Imaginary Animal Circus

Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve wanted a dog. As an ardent animal lover, having a puppy of my own, who loved me as much as (and very possibly more) than I loved him or her, was a dream I held onto as tightly as my mother did to me while crossing the road. Now that I’m in college, the idea of animal ‘ownership’ as if they are mere objects whose worth is defined by those who own them does bother me a little bit, but that’s a whole other debate.

Getting back to my puppy dream, I knew it wasn’t very possible though. Living in an apartment that didn’t encourage (read: ‘allow’) pets, coupled with having a hyperactive daughter who moved from one thing to the other with speed akin that of lightning, meant that my parents had always responded to my pleas with a strong “NO”. This didn’t stop me from asking them for a puppy every time the topic came up, though.

I was so desperate, that even if the topic of discussion wasn’t even remotely related to dogs or pets, I’d do my level best to connect the two. A prime example of this was when my parents would scold me for a bad grade. I’d instantly respond with “but if I had a pet dog, I’d be able to focus so much better on schoolwork”. Nope, that didn’t work either.

As the years passed, I started losing hope. The initial idea that parents were capable of anything and everything that their children asked them for, fell to bits as I grew up. They were after all, only human.

Almost every dinner I had up until my early teens, was accompanied by a story that my grandmother narrated to me (Notice how I jumped topics? Admittedly not the most smooth transition, my practice with the puppy begging seems to have made me worse at this rather than better, it seems). Each day held a different story, that she either made up or read from magazines. Sometimes, if I was having a particularly bad day, she’d ask me for prompts, using which she’d make up a story she knew I’d love. It was from one such day, that Shummy was born.

Shummy was a dog in a story I asked my grandmother to tell me, about a boy who finds a beautiful puppy abandoned in a ditch, and decides to give it a home. The dog in return begins to love the boy and his family unconditionally, and becomes a well-mannered, obedient, gentle dog. The name ‘Shummy’ seems quite silly now, but my childish mind came up with the first few syllables it could think of, and threw them together to form a name when asked so by my grandmother.

Most stories that I heard, were forgotten by the next day. But, for some reason, the story about Shummy stuck with me. Maybe because it was about a dog, or even because it was a situation I had been dreaming about for days, but I decided that that night would not be the last time Shummy made an appearance in my life. From then, the tales of Shummy became an ongoing dinner event.

As and when I found a new animal I fell in love with, it was incorporated into my story in the form of a new pet that the family brought into their home. In a few years or so, there were almost fifteen animals in the Shummy household! Areida and Amanda the cats, Shummy the dog, Jim the horse (and Jack the trainer), Bolt the rabbit, Mirinda the parrot, and many more animals whose names I cannot recollect formed a large part of my dinners.

These stories also began to expand beyond just pets, and started including things I wished for in my own life. The family went to California, had a pet birthday for each of the pets, went to amusement parks, went for runs at the beach (though with all sixteen animals, that would have been quite the sight!), fought crime (that one was admittedly very unrealistic), and even saved other animals. When the story started, the boy was around my age. So, as I grew up, so did he.

It’s funny. I always assumed that after reaching a certain level of maturity (the word when being said in comparison to myself sounding quite unnatural), I’d stop wanting to hear these stories. But, even now, when I’m having a bad day and my grandmother is free (she has more plans than me, which is very believable), listening to another tale about the adventures of Shummy and Co. never fails to put a smile on my face.