Rish Sharma

Children Stories Comedy Children

4  

Rish Sharma

Children Stories Comedy Children

Mantri, a ghost dog?

Mantri, a ghost dog?

8 mins
271


Life has been going on pretty well for our newly married, happy couple, Ryan and Shanaya.

Shanaya loves dogs, and Ryan loves Shanaya as much as he, well, let’s say as much as he doesn’t like dogs. They have recently moved to this beautiful neighborhood, which has a lot of greenery, open spaces, and from dawn till dusk, something interesting or other keeps happening here – kids playing in the park, neighbors walking their pets, birds chirping, and much more.

There is this one interesting character in the neighborhood, a gossip queen, who is always busy on her cell phone. She is famous as the fastest medium of information sharing – leaving behind newspapers, news channels, and 4G internet – and is, hence, secretly nicknamed 5G by Shanaya. When she first met her, she shared her phone number, along with a lot more information that was uncalled-for.

“The husband in 10-A is cheating on his wife, with the lady in 12-A…folks in 8-B tip very less at restaurants…the girl in 9-B is claustrophobic…I think you should befriend 2-C family because they are local politician’s relatives…you should definitely stay away from 4-D family as they are so middle class…,” and so on.

Well, I know for sure from whom I’ve to stay away. YOU! – Shanaya thought when 5G left.

Everyday, Shanaya leaves bird feeds on the window of their new house, and enjoys watching the birds picking on them. More or less, she loves this new place. But what she loves the most is this cute street dog, who accompanies an old, wandering, homeless man most of the time. She loves to watch and feed the pooch.

"Does he have a name?" she once asks the homeless man.

“Yes, Mantri. It’s Hindi for Minister," he replies in his kind voice.

“What an extraordinary name," she murmurs.

And then one fine evening, the inevitable happens –

"Can we adopt Mantri?" Shanaya asks Ryan, bursting with excitement. “He badly needs a home.”

"Please be kidding," Ryan says, with a mix of shock and fear on his face. "That dog is as spooky as that homeless man with whom he roams. Don't you remember what I told you about the day when I went grocery shopping?"

Couple of days back, Ryan had to drive to the next block grocery store. When he began driving back, he spotted Mantri in the street. Considering him to be a familiar dog, and Shanaya’s favorite, he offered him cookies. But to his surprise, Mantri didn't reciprocate the feelings. He gazed at him as a stranger, and soon began to growl at him. So Ryan quickly sat in his car, and left from there.

But when he reached home, he was surprised to find Mantri sitting at their door.

“Now tell me, did he drive back in his car to reach from the next block to our house before me?” he asks Shanaya. “I am telling you, that dog is a ghost.”

“Leave it. You will give any excuse to just not adopt him,” Shanaya frowns.

She knows that Ryan is a little superstitious. But she isn’t sure if he is serious, or saying this just to dodge her proposal.

"Fine, let's discuss this later. I have to get up early tomorrow, and understand the garbage disposal system of our street," Ryan says, and they go to bed.

Like any big change, while settling in at this new place, our happy couple too is struggling to adjust with a few things. One of them is garbage disposal.

On their first night in the house, they left the garbage bags on the curb, just to find a mess created out of them the next morning.

“Must be the rodents,” they assumed. “That’s why the garbage man left them, because they are torn.”

So the next night, they kept them inside the house to safeguard them from rodents, and to shift them to the curb the next morning. But they overslept, missed the garbage truck, and were left with two days of garbage piled up. The day after that, they somehow managed to shift it to the curb in the morning, but were surprised to find it left there by the garbage man. So tonight, Ryan has decided to get up early next morning, and to talk to the garbage man to understand how it works.

And getting up in the morning is what he did, but with the sound of the garbage truck!

“Oh no, I can't miss them today,” he mumbles, and darts out of the bed, the house, the main gate, and runs after the truck with garbage bags in hands.

Luckily he gets hold of the garbage collector, hands him the trash bags, and understands the whole system. For instance, dry waste is collected only once a week, and hence was left out by them yesterday.

Still sleepy, Ryan returns to the house with heavy steps, locks it and returns to the bed. But hardly fifteen minutes pass, when he gets disturbed by a dog's howling.

“Excellent,” he grunts, pressing the extra pillow against his ear. “Must be some neighbor's dog.”

