For every Children’s Day, let’s have a Children-Never-Born’s Day. In place of the bygone “Hum Do Hamare Do”, let’s make a brand new start with the ambitious “Hum Do Hamare No”.

Review - Manu Joseph's latest book 'Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous'

There are two Manu Josephs. One, Manu the author. Two, Manu the journalist. The first is an inspiration while the second is a warning. In his previous two books, Manu the journalist took a backseat and Manu the author – capable of staining the blank page with timeless wisdoms - shone through. In this book, however, exactly the opposite has happened.

First and foremost, this book should be deprived of its “fiction” tag. The only fictional element here is the lame stage names given to really well known, real-life public figures. This book is essentially an extended, heavily biased, opinion piece laying out the author’s thoughts on a particular case that rocked India over a decade back, and continues to emit aftershocks. Although I will avoid spoilers, anyone with a fair command on current affairs will be able to guess the real-life equivalents of the book’s characters and its plot, just a few pages into it.

The book’s best part – the author’s quintessential, though grossly generalizing, barbs against human rights activists – also turns out to be its most ironic. In presenting a completely one-sided view of important real-life events and the people involved in it, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, Manu exposes himself as an activist, and perhaps a cowardly one at that, for his activism hides in the garb of fiction. I should mention here that asking tough questions is the job of a journalist, but asking them in a way so as to turn public opinion favourable to one’s own is not only irresponsible, but also dangerous. But then, as I said, Manu the journalist is a warning.

Of course, not everything about the book is bad. Like his previous works, this book has Manu’s signatures – underdog male characters, strong female characters, and of course, timeless wisdoms. Although the beginning seems jagged due to one too many interjections by the author’s voice, it soon picks up pace and reads like a thriller. It’s a given that the enjoyment readers gets out of this book will be directly proportional to their ignorance about the goings-on of the world. The plot twist towards the end is admirable, too.

I’ll leave you with some gems that only Manu is capable of writing:

“Hope is a premonition of defeat”

“There is no evidence of Damodarbhai’s guilt except one. Hindus adore him and they can’t explain why.”

“Damodarbhai is not right, Damodarbhai is not wrong. He is a secret thought that people have already thought.”

“You can defame love by calling it madness, which only confirms its existence.”

One of the character’s response when his daughter asks him why he doesn’t leave India when he dislikes it so much - “India is a wound. But it is not a wound like a whiplash. It is a wound, like a spouse.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll always be yours because no one else might want me or I might be too frightened to stray, for that is what faithful men are, unwanted or cowards.”

Wait, I forgot to ask the most important question. Considering the entire book is based on true events, what if that man turns out real, too? If he does, I will go back the very day and change this review, as well as my thoughts on Manu the journalist.

Satire - Marital rape from a Bharatiya POV

All this silly outrage over the government trying to preserve the right to marital rape. Don’t all these feminist libtards get it? By defending marital rape, the government isn’t just protecting the “institution of marriage”, it is protecting something much bigger – the very future of this country. Let me explain how.

Bharat is a nation of sanskari men, where a majority of men observe strict celibacy before marriage. They don’t succumb to the Western sins of attempting to woo girls to date. The only exception is a minority who sometimes force their hands into the tee shirt of an unsuspecting girl who agrees to venture into a desolate park with them. She makes some noises but usually not those that indicate trouble. If she does no one really cares, including the top-button-loose khaki-clad protectors of the people. Because everyone supports the men, they must be right. If you think they’re not, remember what our dear Netaji said, “boys commit mistakes, will you hang them?”

