However, puppies are puppies. Yet in our boarding-house it was not so. There were two types of puppies according to our boarding-master - male and female. Male puppies are of high quality and are entertaining. So they are tolerable in a home, but females are of low nature and dangerous because they produce the young. The producing of pups is a nuisance as it is troublesome feeding them and providing them with shelter.

The bitch in our boarding-house gave birth to four puppies. They were of multiple colours. One was fully black while another was all white. The third was of brownish black colour while the other was black and white. They were all females. It was the bitch's first brood and she produced them in a deserted house above our boarding-house.

First they lived silently and freely, yet in a few days the bitch brought one of them to our 'boarding'. She kept the pup under the portico and looked proudly at us. It was indeed a victory for her. The pup stayed with us till evening and then its mother came and took it back. The next day she brought two of them and kept observing their antics. Likewise all four puppies were gradually brought down which proved a source of great joy for us. Having had no one to play with before, now we had enough of them.

This was however the biggest problem our boarding-master had to face in his life. He claimed that he could not keep the pups in the boarding house owing to problems that might arise eventually.

Consequently, Jamis the servant had been ordered to take the pups to a distant place and dispose of them there. The following morning we saw the brood suckling in their mother's warmth. There was also a slight whimper from the bitch and we knew that she was going to be separated from her young that evening. (She was responsible for not heeding the utilitarian principle existing in our society). She was compelled to suffer heartaches because she had produced the type of young not liked by our boarding-master. She adored her pups, yet that 'love' should have been compatible with the accepted theories of society. Hence her plight of getting parted from her young.

That evening the puppies had disappeared, and there was a deep silence in the boarding-house. No one spoke and none had the courage to do so. We had no feelings left in us. While reading books we were thinking if there were any more uncalled - for things to happen. We were engaged in reading deep into the midnight; and from time to time bizarre feelings were trying to enter into our readings in between. When we got ready to sleep one of us spoke: 'They are gone' and we already knew it. There was no need to say it. That kind of things should not be discussed openly.

However Jamis had not taken them so far away. When we were going to school the following morning we could see the pups a little way from our boarding-house. We showed them the way, but they did not understand it. We hoped that they would return automatically in the evening. That evening we saw one of them, the black and white one, running here and there along the rail track below our abode. It didn't look up. What it did was only run here and there. We couldn't take him back for fear of getting caught by the boarding-master. Thus she ran about until a train had to decide where she should go. We went down and buried her somewhere near the track.

That evening we heard the cries of the other pups that came piercing the sleek darkness of the dusk. It was the noise of the rest of the brood returning along the rail track. There mother did not hear that noise. She heard it only when we brought her under the portico. She ran there and brought back one of the pups. It was night then. We ran down and brought back the others. That night there was a 'get-together' of all.

The next day, the problem again arose for our boarding-master. Jamis was given elaborate instructions and by evening all the pups had disappeared. That night the moaning of the mother bitch could be heard at a distance. What my room mate said was that she was suffering from the pain when milk got stuck in her nipples after the puppies had gone. But it was just a biological factor.

From the following day the bitch began to amble along the rail track. She kept looking walking up and down the line. When one day she ran up crying in pain we saw that one of her front legs had been severed, which was the work of a train. The severed part of her leg was hanging by a piece of skin and when it touched the ground as she walked she cried in agony. Then she stopped and after licking the wound again resumed her walk. When she got tired by crying she lay on her side and kept gaping at the wound as if being in a 'jhana'. Her canine intelligence did not have the power to grasp it.

At midnight that day we heard a puppy crying woefully on the rail track below. Though we searched using our torches none was there to be seen. What my room mate said was that it could be the ghost of the dead puppy. It is true that phantoms cannot be seen by torch light. My room mate knew most of the things about the world.

A few days later the brown-coloured puppy returned and it was a factor revealing the mysteries of nature. How that pup came back none of us was privy to.

Now the puppy is living with her mother. It is a mystery for all of us what the future holds in store for her.