The first date

On my way to the airport I kept fiddling with the music volume all the way just to ease my nerves…Nusrat’s magic melted my nerves and somewhat eased the longing to witness that ethereal sighthound gait, first hand…

…..a dream, I’d been living with... for the past 8-10 months, since I'd started digging on sighthounds. Pharaohs to Borzois, to Salukis and standing dumbstruck facing a beauty called Sloughi, not to forget getting glued to all that was available about the legendary Azawakh and craving for more....everything was fine and rosy till my talks with a couple of Swedish & French Sloughi & Azawakh breeders neared the last chapter and the colour of money they quoted for a pup, blew me pale...…anyways, that’s a story for another day……

…..dejected, drained for the next few weeks…I just kept reading more about them and the sighthound family as well, and as luck would have it….i stumbled upon a posting on Caravan Hounds by a Canadian of Indian origin called Neel.....little did i know what was about to unfold in our own backyard....his posting led me to Prasad ....we talked over weekends....after a while, weekdays as well....and after 2-3 months of conversations, mails & photographs and a promise of an exceptional pup(inspite of a tinge of apprehension, about what was in store, clinging somewhere), here I was, driving my way to the airport about to pick up my first Karwani.

As I got over with the paperwork and moved towards the hanger, located the cage with my name and address on it I saw my two and a half month old new member of the family. Picking up the cage I started walking....... i hadn’t even caught a proper glimpse of him, yet fell in love with what couldn't possibly be missed…his beautiful golden brindle colour....thinking to myself, that Prasad had kept part of his promise….now remained the other part..the gait.

‘arre sher ka baccha hai’ …’abe nahin pilla hai, yaar’ a conversation walked past me as i moved through the cargo alley, back to the car. Settling the cage on the rear seat carefully, I fed him a biscuit and that was when our eyes met…it was like, an intense, soulful glare taking you in........ i fell in love with him the second time.

Reaching home, he took very naturally to both Zuzu and Sultan. Though, Sultan held on to his apprehensions. I knew he would, maybe for a day or two….by the next hour he had figured out every corner in the house, where to relieve himself and that, kitchen was the only banned area in the house.

By the evening, as Kusum came back from office, the little one's eyes spoke again, stealing a smile it had me reflecting on my notion of humans having the most expressive pair of eyes…. Kusum's anger and frustration about not being prepared for another after Zuzu( our choco-lab) and Sultan( our rottie) just melted away.......

....sometime in the middle of the night, we figured out that he had made himself comfortable between Kusum and me on the bed. For the first night, I thought it was cute, off course something, which never crossed Zuzu or Sultan's minds in all these months.

The alarm was different next morning. We woke up to a sing song stretch by our two and half month old, Karwani, who had confidently replaced the bolster to take it's position on the bed, within a matter of hours.

After my customary morning walk with Zuzu and Sultan, as we came to the park infornt of our house, our brindle bundle of joy and energy joined us ....

...... within minutes he hit the turf the way Devdas would hit his glass. He was running to his heart’s content and Zuzu and Sultan at nine and seven months(of age) respectively were left trying to figure out a two and half month old hurricane that had hit them. They just couldn’t match up with him and I stood there mesmerized..... watching him glide across effortlessly from one side of the park to the other, i realised, a free spirit had stormed into my life.

I fell in love with him yet again. The third time infact, within 24 hours. Later that day, we named him Parsha, meaning ‘pure’ in Persian.

P.S. : Picture of Parsha at 2 & 1/2 months just after he came into our lives.