Given his preoccupation with being sanskari, Bhartiya nar leaves the job of finding a girl for him to his parents, before he dies of sexual frustration. Have you seen the “V” sign proudly brandished by a Bhartiya nar’s friends at his wedding? That’s they celebrating his overdue loss of virginity. V= Victory = Virginity (lost). Once the marriage is done, he loses little time in claiming this much deserved victory. After all, if the girl in the park didn’t complain, why should the wife? Obviously, once she’s sitting all decked up in the bed, she is craving relief from the 50kg lehenga that’s about to bury her in the ground. That, combined with the glass of milk (or perhaps Red Bull these days, given India’s embrace of modernity) - can you really blame it on the men? Silly Ajay Devgun, backed out despite Aishwarya’s kinky pallu-ripping invitation in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

Sometimes we hear an incident or two of wives complaining that their husbands raped them. Those insolent ones get thrashed even by their parents. If the girls’ parents support the husbands, they ought to be right. If you’re in doubt, remember what Netaji said.

At the heart of marital rape lies another underappreciated reason – Indian men’s love for their wives. Denial of sex is a ground for divorce. Some Indian men love their wives far too much to divorce them, so they don’t let them deny sex. In any case, only 10-20% of the wives get raped. That’s just a few crores. Big deal.

So, do you now understand why marital rape – a perfectly justified activity as explained above – is also essential to the future of this country? It’s the kids, stupid! For a lot of sanskari Indian men who assiduously shield themselves from the Western notions of romance and consent, the right to rape make love to their wives is essential to the continuation of progeny, and thus to sustain the fast-dwindling population of India.

However, our sanskari government didn’t stop at this. It presented still more arguments to convince people of the necessity of marital rape. One of those is that, “This country has its own unique problems due to various factors like literacy, lack of financial empowerment of the majority of females… and these should be considered carefully before criminalising marital rape”. Now, the government understands these aren’t “problems” at all, but crucial to the continuation of the institution of marriage – after all, Westernization of women through education and empowerment makes their rape by sanskari husbands unlikely. Criminalizing marital rape would be a big step towards empowering women, hence it must be avoided.

Another brilliant argument is, “What may appear to be marital rape to an individual wife, it may not appear so to others.” Assuming the government isn’t talking about eyesight, it’s right in saying that women who get raped by their husbands are too dumb to figure it out for themselves. Estrogen, you see. Here they are on common ground with another women’s rights champion, All India Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB). While defending triple talaq, AIMPLB said that it should be preserved because men have greater decision-making power than women. Such nouveau wisdom!

Lastly, the government rightly touches upon the misuse of Sec 498A to punish innocent husbands for domestic violence they didn’t commit, fearing that a law against marital rape will be similarly misused. This argument is based on careful analysis of data from countries – US, UK, Nepal, Bhutan etc. – where laws against marital rape have forced all husbands to flee to India, where men are still allowed to be men. Added to this is the government’s concern over how to prove marital rape. It’s saddening that this concern hasn’t been extended to non-marital relationships, where proving marital rape can be equally hard. This presents us with a golden chance to revoke anti-rape laws for boyfriends too. After all, why ruin a brewing marriage? And boyfriends never rape anyway, their girlfriends just invite it, so there’s little use of keeping a redundant law.

While we’re on the subject of revoking laws, let’s also revoke Sec 498A, the biggest threat to the institution of marriage. India has deftly avoided making a law to protect male victims of domestic violence, and now needs to correct its folly of trying to protect women. If women can undergo rape, what’s the harm in taking a few beatings at the hands of pati parmeshwar? And all those reports of burnings for not paying dowry are #FakeNews about kitchen accidents by presstitutes.

Let’s all be thankful to our sanskari government and Bhartiya nar for fighting tooth and nail to shield our great nation from existential Western attacks. Together, they shall defend our superior civilizational ethos and keep evil notions of romance and consent at bay.

