This is my neighbor’s story, a story that was fascinating and even now astonishing to watch. A story of how two humans came together for the first time in their years of living together. Its been 5 yrs since we had moved into this calm housing locality. The houses next to us, had people who were friendly, but busy.

Now the couple I’m talking about lived two houses away from mine.They had a daughter and both were working as senior officials .In the morning we would see the couple going on a scooter, waving happily at us. But come the night, the house transforms and we could hear shouts & cries of quarreling. This happened every other night and we realized that our peaceful colony was not that peaceful. But come morning, they went to their respective offices waving at us happily. I wondered if they even knew that people around could hear their battle cries and roars at night. It was embarrassing to wave back at them, when you get reminded of their dialogues  to each other the previous night. The whole colony began talking and they went about with their loud quarrels , unperturbed and perhaps unaware.  When the husband got retired and when their daughter got married, they put on a perfect smiling hospitable face of a loving couple. It was strange to watch them talk and not hear them yell.

There was something very unsettling about knowing  something personal about a couple that they are not aware of our knowing it. So everyone put on a show,though every night, everyone were disturbed out of their slumbers by their shouts, howls and noises.

One day as I was passing by, I just waved at them, as I saw them both sitting outside,with sullen faces. Thinking they were starting off at morning itself, I sort of hurried past waving. That’s when they called me in. Reluctantly I opened their gate, and the lady came towards me asking me for help. I was surprised and when they showed me their reason for distress, I couldn’t but smile. Their relative, who had visited them 2 days back had given them a puppy. It was a noble gesture of a considerate thought towards their loneliness that had seeped into the couple’s  lives after their only daughter’s marriage & moving out. But of all the years I have seen them, all I have realized is about their putting on a show, and taking care of a dog was not an easy task. So I felt pity towards it and I even thought if they can’t handle it I might as well save it by myself.So I told them about how to care for a puppy and their major worry about getting tied to their house cannot be helped as the dog cannot to be left alone.The nights that followed were noisy about ‘you take care & you feed!!” yells.They would complaint to my dad about their cancelled trips because of the dog. We thought of stepping in for the sake of the dog. But for all their quarrels, the dog looked well fed & healthy, and they even took him to walk every day.

Slowly, the nights became peaceful and we could often hear laughter, and ‘Jimmy’ being yelled affectionately. One night, I saw them both sitting together with the dog on their lap, laughing and talking silently and caressing the dog which was playing .I was astonished,and so was the whole colony, now that we could all sleep very well. We could see their transformations, and it was all brought out by a tiny creature called Jimmy.

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