I don’t remember when exactly Pulikesi came into our lives. Or, for that matter, how! I am only sure about what he was to us – a close friend, and as my sister kept insisting, our brother! But I vividly remember the day he died, or rather, murdered. I was a kid when we first met him. I think it was my sister who introduced him to me; he was probably an adolescent by then. I took an instant liking to him the very first time, and without anyone realizing it, within a few days he started living with us in our house. He was with us for about 3 years, and over the course of time, he became part of the family. My parents didn’t like him; in fact, my father hated the sight of him. But due to the children’s (our) insistence, he became another family member.
He used to wake up pretty early everyday at about 5-30, of course I had never (or, have never!) seen how the world looks like at such early (read, ungodly) hours. He didn’t do much around the house, to my hyper-active mother’s chagrin; all he used to do was eat and sleep all day. She used to wonder how someone can exist like that, apparently doing nothing but laze around. He used to eat at least 5 times a day, again testing the patience of my already over-worked mother. We (my sister and me) never bothered about such mundane things as feeding him or making food for him, he was our friend, and it was the duty of our mother to take care of him too (as if we were not enough!)
His name was a kind of a misnomer, actually, he was named after one of the great Chalukya kings, but he was the laziest cat I have ever seen. We named him ‘Pulikesi’ with a reason – why do pets (especially dogs) always have to be ‘Caesar’ or ‘Nero’ or ‘Alexander’, when we have so many great kings in India Calcutta Bangalore
Pulikesi was one of the coolest friends I ever had, he didn’t need to be taken for walks, or he didn’t have to be bathed on weekends or he didn’t need to be potty-trained. He was quite independent, actually, I think that is what stood out in his favor, and I really admired and respected his spirit of independence. Never once we felt we ‘owned’ him or he was our ‘pet’, somehow in a disconcerting way, he let us know that HE ‘chose’ to live with us. From a stray cat that used to loiter in our garden, he slowly gained access to all the rooms in our house and eventually became a part of the family.
My sister in fact insisted on referring to him as thambi (younger brother) and even ragged me into calling him ‘anna’ (elder brother); With some complex cat-age logic she gauged his human age to be between mine and hers! My mother was pretty uncomfortable about the whole idea of considering a snowy fur ball as her ‘son’. But even with the initial resistance from my parents about the new addition, slowly everyone got used to him and even loved him in their own way. Even my father who used to kick him sometimes when he thought no one was looking and who used the choicest swear words to address him, started slowly warming up to him.
Even my mother defended him once when a person living on the next street took one look at him and said “Him!!!! He killed my pet parrot! He is YOUR cat?” My mother couldn’t digest the idea that her ‘vegetarian’ (since we were vegetarians she was feeding him milk, curd rice etc and innocently believed that he was a vegetarian like us!) cat could have actually killed and eaten someone’s pet. – “There are so many white cats with a black spot running around, how dare she thinks our Pulikesi is the one who killed her parrot? Silly girl!” – She fumed.
Pulikesi had his brush with death many times, and he probably had a dark side too. We had a younger (and cuter) cat shortly afterwards (another stray who ‘chose to live with us, just like Pulikesi). For many months the two cats co-existed peacefully, without any incident. We had the impression that Pulikesi was the softer one, but one fine day, we witnessed a cat-fight (a real one, not the ones involving girls!), which lasted for hours. We didn’t see the other cat at all after that fight, our Pulikesi, true to his name, had defeated his enemy and defended his “kingdom” (our house, in this context) and became the singular monarch. In my eyes, he was quite the hero - the silent, soft guy who, when provoked, erupts like a volcano. My respect for him grew.
We had this neighbor, who kept warning us that there are ‘cat-catchers’ (gypsies) around. She used to have a soft spot for Pulikesi too; she used to clandestinely feed him fish from her house without my mother’s knowledge (she wouldn’t approve of it!). I was quite amused, gypsies who caught cats, in the suburbs of Chennai? I didn’t believe what she said, but we still sometimes kept him inside our house when the ‘warning’ was issued by our ‘lookout’. We couldn’t really control his going in and out of his castle, but still, we tried.
That fateful day in January, the old lady next door again frantically called us with the usual warning, and all of us searched for him all over the house and in our garden. He was no where to be seen, which was unusual, as he used to go for his ‘outings’ only in the nights. To my horror I saw a javelin wielding gypsy carrying two sack bags going on the road. Immediately I just ran barefooted behind him and questioned him with all the courage I could muster what was there in the bags and he answered, ‘cats’. I kept shouting at him to leave the cat as he was our pet, but he just shook his head as of to say ‘Too late’.
I came back to our house still hoping that those two gunny bags didn’t contain Pulikesi, and they were probably some other cats, and soon it became clear that he was gone. He wouldn’t miss his evening meal for anything, and slowly we realized he was murdered. The two gunny bags kept coming to my mind – my friend, being stabbed, skinned and eaten as dinner. All of us were gloomy, my mother was uncontrollably crying, and we were wondering how to break the news to my sister who was at that time away at college, awaiting her exams. All of us, in our own way missed him, including my father. But this ‘childhood trauma’ has made me determined to stay a vegetarian, as I cannot imagine eating something which was once someone’s friend or pet, or even a farm animal which was running around, frolicking like my Pulikesi.
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