Devils of Speechless Creatures Muthulakshmi Muthukrishnan   © Copyright 2022 by Muthulakshmi Muthukrishnan

Photo by Roger-Johansen on Pexels.

Could  anyone of you give a think about nights without  sleep for several years of your life, always put under the grip of a damaged kidney(kidneys?) due to improper schedule of sleep? Yes,I have been experiencing this phobia for the past ten years, fearing to meet the dawn past five hours!  In the early days of our shifting to that new house, the first one week went without any feel of difference,since the whole family was totally exhausted in settling down the huge accumulated domestic items.But once we came back to normalcy,regular sleep at 10.30pm seemed to be an impossible one,because of the broken throat shouts of the street dogs, numbering around ten! Since we had not experienced such a horrible noise at nights, we went to bed with the hope that they would stop noising after some time,but once realised that it would even go up to more than a hour, with  each dog takes time to begin their screaming at different times!

Not the  whole family tends to  fearing over 'night sleep' but few exceptions were there! Me- is the  worst affected member of my family,awaiting for the  'Great Animals'to go to their respective sleeping beds on daily basis!

It would  take nearly half night for those shouting "daredevils"to shut down their routine,aspiring to start horrible,unbearable screaming either all at a time or one by one, so systematically.  As soon as I got used to move with my neighbors, the immediate  query was,'' have they all come down from some other species of this Universe or blessed with a boon 'not to be disturbed by any high velocity of sound  during night sleep''!But their casual answers retrenched me to come to a conclusion that I was the only human,taking small things so serious in life.

Everyone's reaction was the same as if they got used to such dog menaces often in their experiences! I felt embarrassing as if I had asked them a blunder question, having worked as a librarian in a reputed institution.But got convinced that most of them were not employed like me,who cannot compensate  with the day ounce!

The problem is persisting for more than six months,I tried my possible range of complaints through corporation,but got surprised to the immediate response of them to swift away all in one night! Flying in air, I had opined to my husband  about my achievement,who never believes my task winning!But the fate of mine revealed that that was only a temporary relief for me because the dogs were  taken away for sterilisation purpose and will be brought back to their native areas as before! Then struck me the fact that the problem involving court judgement that animals should it be harmed and chased out from one place to another against their natural phenomena. Also came to know about the court stay order by the so called,''Blue Cross''the association of Animal Welfare,is under Rule! My anxiety over solving the problem went wider calling  the secretary of the Association,had a tough argument with her, but felt unsucceeded at the end of the conversation,must be due to her empathetic attitude towards animals,especially in favour of the wandering street dogs,as they are helpless.                       

The hectic sleepless nights day by day  made me astonished towards the whole jurisprudence mainly due to my sudden wake up of sleep hearing horrible outburst of some dogs, unknowingly if it was a crying or barking!

Sometimes pounced upon my husband blaming him for selecting this house with such intolerable surroundings. It is an unlikely fact,I forgot to tell, that my house is situated in a four corner street easing the movement of street dogs to have a gathering around!   Another unlikely but at the same,amazing fact is that my husband, lying   near me-never  kept distracted over these howling sounds!

Gradually  a feel of jealousy imbibed in my mind on finding people around, including house inmates  who never care for these speechless creatures!

Sometimes I used to think that they are the really blessed by heavenly bodies!

Inspite of my hectic routines, didn't spare out to call  from the local corporation upto the district collector office, apart from posting complaint messages to the concerned authorities. To my surprise,everyone reacted so quickly but none had worked out practically, ultimate pointing index rests with the so called,"Blue Cross" or put in other way,"People For Animals". On one fine holiday, I took to strike out one of these members and blasted that "Sophisticated people like you comfortably sleeping in closed AC rooms,would never realise this problem of poor middleman like us,so go to hell". In spite of my harsh,rude expressions,that strong lady coolly said that we,as human beings hardly understand the problems of the poor, lesser intellectual inhuman creatures of God! Vexed up,I just cut down the line! Suddenly one evening got clicked about writing to a magazine, in which a separate column for complaints about our area is being published.Without wasting a single second,typed out and sent the mail to the journal. Dreaming of an immediate action to my mail slowly got vanished when I came to know that their duty limits by just publishing,and the ultimate step of further course of action gets in to the network of Corporation,which had already accepted its helplessness.I tried developing the habit of sleeping in free hours during day.

Having tried through all possible sources, I had conveyed my problem to my younger son,who is settled in US, immediately he had given a simple solution of  buying earbuds and use  them at nights. Since I had zero idea about this,I didn't give much weightage to it,but, within one week once he had sent it through courier, I started using them with great expectations! Of course my ears were partly blocked off outside noises, I felt relieved for few hours,but again started hearing dogs' howling,I thought it would block only for some time, but then I felt asleep,but when I found the two buds under my pillow in the morning,I was ashamed of my ignorance in a simple matters like these! The next day,I read the instructions carefully and fixed the buds, I had had a good sleep of six hours after nearly two years of my taken over this house. But,some times due to my movements, I had to miss my earbuds and found it very difficult to search out in the dark,since my husband is used to give a horrible reaction when even a mild sound disturbs his sound sleep! So no other go except to try for a continuity of sleep, with the grip of fear of the great animal's' torn out cries at any time!        

Number of calls to the collector office went numb in due course,since this problem doesn't come under the immediate attention of the collector,I assumed myself. Earbuds worked out only to some extent since some dogs bark at the maximum velocity of their throats, ultimately sound just pierced into my ears, barricades my sound sleep. Now and then I am used to fear that insufficient sleep of mine would result in damaging of the kidneys,there after I would stop blaming a third person,instead blaming myself for not vacating this house,inspite of all difficulties. One night I had even gone to the extreme act of picking small small stones in the evening itself,then at night opened the balcony and hit the dogs from the first floor,thereby chase away all! But it all had gone with the wind,as my husband  objected to opening the balcony door during nights.As another
possible solution, I dreamt of buying guns ( of course with the license) simply shoot each one of them pointing exactly to the throat (!) and kill each one of them meticulously without creating  any noise to avoid shocking for neighbours.

Concludingly, the terrorised creatures still spoil my sleep every night without caring for the pathetic humans like me, and hence I am forced not to care about barking of these animals,simply lying on bed with the buds,thinking about all sorts of my profession,and other house holds. This brings me a slight deeper sleep at midnight and not awakes me when my hubby raise calls for coffee at six.

*****

I am residing in India, working as a librarian in private school,in Tamil Nadu.  I have a strong passion for creative writing,waiting to see a good turn of my writing journey,hoping to get it through this contest!