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United We Stand

It was a winter night. There was no moon in the sky, but a broken streetlight was oscillating in the brisk wind. I looked around. Everyone in the houses around was asleep. Somewhere, I could hear the T.V. blaring a late-night show. The spectacled watchman Babu was trying to keep awake, striking his bamboo stick on the concrete floor, counting moments until sunrise, lest his bon-fire blows away.

The wind was slow but it was cold, and my teeth started chattering. Whine looked at me, and then at Bisha who snuggled beside Bowwo. He then said,

“Wow… what a peaceful sleep these guys are having… and look at us… staying awake all night just because some jackass warned us about the Outsiders…”

“Whine, they watched the area all day… now we are replacing them in the night”, I replied.

“Why only we have got to do the tough stuff every time? I can’t sleep in the daytime in all these noises, and in the night I have to freakin’ nightwatch! This is unfair… I need a change… And look at these two… their life is so easy!”.

“You don’t want your younger brother and sister to stay awake all night in these dangerous times while you sleep peacefully, do you?” I replied.

“Let me tell you one thing. If Blacky wouldn’t have left, that means, if You hadn’t driven him away from this place, we wouldn’t have faced This!”

Whine was in a complaining mood tonight. I looked at him. His eyes were full of fear. May be he was afraid. Or may be he was nervous. Whatever it was, It made me feel he was unconfident about himself. And I also felt that he didn’t have trust on me. Being an elder is the biggest drawback – You have to make others feel confident about themselves, even though you don’t believe in yourself.

We are four dogs (puppies, actually) living in this dingy street where the days are noisy, full of human-generated sounds, and the nights are creepy because creatures with a supremacy complex come to drive us out of this place, to grab our area, and to relish our food. Tonight, we got a message from a friend who lives outside the street:

“Beware, for tonight the Outsiders are coming this way!”

Believing him was necessary, because we regretted once when we didn’t. We’ve got no relatives, no friends, no one, and since mom died, there is no one to protect us. All of a sudden things changed, and we didn’t know what to do. Finally, we learnt the trick. They can beat one of us, but not all of us. So, we face this challenge together, Bisha and Bowwo guarding during the day when our human friends are wide awake, and me and Whine, during the night, when the things are dark and uncertain.

I hope this night ends soon…

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