Dunkirk: Nolan walks further down the wrong path

In Dunkirk, Nolan falls for the same trap that ensnared him in Interstellar – that Zimmerman’s background score is a substitute for dialogues, and cinematographic grandeur, confounding nonlinearity and Bollywood-like heroism are substitutes for good old character development. In cinema, dialogue and character development still make for the compass, and technological shenanigans only for the oars. Clearly, Nolan’s beliefs have changed since the days of Following, Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. While Dunkirk thankfully stops short of Interstellar’s meme-worthy sappiness and grandeur, it does have fuel-less planes shooting potent adversaries out of the sky. If grandeur and victory of good over evil were the criteria, only the hypocritical would admire Dunkirk while trashing Bahubali.

Besides the notion that it’s Nolan’s best work, the biggest misconception about Dunkirk is that it’s a war movie. That’s wrong for two reasons – Dunkirk doesn’t focus on war beyond its facade of guns and warplanes, and moreover, it’s hardly a movie. A movie is an on-screen narrative that begins at one point and ends at another – and sometimes at the same in case of gems such as Pulp Fiction - passing through several points during the course of its journey. Dunkirk eschews all attempts at a narrative. It just teeters at one spot like a drunkard. Wonder whether D(r)unkirk would be a more fitting name. In mathematical parlance, Dunkirk is not a flow but a stock; a stock of numerous, unconnected images that run past the viewer’s eyes in Nolan’s signature, though now tiresome, nonlinear fashion one after the other, with a very predictable attempt at the end to link them all together.

Dunkirk begins coherently by focusing on one desperate soldier, a Frenchman, who violates orders to join ranks with the fleeing British army. Except for the non-sequitur, awkward shot of the man taking a dump on the beach, one would think fleshing out this narrative would have made for a great movie, bringing out the travails of soldiers trapped in a merciless war. Sadly, it soon collapses into multiple threads – a dog fight, a bunch of British civilians ferrying to Dunkirk to take back their soldiers, and the original one of the French soldier – each of which is reduced to nothing but the stock of images referred above.

Sure, some of these images are worth gaping at, and to those who are easily impressed, Nolan will remain the most useful investment of their movie budget. The scene depicting a German bomber’s attack on a British minesweeper ship, and another of soldiers trapped underwater while the surface is set ablaze by oil, are some of the greatest sensory treats ever. Certain others – one, a soldier killing himself by sailing into the waves, and two, hundreds of British civilian boats reaching the shores of Dunkirk in a heart-swelling display of true patriotism - could have been made much more powerful but feel half-baked due to Nolan’s rush to distort time and replace individuals with larger-than-life, mind-boggling events. For the most part, Zimmerman’s persistently edge-of-the-seat background score also seems out of sync with what happens on screen.

In all fairness though, Nolan must be commended for historical accuracy – the Stucka dive bomber makes its characteristic whistling noise while diving down, and original models of warships and planes have been used wherever possible. The only noticeable departure from real events is the yellow-coloured nose of the German planes (in reality, this happened after Dunkirk evacuation was over), though that was done only to allow clear distinction for the viewer. Unfortunately though, such eye for detail is lost on all but the WWII-obsessed viewers.

In Dunkirk, Nolan has come a long way from his initial days of making tiny movies focused on a handful of characters. There are fighter planes, naval destroyers, U-boats, and phantasmagoric imagery. Sadly, all this has come at the expense of characters. I miss the Nolan of yore.

Men are finished

A few weeks back I watched an online debate on the topic “Men are finished”. It’s interesting that we’re having this debate at all. After all, men still overwhelmingly dominate politics, science, sports, even restaurant kitchens. Naturally, I dismissed the motion as absurd.

I was wrong.

Lately, I spent eight consecutive days trekking in the Himalayas with twenty strangers, sans internet. 15 of those strangers were men. This was one of the few times when I was forced to flock with birds of another feather. And man, of an entirely different feather they were.

While I am all for female equality and for shattering the glass ceiling imposed largely by men, I will never understand the “pride in being led by women”, as a friend described the situation where two women were walking ahead of the men. I will also never understand why a guy would spontaneously break into garba (which autocorrects to garbage) surrounded only by men in the middle of a cold night, and not spare them of even the gayest of its moves. Again, why would a guy dismiss as “a bit harsh” my confronting possibly the worst trek leader on planet earth, and give him the “benefit of doubt”, or, for that matter, be content with sipping watery tea simply because it’s “something warm” (why not drink piss instead)?

