Puddles and His Puppy Friend By Yoginder Sikand

Puddles and His Puppy Friend

By Yoginder Sikand

The only way to describe Puddles, as he once was, was that he was a little bundle of enormous fear. He lived in terrible fear of everything. He feared his parents most—their constant fights and their furious tempers. Nothing that poor Puddles did was ever right for them. Not a day passed without their losing their heads screaming at or even badly beating him up—more often than not for nothing at all. It was hardly surprising, then, that Puddles began to believe that this was simply how all parents ought to behave.  As for Puddles' siblings, they behaved exactly as their parents did, for they had learned from them that all that Puddles deserved was a round scolding and an occasional wallop.

As he grew older and learned about God, Puddles began to live in terrible fear of God, too. If he was naughty or forgot his prayers or disobeyed his parents, he was told, God would throw him into the leaping fires of hell, from where there was simply no escape for all time to come. How awfully terrified this made the poor lad!

As you can well imagine, there was little cause for fun and cheer for hapless Puddles. At night he would be haunted by dreams of ghosts—not that he had ever seen one but they were a stick his parents wielded to force him to do as they pleased. 'If you don't brush your teeth or listen to Daddy, a ghost will take you away tonight,' his sharp-tongued mother would sternly warn him. And when, after a restless night, he would climb out of his bed Puddles would start trembling at the thought of all the fearful people he would have to meet that day: his teachers in school, who delighted in beating him for no reason at all; his class-mates, who called him a 'sissy' and played cruel pranks on him; and then, when he returned home in the afternoon, his parents and siblings and their constant banter and beatings.

Little wonder, then, that wherever little Puddles went he kept all to himself. He had no friends at all, and at home all he did was to sit on his bed and think of all the many people he so greatly feared.

Things had come to such a pass that Puddles even feared to cross the road by himself. What if he banged against a speeding car or a pedestrian or knocked a child down? What if he tumbled into a pothole? What if a bird flying above were to drop something on him? These were the fears that haunted the child each time he had to cross a road.

One day, it so happened that Puddles developed a high fever—his father had given him a round thrashing for getting wet in the rain and his mother had added to that by refusing him his dinner. As his fever mounted his head began to spin like a top and he felt that he would soon fall unconscious. No one at home, he sobbed to himself, loved him. How he wept in despair!

But just as Puddles was about to give up all hope, a thought struck him. 'I must help myself', he said to himself firmly. 'If I don't, there is no one else who will.' And, to his utter surprise, he mustered enough courage to climb out of his bed, step out of his house and head towards the chemist's shop.

As he walked ahead, Puddles came to an intersection, from where, to get across to the shop, he needed to cross a busy road. It was rush-hour and the road was clogged with traffic. You won't believe how frightened this made poor Puddles! After all, he had never crossed a road alone before. Each time he hesitantly tried to take a step forward all the fears he had of crossing roads would haul him back. 'I can't cross. I simply can't and won't!', a voice thundered in his head, and all this while Puddles felt his fever going from bad to worse.

An hour passed as Puddles stood at the corner of the road, torn between the need to cross over and a powerful urge to rush back home, back to the safety of his bed, even if that meant leaving his fever untreated.

Just then, a puppy strode up and squatted beside him. Puddles looked down at the puppy. It seemed so full of joy and love. It had kindly eyes and a smile seemed to dance on its lips. It turned up to look at Puddles, and, as their eyes met, something strange happened. It was as if the puppy was calling out to Puddles, saying, 'Come, little one! Fear no longer. We may be small and helpless, but together we can cross the road.'

Do you know what happened next? All of a sudden, Puddles forgot all his fears of crossing the road! The puppy looked to the right and then to the left and then trotted across the road, with Puddles bravely following after him.

'We've crossed the road! We did it! Wow!' Puddles excitedly exclaimed as he and the puppy reached the other side. He could hardly believe what he had just done! He swept up the puppy in his arms and showered it with kisses. And just then, to his utter surprise, he felt his fever vanish at the same time as he knew that he no longer feared crossing the road.

Puddles had now no need to go to the chemist's and so for the rest of the evening he and the puppy had the time of their lives crossing from one side of the road to the other, just for the fun of it—much to the amazement of passers-by—until they were really exhausted. You wouldn't have been able to recognize Puddles, so excited was he that evening!

And do you know what happened after that? Puddles took the puppy home and somehow managed to convince his parents to let it live with them. The puppy became Puddles' best—and only—friend, and with all the love that it shared with him Puddles learned to gradually overcome all the many fears that had haunted him for as long as he could recall.

Truly, as the saying goes and as Puddles came to learn, love overcomes every fear.