The following pages narrate Pyarelalji’s experiences with his pets. He was an animal lover and often used to say that he wanted to pet a lion’s cub. He was sure its mother would be able to sense his love for her cub and let him fondle it. He was not able to fulfil that ambition, but once he and I had gone to Harwar. At Lachhman Jhoola, the monkeys came and one of them caught hold of his elbow, pulled it down and ate sugar cubes and roasted gram from his hand, it pleased him more than any other experience of the trip. In the last few weeks of his life, he was often seen sitting in his office all by himself scribbling away the story of Soma and Neema. I asked him to complete the remaining one or two chapters of his next volume of the multi-volume biography of Gandhiji, which takes the story up to the mass meeting at which the Indians took the solemn pledge on September 11th 1906, that they would resist the Black Act, come what may. This new legislation had further curbed their rights and heaped more humiliations on Indian me and women in that country.