Since I’m visiting my son in America I left Brownie Wownie with my long-time driver Raju in Bangalore, India. Brownie loves him and went to his house quite happily.
Apparently during some Holi carousing that included fire-crackers (grrr) set off at a temple near where Raju lives, Brownie escaped from under his watchful eye, and disappeared.
Raju hunted high and low.
The family hunted up and down the streets.
The neighbours were pressed into action and they looked everywhere, but my Brownie was nowhere to be found.
She had disappeared.
Raju remembered that he had a friend, an auto rickshaw driver who had a megaphone attached to his vehicle, one that was often used by politicians to scream out for votes. The politician had been quite successful, so Raju felt positive.
He called his buddy, late in the evening, and said, “We have to go hunting for Brownie. My boss-lady will kill me if she comes back and finds her baby gone.”
They rode the streets of the neighborhood, relentlessly and loudly shouting for Brownie.
They had no luck.
Desperate, and rightly so since I would have certainly chopped off his head if I’d returned home to find no Brownie, Raju sent word thru the ‘hood (maybe he used Whatsapp) that he was offering a big reward for her safe return. A thousand rupees.
Finally, at around midnight, someone spotted her and called Raju, “We’ll feed her chicken puffs,” they said, wanting to seal the reward deal.
By then his auto rickshaw friend had left and all Raju had was his motorbike. “Let’s go,” he commanded his teenage son, and the two set off, hoping that it was indeed Brownie.
As luck would have it, it was Brownie, who wagged her adorable tail happily when she saw Raju.
Raju and his son Shivu then picked her up and brought her back home on the bike. No they did not have a helmet for her, but it was night and the cops didn’t catch them.
A very happy ending.