From Conception to Inception

Sisi - Dec 10, 2012 - 8 weeks old

It's been 9 weeks since she moved in with us, and as I finally start my blog on this wintry Saturday night, Swati is tucking Monsieur under the arm of a peacefully asleep Sisi. For the past 4 hours, I have been playfully bitten at with those tiny needle like baby teeth, to the point where it really really hurts now; Swati has been incessantly chased around our huge 600 s.f condo; Monsieur, the long legged stuffed tiger, might have dislocated one of his arms, again, to the might of Sisi; and Nermel, the stuffed cat, has suffered so much that her stuffings are on the verge of coming out.

She's finally tired and ready to sleep, so she trudges to her bed by the window; peeps over at the night traffic on the road by our building, and slowly shuts down for a beauty sleep. We are definitely bruised, burnt, spent and exhausted, but it's the happy exhaustion that makes you feel good and makes you want to lock these precious moments and never let them go. In that vein, this blog is a 2 yr married couple's vain attempt to remove time from the equation, and pray that these words, whenever they are read, bring back our Sisi days.
-----

Diwali, for many is a time to start afresh. To meet and greet the new. By extension, it's an invitation from hope to hold your hands and venture into tomorrow. 2012 had been a king year to us thus far, and since we did not believe in the Mayan Doomsday prophecy, we had the reason, the age, and the finances (all together termed as "settled") to dream up some puppy love.

As working professionals in a city far far away from home, Swati and I both craved for our logic-driven minds to agree for the right time to adopt a pup. But thankfully, on the morning after Diwali, with the hang-over from the party the night before having rendered us temporarily brain dead, we went ahead with a heart driven decision. By the time our brains woke, we had checked the breeder's website, liked the puppy, argued over the puppy's name, called the breeder, promised her a deposit, and further promised to visit her place the next weekend to have the first real glimpse of our new family member.

Our first sight of Sisi was that of a tiny, palm sized, quiet pup in a litter of 6. She wasn't going bananas following her mother around the house, as her siblings were. But when the mother did offer some milk, Sisi was the first one in line. She drank up first to her fill, then quickly went back to her corner spot on the crate, and watched her siblings from afar as they continued to scramble over each other.  When Swati took Sisi in her arms for the first time, she cuddled in nicely against her overcoat. I on the other hand, was petrified of the tiny-ness, and when I held her gingerly within my palms, she could sense my discomfort and let out a little squeak and shivered till I handed her back to Swati.

And we drove back home that night, knowing we had found our perfect pup, and something told us that she also assessed us - and approved of us :). Homecoming was set for December 7, 2012, when she would turn 8 weeks old.

----