bunny thani

 

Once upon a time, (Did you say, when? Oh, about last week, and please don't interrupt the narrative flow, thank you) there was a bunny. It led a fairly blameless life (A world of vice and sin is pretty much a non-option when you are a stuffed toy, unless of course, you live in the pages of an Enid Blyton, where it seemed that toys got upto all kinds of hanky, not to mention panky).

 

So our bunny sat around looking cute, getting his ear chewed meditatively and drooled on a bit, till the Day Of the Chucking Out happened.

 

It was around the time that K had started throwing things at random, presumably to see whether they would make an interesting noise, bounce or do other fun stuff. It was also around the time that we decided to use her pram indoors and trundle her around instead of carrying her all the time.

 

The combination was fairly predictable. It meant a trail of toys, handkerchiefs, cushions and just general stuff being dropped to the accompaniment of happy squeals all over the pram trail in the house with Paranoid Papa yelling at all and sundry to "sterilise that damn stuff - do you have any idea how many germs these things are picking up?" He had a point...

 

But K was obviously ignoring the point and she proceeded to chuck Bunny out of the pram too. Now, Bunny is a much loved toy and like I said, hasn't done anything to deserve being dressed up (badly) like a Kishangarh painting. But Ghunghroo was at hand. And as the song goes, It all started with a broken sibling, in the words of the famous Rudyard Kipling. As older sibling (canine, but sibling nonetheless), he takes it upon himself to be protective and occasionally bullying, which in this instance, meant that he pounced on Mister Bunny and retreated with him to his fortress under the bed. he probably reasoned that either Bunny had gotten chucked because he was harassing K or because it was an accident. Either which way, he felt entitled to make a meal of him. Well-supplied with dog biscuits that he had been hoarding, he was all set to make a long session of it, till I dragged him out and rescued Bunny.

Since appealing to Ghunghroo's finer feelings does not work when he has his teeth into something, I resorted to putting the fear of Bunny into him (for the entirely selfish reason of cutting down on the laundry). And I did this, with deepest apologies to the ghost of the Maharaj of Kishangarh and his muse, who spawned the Kishangarh school of miniature painting with the famous bani thani portrait.

But you have to admit, that Bunny does look quite thani... And it worked. Ghunghroo stared rather apprehensively at the much-bedecked rabbit and well, rabbited out from there.