Making friends with leopards

I’ve always been an animal lover. I’ve heard childhood stories of me reacting joyfully to bullock carts only as a baby and chasing squirrels as a toddler to having memories of hanging out with street dogs and cats, in the cowshed at our local milkman’s place hanging with the calves, calling various aunties by their dog’s name like Tootsie Auntie, Teddy Auntie, etc. and kidnapping puppies and trying to hide them from my family so that I could keep them (my family always made me return the puppy to its mother in a couple of hours because I would invariably get caught). I was also lucky that those aunties loved their dogs and were not offended!

Ammamma has always been advising me to be careful with the street dogs, not to pick up a squirrel, not to touch pigeons, not hug every cow I meet, pet every cat, etc. She’s always been cautious and it’s also probably why I’ve been rabies or disease free. 

A few years ago, thanks to humans encroaching on forest land (yuck), a leopard was spotted in and around the city. This made the news, and my Ammamma watches the local news without fail every day. The news of a leopard wandering in the city resulted in the following conversation over the phone.

Ammamma: Hello Romy, where are you?

Me: Hi Ammamma, I’m at work. Is everything okay?

Ammamma: Yes. There is a leopard in the city. It’s running loose and they haven’t caught it yet!

Me: Oh no! I hope they catch it and not kill it or something.

Ammamma: Romy, I want you to promise me something. Promise on Sai Baba that you will not go looking for it and you won’t try to make friends with it. It will kill you. 

Me: Um, what? Okay, Ammamma, I promise I will not look for the leopard to make friends with it! 

Yes, at 20 something, my grandmother warned me away from making friends with a leopard. She felt that at 20 something, I would not have this common sense to stay away from the wild animal, and that she had to extract a promise from on all that she holds Holy, that I would not do it. 

I am touched that she believes that I have such a strong love for animals that I would go chasing after a wild leopard to adopt it, and also mildly offended that she thinks I am an idiot around them. I’m sure next time this happens, and it will because have you met the human race, she will indeed repeat this conversation.

The Fringe

Conversations with my grandma are some of the best moments in my life. My Ammamma (mother’s mother) is one of the best human beings I know and sometimes dispenses the best advice or makes the best comments. 

My bestest Ammamma

I think it’s her wit, her unconditional love for me, her sense of humour and the generational gap that makes these interactions so much better. 

She always starts off with “I know you’re too old for advice, but I’m your grandma, and I just want to ask…” It’s mostly about my eating habits, savings or sometimes, it progresses to boys, animals around me or my sense of fashion and style. 

Over the years, I’ve realised that my Ammamma is not like most others. My Ammamma is “modern” in a way that consistently makes me gape like a goldfish and also traditional in a way that’s comforting. It does make for quite a fun paradox. 

I went to her house for lunch this afternoon and we had a conversation about a bunch of random things before landing on my fringe. I’ve mostly had one all my life, but my grandma is convinced that a fringe is not okay for a 32-year-old to sport. She’s tried multiple times and multiple ways to convince me to get rid of it, from just telling me, to pleading with me, to bribing me, to tentatively asking (so, do you think you may grow out your fringe anytime soon or what do you think about this hairstyle? It would suit you no? – pointing to a fringe-less hairstyle in a magazine).

Today, she tried a new tactic. She appealed to the fangirl in me. I love the show Criminal Minds, and I like Paget Brewster, who plays Emily Prentiss. I even had the opportunity to meet Paget. Ammamma also watches Criminal Minds on occasion and knows that I like the show and the character. She casually mentioned that the show was back on TV if I wanted to catch it. She said she had watched an episode. 

Then, came the next sentence. “Even that Agent, your friend, has graduated from her fringe. You can also grow it out.” I literally choked on my lunch laughing. A part of me was mightily amused at how much she wants me to get rid of my fringe, amused at the ingenious idea of appealing to the fangirl in me, amused because she used the word ‘graduated’ and also a little pleased because she called Paget Brewster “my friend”. Yes, I really am 32. 

I would have liked to show her the latest photo of Paget as Emily Prentiss, with the fringe, but alas, my phone had minimal network and we were eating lunch. I of course Tweeted about it as soon as I could, with a slight comedic exaggeration, where I imagined showing her Emily Prentiss’ photo and her imagined response. 

In real life though, I just nodded and smiled, refusing to encourage this conversation about my fringe. After a few minutes of silent chewing, the topic was changed to the pumpkin curry from last night’s dinner where the cook had tried “something different”.