Prologue

The summer of ’24 blew in sweltering hot, chasing a non‑existent winter. A heatwave swept across India as early as mid-February, a relatively cool month for the country.

When people should have been snuggling under covers with hot chai and bolting windows against the evening chill; they were cranking up fan speeds, dragging room coolers out of storage and switching on the ACs. Anything they could do to combat summer’s ambush.

Between March and June, temperatures soared to above 50 degrees Celsius, competing with their previous year’s records. But of course, in ’24, they beat all of their previous records, ascending northwards. The predictions of the Indian Meteorological Department (never quite trustworthy at the best of times), this once, came true.

The summer of ’24 didn’t just burn. It blazed and bulldozed its way through.

The weather became the country’s unofficial national pastime. Couples grumbled at it while collapsing on their couches post-work. Aunties discussed it over cards at kitty parties. Barbers muttered about it while fussing over beards or hair. Even doctors shook their heads gravely and blamed it for everything from dehydration to gastroenteritis. In short, the blame for everything wrong with the world landed squarely on the weather.

Nature, predictably, fared no better. Trees stood around like skinny ghosts of their former leafy selves, tall, but bare and lifeless, like logs planted vertically. The cityscape looked barren, smeared as if in an obscene amount of dirty yellow paint.

But it was the people at the margins. . .the delivery workers, the farmers and the vendors parading the streets, hollering their wares under a sun that could fry an egg mid‑air; who bore the cruellest brunt. While the privileged classes complained from inside air-cooled cocoons, these frontline soldiers of daily survival pressed on. Some dropped from exhaustion. Others, heartbreakingly, didn’t get up again.

The animals fared no better. As the sun scorched the earth, they scrounged for food and water in places where there was none to be found. The strays depended solely on merciful humans to feed them, not that there were too many such kind-hearted people. And for once, those behind bars, the caged pets with their automatic feeders and luxury hydration bowls, were better off than the ones supposedly free. Freedom came at a higher cost than captivity.

Birds were marginally smarter. The early ones got the worms, but mostly because by 7 a.m. the ground was already hot enough to toast bread. By mid-morning, the feathered folk retreated into the shadows, only to venture out again near sundown. Many didn’t survive. Their hatchlings, tiny and helpless in their nests, perished silently. Those who made it owed their lives to the saintly few humans who remembered to place water and food bowls on balconies, gardens, streets and roofs. Acts of unexpected kindness from a species more invested in themselves than others.

Among these rare do-gooders were the Choudharys. A family of four humans and an ever-changing roster of non-humans, the Choudharys’ modest, middle-class household functioned as an informal animal sanctuary.

Their balcony hosted a veritable buffet for sparrows, finches, mynas, and occasionally, a cooing pigeon or two. Every morning, they diligently filled the food and water bowls and sprinkled food grains on the walking trails whenever they took their dog, an ageing Shih-Tzu, out for a walk.

Their family motto was: In a world where you can be anything, be kind.

Clichéd, yes, but they lived by it.

Mrs Choudhary donated monthly to several animal welfare NGOs. She was also a proud member of multiple animal rescue forums. There wasn’t an appeal from any animal welfare group on social media that did not elicit a contribution or, erm. . .a reaction from her. In short, whatever little she or her family could do (for the animals), they did, and it delighted them to see feathered flocks converge on their balcony to feed.

Over the years, the Choudharys had sheltered many animals in their home. Cats, dogs, birds, tortoise, squirrels, crabs, fish (once even a piranha rescued from an aquarist), and one suspiciously quiet rock python (who disappeared under equally suspicious circumstances along with the recuperating hamster). If truth be told, at any point in time, there were more non-humans than humans in their house.

And far from finding that odd, the family considered it entirely normal. And what others thought. . .pfft! Who cared?

Their lives were predictably, mildly chaotic, like a petting zoo on the verge of becoming a full-blown circus, but brimming with love, sudden barks, and the occasional judgemental meow.

A wooden plaque hung proudly outside their home:

Welcome to our family’s zoo.

And it was to this motley crew of animal lovers that an SOS arrived one morning. A cry for help that spiralled the family into an adventure of sorts, an emotional rollercoaster that tested relationships, demanded resilience, and led to deep, life-changing epiphanies.

But above all, it hurled the mildly chaotic Choudharys into spectacularly unhinged chaos.