CATTLE- SHED AND TOBBY

     It was late morning. The sun appeared  nowhere in the thickly clouded sky. I woke up early and spent the whole morning editing a series of short films on wild roses in the deep valley by an NGO. After  long hours of cutting and smudging I went out with a cup of coffee, leaned my back on the little Santa hut I ran my eye over the running water of the night rain in the yard along the garden bordered  with red lillies. A mooing I heard from the backyard and the  muddy water splashing out there. Tobby appeared from the green grassy lawn rushed  towards the hay sack. I could not make the picture clear. He was dashing in the air and two calves were chasing him. He slipped on the ground but managed to stand up on the hind legs and resumed the course. The calves sneezed. 

THE DAYS-PRIYA AND TOBBY OUT OF STATION

 I was busy with my business. The owner of  Magic Focus  and my childhood friend Bunny Shaw and his father Shaw the Great made their annual visit to their estate. My dear studio, Magic Focus is owned by Shaw family , the youngest one Bunny Shaw happened to be my childhood playmate, and eventually he handed over his studio to me to take care of  while he takes care of his fathers business in Pennsylvania.

     Bunny Shaw hugged me several times when he groped through the heap of colorful landscape photographs I kept at the corner of the green room. He hummed, whistled, patted my back, made varieties of sounds of sudden thrusts of happiness. He dreamt to become and photographer and set up this studio years back as his dream project and Bunny's dream shattered into pieces when his father married to a French beauty, though he took his younger son under his care. 

    On the second day of their visit I met Priya and Tobby on the tram to Brooklyn. I could not converse with them,  only signalled to them with my red kerchief waving in the moving car.

      My busy schedule ended after seven  hickey days accompanying them all busy places in the city,  waiting for them in the lobbies of  malls and  bars, clicking camera for their weird postures in bars, lobbies, public gardens, dance chambers, in and out of the cars, on beaches and in swimming pools....      

     I fell on the bed in my room and lost in deep sleep. In a fresh morning, after showering in  warm water I went out of the door stretching and  relieving myself  from the slumber, I felt I really missed somebody and I thought of Priya and Tobby. I quickly moved towards their door for any slip and I could get only some slips of Tobby's creche. 

TOBBY GOT FEVER

     Last three days were damped with rain and chill. Tobby was not seen out all these days. The chatterings of rain continued till this morning. I woke up early in the day break and dusted off my second camera, a Nikon I kept  home. When the rain dripped its last drops I heard somebody approaching my front door. Priya appeared in. She looked weird  and her  eyes red with lack of sleep.' what, what's there, mam, where is Tobby?' I worried and enquired. She kept a grim face, waved her hands towards  me and pointed outside. I went to the door and looked out in the yard. Nothing. But   a few seconds later  Tobby appeared behind the bunch of a princess flower. Tobby struggled to walk all along the garden fence. He  looked at me from that distance as if  it were the  strange world of OZ. ' He got fever, for two days ...' Priya commended from back.

TOBBY VISITTING MY STUDIO

During every summer season, the last week of the month of May appeared very busy in the Studio. I think it may be because of the end of a leisurely summer period make people sad. All those holidays there were closely watching each other  and drinking intimately through their hearts. And they are going to lose their tender kisses, going to be  drawn in the torrent of routine.
     So, some mysterious reason made Tobby jump through my studio. I could already  see the shadow of a naughty dog outside my glass door. The sudden entry into my surprised me. "Wow, Tobby", I exclaimed in a cry. Tobby leapt upto my lower abdoman and abruptly I raised the camera hanging on my neck. Tobby trotted around me  in a belly dance style putting her nose on my heels and calf.

A RAINY DAY

' There is no other way to solve this problem', Priya thought while she was bathing Tobby in an outside bathtub, ' she is hungry for pampering unlimited'. Tobby showed her resentment in many awkward ways, putting the hind legs out of the tub scratching the ground, slapping in the hot water scattering  the water around, whimpering in low long tunes through nose in an alien dialect. I was viewing the scene from the low attic. I could make a clear picture of the whole episode from the beginning. It was a rainy day, I missed the only  bus in the early morning and thus I was forced to take leave from the Studio. Heavy rains almost made me bound inside my room. The village road disappeared under the rainy water, the only way of means, the green bus lost it way in the mud. ....

TOBBY IS CRAZY, SOMETIMES.

 A sunny long day stretched all over my courtyard. A weekend. The sky was pleasant, but  Tobby was in an eccentric mood. She circled  around the courtyard as a pop singer in frenzy,  crossed and re-crossed  trails in between the  red rose plants, grunted like an old Yankee.

      I didn't take her seriously. I was decorating the fancy table adding butter paper and crispy petals. The construction was in its final round. In a mysterious moment I lost in thought, lost in a Wordsworthy melancholy. DASH ! a sudden attack from an unexpected corner! My fancy table  was broken  into several fancy pieces and I noticed Tobby's 'tail- end' in between in a flash. What a crazy Tobby!