I have written extensively about the perils of political correctness, but this trip was an eye-opener even for me. The sample size should suffice, for all but one man behaved in this manner, and they belonged to varied socio-economic, demographic and geographic backgrounds. The younger the lot, the stronger the grip of PC. The stronger the grip of PC, the more emasculated the men. I suspect it also has something to do with the income group. As Manu Joseph put it in his novel Serious Men, “These days, men live like men only in the homes of the poor”. There’s no shame in being sensitive and living in a world where women do better, but there’s no pride in not calling a spade a spade and inviting subordination.

Men are not yet finished, but the process is underway. We won’t lose our dicks, but we’ll lose our defining traits.

The photo below captures what I want to say.

A letter to Trinity

Dear Trinity,

I couldn’t utter a word for a full minute after papa informed me on the phone that you were gone. He couldn’t say much either, except that you were no more. I knew you were on the brink when I saw you last. But I could only break my silence with a quivering ‘how come?’

In those thirteen years, we transitioned together – me, from adolescence to adulthood; you, from infancy to dust. In one lifetime, I could outlive you seven times. Boon or bane?

I never told you this and you never asked, but your name, Trinity, was inspired by The Matrix. There was considerable opposition to it since people thought it would be tough for you to grasp, but they were wrong. You leapt all the way up to my face, sometimes even defeating my maneuvers to evade your prying tongue, whenever I called out to you. I wonder where you got all that energy from, for you were always wafer thin. While you were not stupendous at spotting the ball once it was lost (remember how you made me do the fetching every time that happened?), that nose of yours sure did a great job of picking out the well-camouflaged pieces of chicken in your big bowl of food, and leaving the rest behind. You’re probably unaware of the joke, but after all our attempts to make you eat failed, we blamed it on your figure-consciousness. Was there an element of truth to that? I hope not, because you’d grown terribly weak in later years.

You were thin, yes, but none could question your agility and speed. Hey, you often outran the much stronger Alex when the three of us played fetch-the-ball! Wait, did you ever stop to consider that he let you win? Ok, maybe not always. But he did love you too much to see you lose too often, and this despite the fact that you were always more curious about the contents in his bowl of food than your own. After all, you gave birth to the only offspring he ever had, nine of them, all in one go. It’s a good thing you weren’t human, for they often give up on their wives if they birth all daughters. I think you were far too dazed to notice that I pulled each one of your kids out of your body with my own hands. Rather messy day, that. I hope you never got to know that one of them didn’t survive. Don’t worry, we gave her an honourable burial in the park right in front of the house. Yes yes, that same park, of which you once chased out an unsuspecting stray while I was giving you a walk. Poor guy, why were you so disapproving of others of your kind? Coming back, I want to apologise to you for keeping you confined to that little room where you gave birth, for nearly two months. I could see you wanting to escape as the eight crawlers went all milky way on you, but I had little choice. But hey, as a one year old mother, you did a great job. The sad bit is that it made sure you stayed thin all your life.

Trinity (foreground) getting curious about Alex's bowl

You were about six weeks old when Papa and I brought you home, in 2004. You might be surprised to know that unlike your kind, humans carefully pick and choose the recipient(s) of their affection. It’s natural that you feel disappointed in me for not recalling precisely why I picked you from a large group, but I did like the way you circled around my feet and licked them.

Do you remember your first meeting with Alex, the four year old big guy already at home, when we let your nose and his do the talking from across the net door that you later tore apart? That was because we were terribly afraid of what he would do to you, only we were fearing for the wrong dog. Soon you were making us run after you, trying to stop you from jumping up to bite his nose, placed about two feet higher than your mouth.

