My grandmother kept a cuckoo as a pet. Chased by a band of belligerent crows, the cuckoo had flopped down on our verandah one summer morning. My grandmother, ever the bird-lover, scooped him up while her granddaughters screamed, and put him in a huge bamboo cage that had recently been vacated by the previous occupant, Pitu the Parrot. It is difficult to say whether the cuckoo, who was named Maku by Grandmother, preferred the safety of the cage to the freedom of the sky. But he had developed a horror of crows and his red eyes dilated in fear whenever he heard their caws. So he was kept hidden in the deepest recess of the house, his cage covered with a blanket. He communicated in a mysterious language made of soft coos and squawks only with my grandmother.

But come spring, and Maku would find his proper voice. By a tacit agreement, Grandmother would hang his cage in the terrace as soon as winter started leaving the city. The cage would remain covered as usual so that Maku would not have to face the ubiquitous crows. Hidden behind the blankets, Maku would pour out his heart in an ethereal, plaintive song that would leave visitors and even passers-by startled. But like Shelley’s nightingale-poet, Maku obviously preferred to sit in darkness and sing to cheer his own solitude. He would stop midsong and look sheepish if anyone except Grandmother lifted the blanket even by an inch.

My grandmother had passed down her love of animals to her grandchildren. But we could not keep pets in the house because my mother had an irrational fear of animals as result of a childhood trauma involving a wet dead kitten in the coal shack. My sister and I made up for this lack by visiting all the houses in the neighbourhood that had pets.

Thus we came upon Motru the Rabbit at a friend’s place. Motru was at least a hundred years old and age had given his once-white coat a moss-green shade. He was one of the most ill-tempered animals I had ever seen. He loved to bite and would pee vengefully on the carpet at the slightest hint of a scolding for his bad habit. All day long, he sat ensconced in the depths of an armchair and scowled at anyone who dared to come near. But for all his displays of anger, Motru had a weak heart. He suffered a stroke when a road-roller clanked past his home. Grief does strange things to people — a truth we rediscovered when Motru’s owner brought home a goat as a pet after Motru’s death and named him Darpanarayan.

Darpanarayan loved to imagine himself a dog. Whenever anybody rang the doorbell, he would start bleating at the top of his voice. Unable to endure the bleatings for long, our friend’s father had a heart attack this time. After that, Darpanarayan was packed into a gunny bag and deported to some village in Diamond Harbour.

Among the apocryphal stories about pets that still float around in our household, the one I like the best is about Krishnakali, a talking mynah that belonged to my great grandaunt. That lady had taught Krishnakali to say ‘Hare Krishna’ and ‘Hare Ram’ in turn when first its right leg and then its left were pulled with a string. One day, its mistress had an urge to make Krishnakali say ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Ram’ at one go and so pulled both its legs simultaneously. At this, a very angry Krishnakali is said to have screeched, “Arré, pore jabo na (Won’t I fall)?”