Next, to our house, there was plenty of grass growing on the tank bed. With receding water in the winter and summer, the lush green grass used to grow on the fertile tank bed. It was common to see many buffalos grazing around. In those days we were buying milk every day for my younger sister, as she was very young. So, one day my mama i.e., my mother’s brother, Mr Veera Reddy, had sent a buffalo from his village. My mother engaged one girl called Munni, to take care of this buffalo - that is to take it out for grazing, providing drinking water and giving it a nice bath every day. The buffalos like to take bath everyday. The milking was done twice a day by my father or by my mother. Then we had good quality milk and curd every day. We had plenty of dung too, some dung was used for sprinkling around the house. And some dung was used to make into dung-cakes for using as fuel in the biomass stove. As we were small, we watched the buffalo with curiosity and sometimes took the buffalo out with a rope around its neck for grazing. There were paddy fields nearby. Sometimes our buffalo was attracted and drifted into the paddy fields for grazing. We were having trouble with the farmers. After about one years time, we sold the buffalo. And by the time my younger sister was also consuming less milk.

We also had dogs and hens at home. The country chickens were kept at our home for several years. They were free range chicken. For the chicken, to stay during the night, we made a small makeshift house. It was protected with a tin door for safety from cats. The whole day they roamed and fed in the neighbourhood, that is on the banks of the tank. They liked eating earthworms and other insects very much. We were also giving grains as feed sometimes.

Inside our house, near the ventilator, there was a pair of sparrows always living. They brought in the straw and twigs from outside to make a nest. My mother used to wake up early and so the birds. The chirping of sparrows and the calls of the chicken were the natural wake-up calls for us. Nowadays it is very rare to see the sparrows living inside the houses and people don’t allow them to live. The corrugated asbestos roof sheets above and the supporting wooden beams always gave a chance for the birds to have a nest. In the modern new buildings, the architecture gives very less scope and niche for the birds to make nests. In many buildings even if there is scope they are averted by placing the long needles on such spaces. The sparrows altogether disappeared for various reasons, only recently I could see some sparrows reappeared in our neighbourhood.

The pet dogs that we had in our home were all local breed. Rani, Tomy, Subramanyam were the names of our three dogs that we had in a span of ten years. The first dog Rani once gave birth to a litter of puppies. It was raining heavily, and the water entered into its den. By listening to their cries, my mother woke up saw them drenched in water, brought them inside the home, cleaned them with a cloth and made their stay comfortable. Rani was watching all this with approval and submission. As our house was the last house in the basti where we lived, we had the threat of thieves, so the dogs provided us with lots of security and company too.

Childhood passions rarely die and resurface again in life. At the research center started near Jangaon in the year 2010, again I started having some pets. This place was very open, about half a kilometer away from the village and it was surrounded by fields. I bought the local breed of cocks and hens from the Lambada tribal hamlets. They were so majestic with bright and colourful feathers. Also bought some Guinea fowl, it was said that the snakes are afraid of the Guinea fowl. Because this place had lots of snakes including the poisonous, like, Cobras, Banded-kraits, and Russel’s vipers, which I encountered occasionally. In the night the wild cats which were locally called Janga-villi visited the centre, and in a few weeks, time ate all the Guinea Fowl, which preferred to roost on the trees outside.

A cat named sweetie, a dog named ‘Biochar’ which was pitch black in colour, and another dog brown in colour named Mallanna were raised at the center one after another over a period. As they were living in isolation and there was no one staying at the center in the nights, after a few months they left the center and started residing in the village with other dogs. Recently a Labrador dog, named as ‘Zen’ was bought for my children. As it grew, the space for it appeared less at our residence in Hyderabad. So after three months I have taken it, into one of our villages and left it with a known family. They have buffaloes and a small dairy, so they could give every day enough milk, and now it has grown very well. When I met the dog after five months’ gap, Zen was so joyful. I could feel its warmth and love, which is unconditional. For every person in life getting connected with the other life is the most beautiful space to live.