Always ready to help

Nayanika climbed down 2 steps at a time. She had slept longer than usual. Her afternoon nap was only for 20 minutes but now she was late by almost half an hour. “The bus would have left”..she murmured to herself as she climbed down 7 floors. The elevator was not working.

“What a day?” She thought. The household help hadn’t turned up, and she had to do all the extra work, go shopping and prepare dinner as she was going to be late in the evening.

She was tired but tried to suppress a smile. If only Shashank would see this…how she kept shouting at him to take one step at a time, and what was she doing now? She was carrying a big package and had to watch her steps.

In the lobby, the black dog Juggu was stretching himself.” Well, yoga time for you Juggu?” she called out softly as she passed by without tripping on Juggu. She bent down to check his front paw — “ “Good boy, the wound is healing well. Will get your favourite biscuits in the evening,” she called out as Juggu wagged his tail hard without shifting from his yoga pose.

Poor Juggu, he wouldn’t budge from his place in the lobby and an ignorant car driver had run over his front paw 2 days earlier.

She nervously glanced at her watch as she walked swiftly to the busstop at the corner of the street. The package was slowing her down but it did not bother her a bit.

She was more worried about the time. It would take another half an hour to reach the school and she had promised to take Shashant to a special event later.

I met Nayanika in the school pickup area as Shashank and my son Vihaan were coming out from the classrooms.

“So how was your day, little heroes. Are you ready to go now?” I asked.

Eyes twinkling, Shashank replied “Aunty, do you know where we are going? We are going to learn how important it is to be kind to animals.”

And Vihaan added, “Yes mommy, and you know what happened during playtime today. Aroosh kicked the football on Momo and she got hurt but thank god, Buddy did not get hurt. Then something funny happened..Tia and Vanya chased Aroosh with an apron for hurting Momo. I joined in to punch him and he ran all around the field.” We laughed.

“See there they are”, he pointed to the brown stray dogs outside the school gate whom the kids had named Buddy and Momo, who was ofcourse Buddy’s mom. We noticed that almost every child leaving school bent down and patted them on their heads or shared their snacks with them.

The little boys skipped all along to the venue that was located in the street next to the school.

This poster greeted us.

The older students of the same school were organising the event. As Nayanika gave her package to one of the boys, he opened it eagerly while the others crowded around. Soon the teenagers were exclaiming how lovely it looked and thanked Nayanika for making the painting for their art auction.

The auction was to raise funds for an organisation “Animals matter to me” that takes care of stray dogs, cats, cows, turtles and even birds.

When they opened the package I was carrying, do you know what they found inside?

Nayanika, a vet herself had convinced me to create this artpiece for the event.

We beamed with delight at little Shashank and Vihaan who were enthusiastically helping their seniors. They also had quite a few tips to share with the guests about kindness to animals. “Always be ready to help” they said sharing the cute bookmarks they both had made.

Originally published at http://charukriti.org.