IT was my daughter Shreiyah’s birthday and her sister bought her a pup, a golden Labrador, as a gift — a wide-eyed golden ball of fluff with a blue ribbon, who was a living, hand-licking, tail-wagging creature. This was some days ago on July 31. Eight months ago our 17-year-old Spitz died, unable to hold onto life any longer. You feel extremely powerless in the face of death, and there is always a gaping hole where grief lies. A presence missing from the home, more so since we have been facing a lot of bad health karma at home and I feel the Spitz, Fluffy, took on some of that.

Ill health has a way of running circles around doctors, surgeons, hospitals and mortality, lending seriousness to the heart and the home. Now, what I am going to say may sound trite, but it is true. The heart reflects its joy or pain in its surroundings, in the windows, in the feelings that cling to the walls, in the aura of the home.

Here we were preparing for a party, polishing the silver, arranging the flowers, organising the food, ordering the cake — there was simply an abundance of work and not enough time to execute it in. Suddenly, with the arrival of Caesar the pup, the centre of gravity shifted. From a well laid out, manicured arena, the house became a war zone. There was a piddle trail all over and Caesar had captured everyone’s attention. They ran helter-skelter getting him milk and then we were told pedigreed dogs were lactose intolerant, so we ran to get some yogurt. Then we played passing-the-parcel with him. Everyone wanted to cuddle that golden ball, soft as mohair. Nothing like innocence to bend rules and melt the heart.

My husband who is a cleanliness freak smiled benignly as Caesar graduated from piddling all over the Kashmiri rugs to biting the period furniture. What worried me was who was going to carry him every hour to the garden to potty-train him, and the day had 24 hours. What about our sleep? I was used to an eight-hour undisturbed sleep. Questions were buzzing around my head… And then Caesar crawled towards me, nuzzled my toes and flopped down on my feet. He gave me one long loving look and trustingly fell of to sleep right there and then, all 12 inches of him. He had me pinned to the ground.

I wondered how he could trust me completely. It was as if he was saying we could sort out things together.

Happiness is an organic feeling — it grows out of the home. I was only focusing on the work he would make us do, not on the love he could give us, not on the way he bonded the family together. Each day, in small ways, the house changes its colours. Families build houses and love turns it into a home.

Bubbles Sabharwal is a theatre director