Gosh, you never let that pattern reverse for the next eight years you and Alex were together, did you? And you didn’t even need to jump to bite him after the first few months. I can probably understand the fun in dominating one’s partner, but why did you get so jealous at his being called ‘good dog’ or being patted on the head? Intervening forcefully to divert attention towards yourself to steal the mantle of ‘good dog’ wasn’t the best strategy, you know. Poor guy, except visibly seeking solitude at times, he loved you too much to complain. Despite everything, I know you did too, for you never recovered from the shock of his death on March 9, 2012.

Trinity refusing to let go of the ball, as always

Trinity (left) and Alex (right); Trinity is the one being chided but it's Alex who seems sorry as she wags her tail

The two of you made for an odd couple. While he was ferocious and uncouth - his love for sampling human blood of varying delights and the habit of making a show of nature’s calls, put us through considerable heartburn and embarrassment - you never bit a soul and your cat-like discretion in potty matters was often admired by the three homo sapiens in the family during secretive, closed-door deliberations about the two of you (whenever we found out you were eavesdropping we changed the subject to stop you from gloating about it to Alex). We never did figure out, however, the switching of personalities between the two of you when it came to animals. While Alex floundered with the mice in the kitchen, you made sure the cheese always stayed protected. Mummy confirms that in the court of mice, you would be tried for over 100 brutal murders. But hey, I am not scared for you because I know you’d kill them all before they could sentence you. 

Know the reason why I preferred playing fetch-the-ball with Alex? Because while he let go of the ball as soon as he got back to me after fetching it, the only way of making you do so was to poke a finger in your ear. Also, even as he saluted every time he was asked to do so, why did you simply collapse on the ground and play dead?!

             Alex, on being asked to salute

Trinity, on being asked to do the same

And of course, of course you know damn well what your homo sapiens remember you most for - that incessant, inexplicable wailing which was the most endearing, irritating and confusing thing about you all at once. I know it was your love for us that made you whip up a storm of cries as soon as you were left alone, but sometimes, waking up your homo sapiens groggy-eyed in the middle of the night doesn’t exactly win you their love, you know. Are you even aware of the flak I got from mummy-papa for letting you lick my face, my bribe for shutting you up?

I hope you realise that the only time papa raised his hand on you, towards the end of your life, was a desperate attempt to stop you from waking up the neighbours. He deeply regrets it now, realising that the terminal decline and paralysis you struggled with in your later years had increased your craving for us. The only thing he regrets more is that none of your three homo sapiens was around you in your final moments, to hold you tight as your breathing slowed on the night of May 23. We could never think about putting you to sleep, but papa said, and I agreed, that what happened was for the best. He wondered whether you’d have fought to live longer had someone been around. That broke my heart, the last I saw you was on April 16. If it’s any consolation, we did sit beside you after you were gone. Although I don’t believe that the dead look down, if it’s true, I hope it made you wag your tail. And if there’s really a world for the dead, that ball we buried alongside you will make sure you, Alex and I have something to keep ourselves busy with, when I join the two of you there.

Trinity’s resting place

It took your death, Trinity, more than five years after Alex’s, for me to muster the courage to have another look at the captured moments of either of you. It’s true what they say about a man with nothing to lose - with your departure, the ‘Alex-Trinity’ era of my home, my family and my life is well and truly over. While I was unable to take another look at Alex’s motionless body lying in the veranda on the morning of his death, I spent considerable time next to yours, caressing you. To borrow a line from my favourite TV series, loving the two of you has been the most profound, intense and painful experience of my life, almost too much to bear. 

Each day I died a bit thinking you'd leave me behind, and now that you have, I feel liberated. The only thing that scares me is that, with my death, your memories will be gone forever too. Hopefully this tiny space will prove me wrong even far in the future, as someone, somewhere will keep stumbling upon it.

Yours,

Whatever you called me