Ramlal

A few days ago I reached a profound conclusion. That it would indeed be devastatingly boring if one were to born as a turtle. This insight was brought by my close association over the past two weeks with a turtle that’s been living at our house.

To start from the beginning, a friend of Manasi’s left her pet turtle with us a fortnight ago because she had to rush to India on a family emergency. The turtle, barely two inches long, came in his sky blue plastic tub that was half filled with water. An inverted plastic bowl in the tub is his home, and that’s what he scurries under every time I decide to sing to him, which is at least once every morning.

When he arrived at our house, within his first few minutes with us I decided that he needed to be taught some new rules. After all, he was going to be with a pucca Indian family now, he had to be made Indian, so what if he had been plucked out of Caesar Creek in Ohio, USA. His name was Caesar too, since his mistress had felt a need to keep him tied to his roots. However, I rechristened him, and now he is called Ramlal.

Our daily routine is somewhat like this. I wake him up every morning when I patter out to the kitchen to make coffee, “Ramlal, beta Ramlal utho. Subah ho gai hai.” After which I proceed to sing to him, and feed him three sticks of his prescribed food…dried, rotting fish-smell oozing sticks. They smell bad, real bad. Often when I am reviewing or reading out loud whichever story it is that I am currently working on, I go and sit next to Ramlal’s tub, and we pretend that I have just won the Nobel Prize for Literature and that he has come for one of my readings.

The ways in which I have suggested/wanted to enliven Ramlal’s life are as follows. (Mind you, they have all been thumbed down by my cruel roommate. Seriously, there’s just no appreciation of creativity in this world anymore.)
1. Take him out for a walk. But apparently the cold outside will kill him.
2. Feed him something nice and spicy. Apparently he is just supposed to eat his own diet.
3. Feed him chocolates. You know the answer to this.
4. Give him toys to play with. These could be pebbles or plastic. But there is another apparently! Apparently he will try to eat them and that might kill him.

Given the fact that Ramlal can’t (or chooses not to) respond to my affection the way I want him to, I suggested that we should just get rid of him. You know, maybe cook him up and have him for our Sunday lunch or something. (Yes, I know I am rather demanding with my love and affections, but that’s fair enough. I invest a lot too.) But at the suggestion that we should eat up Ramlal, all hell broke loose. At least that was entertaining! :D

Way to go Ramlal! At least you provided indirect entertainment.