The howling persists, getting louder, longer, and more anxious every time.

“I think I will get up now, and will make some coffee,” Shanaya says, and steps out of the bed.

Yawning and still half asleep, she opens the bedroom door. But what she sees, got her wide awake, and she slams the door shut. She tiptoes to Ryan, and whispers in his ear, "Ryan, the howling is coming from our hall."

"WHAT?" he springs up. Now he is wide awake too.

Quietly, they both crack open the door, and are shocked to find Mantri in the middle of their hall. He is running here and there confused, breaking things, creating a mess, and turning the world around him upside down.

"Mantri…" Shanaya cajoles him in a soft voice, trying to calm the dog down. But he panics, growls, and begins to pounce at them, and she immediately slams the door shut.

They recall that famous scene from a movie, in which three drunken friends find a tiger locked in their Las Vegas hotel bathroom when they sober up. Mantri, in this aggressive state, doesn't look any less than a tiger. And now they are scared of stepping out of the bedroom.

So there is Mantri in the hall, and Ryan and Shanaya in the bedroom – all three locked in.

"See, I told you, he is a ghost. How else can he walk through the solid walls and appear inside our hall?" Ryan asserts.

"No, I guess there is a secret tunnel in this house which the landlord didn’t tell us about," Shanaya counters.

Ryan places his hands on his waist, raises an eyebrow, and questions, “Tunnel? Seriously? That's your logic?”

“Oh so it’s fine when you give your ghost logic?” Shanaya asks sarcastically with her hands on her waist now.

“Ok, ok, I get your point. Now let's figure out how to get him out. Else we will be stuck inside for who knows how long,” Ryan relents. “We don't even have any food in the bedroom to bribe him.”

They do some thinking. And then some more thinking after that.

Suddenly Shanaya bursts out, “Call the landlord! He must be having a duplicate key. He can come over, unlock the main door from outside and rescue us.”

“Good thinking,” says Ryan, and begins dialing the landlord.

But their happiness is short-lived.

“Good news and bad news – he does have a duplicate key, but, he is out of town for this whole week.”

“Oh no. Back to square one.”

Ryan looks at her persuasively, and advises, “I think it’s time you called 5G.”

With no other choice in sight, Shanaya half-heartedly calls 5G. But she knows in her bones that she will be regretting this later.

It’s agreed that 5G will get a key maker to make a duplicate key, then someone will unlock the main door, and will bribe the dog out of the house with food.

After a tiring wait of several hours, Ryan, Shanaya and Mantri finally get their freedom, and Mantri speeds out of the house. They both step out of the house too, with pounding hearts and expecting something unexpected. They emerge into a street crowded with all the neighbors, the key maker, that homeless man, newspaper delivery man, milk delivery man, vegetable hawker, and a whole lot of other bystanders, thanks to 5G who is standing in the middle of the crowd with her cell phone on her ear, and a proud smile on her face.

“Wow! Thanks! Look everybody is here…” Shanaya says to 5G, trying to hide her sarcasm. And then continues by whispering into Ryan’s ear, “…except news channels and newspaper reporters.”

Mantri almost immediately transforms into his original happy self and joins the homeless man. Soon the crowd thins, and only Ryan, Shanaya, the homeless man, and Mantri remain there. But they are still puzzled.

"How did he enter through the solid walls and locked doors?" murmurs Shanaya.

“Exactly...locked doors…locked all the time...” Ryan replies sheepishly, “…except for when I had to run after the truck.”

“BINGO! So now we know when exactly the poor, hungry dog sneaked into the house looking for food, or may be chasing a rat. And he must have gone to the kitchen smelling the food when you returned and locked the door,” Shanaya concludes. She pats Ryan on his shoulder, and says, “So much for the Ghost Dog!

“Ok, then what about him being in the next block and at our doors at the same time when I went grocery shopping?” Ryan asks in his defense, still not ready to give ground.

At this point, the homeless man steps in, “You see that's not Mantri. That's Mantri's identical twin – Santri.”

“Aah, that explains,” says Ryan, with a nervous smile.

“Santri! Means Guard. Another extraordinary name,” murmurs Shanaya.

And then it happens what Ryan feared. Shanaya blurts out excitedly, “Can we adopt both Mantri and Santri?”

And so, life goes on for our happy couple...


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