Inspired by R.K. Narayan's "Engine Trouble"

The Grand Possession: Homes, Land and Pets

Ah, the dream of ownership!
A shiny new house, acres of lush green land, or a fluffy companion who’ll be our faithful friend. 
YET ... much like R.K. Narayan’s Engine Trouble, where winning a road engine in a lottery turns into a nightmarish burden, owning homes, land, or pets can often be more of a curse than a blessing.

First, the house.
We love to be lords of our own castles, walking through spacious rooms with gleaming floors. But, much like the hapless lottery winner in Narayan’s story, we soon find out that owning a house is akin to winning an immovable road engine. The roof leaks, the plumbing goes wrong, and think of those bills! Property taxes, repair costs, maintenance fees — suddenly, our dream home feels less like a money-sucking monster. We might as well have won a ten-ton road engine and parked it in the middle of our living room. How often we have to take flights to our home town to peep into our "proud possession" just to check how well it's  maintained by the man we pay.

Next, there’s land ownership. We buy a piece of paradise, but the irony here is, much like Narayan’s hero who tries and fails to find someone willing to help him move his engine, we quickly discover that owning land is a full-time commitment — not to living the good life, but to wrestling with bureaucracy, unruly weeds, and cows who treat our crops as a buffet. Suddenly, the thought of owning land feels as burdensome as trying to push a monstrous engine across town. By ourselves. Without wheels.

And then, of course, our pets. Now, who wouldn’t want a fluffy little companion, right? It’s a universally heartwarming idea. But just like Narayan’s protagonist realized too late that his grand prize wasn’t a win at all, pet ownership often reveals its true colours. We find ourselves  glorified servants to a creature that wouldn’t care about your once-precious sleep schedule. Cats will regard you as their staff, dogs will shed in places you didn’t know existed, and if you own a parrot, forget quiet moments to yourself ever again. The pet you imagined as a bundle of joy becomes an engine of chaos, endlessly hungry, shedding fur, and demanding walk after walk after walk — no matter how hot the day.

Owning a house, land, or pets is a beautifully ironic lesson in life's practicalities. Much like the road engine in Narayan’s Engine Trouble, these possessions seem wonderful in theory but require Herculean efforts to manage. We can’t throw the house in the backyard and forget about it. We can’t walk away from a patch of land that now resembles a jungle. And we definitely can’t do away with the pet when it decides that our couch is the perfect chew toy.

So, the next time someone tempts us with tales of “the joy of ownership,” we must remember R.K. Narayan's "Engine Trouble". Sometimes, the things we think are prizes turn out to be our heaviest burdens. And no one’s coming to help push that metaphorical road engine out of our yard.