

A warm, affectionate hug from a puppy is so pure and genuine, it can make the grumpiest face smile.
Enjoy Morning Meanderings Season 2 with your hot cuppa and cookies. ☕🍪😊
Yesterday again, I slept very late, this time bingeing on the fourth season of The Crown. There was a particular scene that refused to leave me and I kept tossing and turning in bed.
When Princess Diana, not very comfortable with the stringent rules of monarchy, spontaneously hugs the Queen, the Queen stiffens and does not know what to do with her arms.
The Royalty is not expected to show emotions, how could she hug her daughter-in- law? It is a sign of weakness.
It was easy to understand how suffocated the Princess was feeling in these environs. This set my mind thinking.
The Pandemic had reduced all of us to individuals strictly maintaining the rules of social distance – not touching, not hugging!
And all because we had wreaked havoc on Nature, and in the bargain, wrecked ourselves too.
Human beings are made of emotions, hugging and embracing has always been very much a part of social interaction.
But the virus destroyed all that. Peeping through the windows of our incarcerated existence, we had envied the birds and the animals having a gala time – unshackled by any rules. The Covid virus did not affect them. Is it because they never messed with Nature?
Tactility had become taboo for humankind.
Although, there has been a slight improvement in things, we are still wary of hugging and shaking hands.
Mulling over all this, I headed for my morning walk, sleep kinks still floating in my eyes, and sloth refusing to leave my limbs
It was just 5.30 AM and the moon was still trying to entice with its silvery might, at times, a picture of frenzied restlessness, like a despairing lover hunting for his lost love.
Every morning I have seen the pups enjoying themselves to the hilt, so full of warmth. They were all there – the white, black and sand-colored – in all their canine glory. There was a tactile one, its toes and limbs itching to caress and hug me.
I walked in a different direction, so the pup headed towards greener pastures – actually, a bearded man in an orange green T-shirt, which looked as if it had been pasted on his skin. He was gingerly holding a badminton racket in his hand with a grumpy look, made grumpier by the dark bushy beard.
“Shoo shoo,” he said frantically, trying to ward off the canine warmth with cold looks and flailing the racket. Alas, the canine tactility was too overpowering and the pup wouldn’t budge an inch. He leaped on the bearded man, wagging its little tail. The pup’s affection was so overwhelming, the grumpy forest parted to display a smile. Almost as if the sun broke through dark and dense clouds. His reluctance vanished and allowed himself to be hugged by the pup, with the gold-tinted pigeons looking on. The badminton racket quietly waited its turn to be picked up again.
A rag-picker bent over the dumpster, watched this scene with a smile on his lips. The sunbeams bent low and kissed the tree leaves, the tree leaves rustled with a newborn ardour, and hugged the sun. The sun blushed red.
The gold-kissed leaves, the gold-speckled pigeons, and the little pup nestling in the ample arms of the badminton player. What an exquisite scene!
Morning Meanderings is a musings column by Santosh Bakaya
I smiled and saluted the golden-hearted sun.
The sun smiled back. This was the cue for the tactile pup to show me some warmth. It came bounding towards me, and flung itself at me.
What a great feeling it was to get that warm ‘hug’!
As I walked towards home, I turned back to find the pup bounding after me, feeling like Mary, not with a lamb ‘whose fleece was white as snow’, but a pup who was made of love and hugs and all things nice.
I felt incredibly rich.
Click here to read all episodes of Morning Meanderings Season 2
Don’t Forget to Revisit Morning Meanderings Season 1
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