The maid, drafted to chip in on an ad hoc basis, as Lakshmi recoups from the rigors of childbirth and perinatal phase – wore a sour expression. Long face, as Tamils call it, with a sulky pout that trademarks surliness. I entered into the kitchen and gestured to Lakshmi – the hand signal and raised eyebrows imply, ‘Now what’s come over this female?’

Lakshmi pauses between her efforts to raise the rice bowl off the range, exhales a long phew…and tells me that the dogs had chewed up the stand-in maid’s footwear.

But you did tell her on day on she had to place it on the staircase didn’t you?
I did, but today she didn’t do that, and the brats have ripped the pair into shreds. And, she stressed to drive her point, Prema said it was a brand new set, given to her just yesterday by her doting house-man as wedding anniversary gift. One twenty five, she had hissed.

Lakshmi knows as well as I do, the shredded footwear was as dog-eaten and weather-beaten as a museum piece. But as is wont with some, the granite-faced maid was taking advantage of the situation. To the hilt.

So, mumbling, I shell out Rs.150, ‘Here get yourself another pair of sandals’.

Prema accepts the largess with a more contemptuous expression of tart –

What’s a new pair to me, it can never get me back the one my husband so lovingly gave me?

Thus delivering her coup de grace she struts off in a huff, muttering in low key, a tandem of unparliamentary words in reference to the mutts and their lineage – they, unconcerned, stand around us, tails a-wag and eyes twinkling.

After Prema left, I gave a dressing down to the canid brats, waving an accusatory index at their noses.

This isn’t the first pair you have made me compensate – for the record, it is the eighteenth, not including the Nike pair, the destruction of which, penalized me half my monthly budget.

The dogs continued staring wide-eyed, with a ‘What? Why us?’ expression, but continued to wag their tails, quite nonchalantly. The tirade and homily were wasted on them.

The maid didn’t turn up the next day, or the day after, or ever again. Also missing along with the maid was a tiny pair of gold earring that Lakshmi had loving saved for and secreted for her baby daughter’s ear piercing day. She is shattered and disconsolate. This is life, in all its ugly form, I tell her, as I see look past her through the open window and the garden beyond. Gamboling and playing tug of war with a strip of strap are four happy dogs. A leathery relic and reminder to me to be a bit more cautious and circumspect in  trusting anyone. The principle difference, I read somewhere, between man and dog is that, the latter never bites the hand that fed it.

Yesterday, I bought a small pretty pair of ear rings, baby size, for Maitreyi to sport on the 2^nd. September, the day she is due to get her ear lobes ready.