It’s a human thing – to see something right in front of you, around you, every day and not do much about it. I experienced this for the first time back in school. We had a large ground with several tall trees at the perimeter and this one big tree at the centre – broad enough that it would take maybe eight or ten students holding hands to surround it. Coincidentally, I got to stand next to this big tree every day for morning assembly. But maybe that was more fate than coincidence.

You see, in our school, or maybe in most schools in India, there’s a method to the morning assembly madness. You stand based on your class, your class section, your gender, and then your height. I’m not sure of the math. But at the time, of all the children in our school, I had the fated or coincidental privilege of standing underneath that big ass tree. I did so for months, without batting so much as an eyelash in its presence. I never quite noticed just how much the leaves rustled from the occasional breeze, or how much the birds spoke with each other, across species from different branches, maybe the same with insects.

I wouldn’t have been able to describe any of this back in school. Not because I can put two sentences together better now, but because I took these small experiences for granted. This changed one morning, during morning assembly. I couldn’t keep my eyes open; it’s hard to explain this, but they hurt from the inside and the outside. The sun became unbearable to me from the outside, and to explain what was happening inside my head, well, the best way to do that would be to imagine a thousand blacksmiths hammering away at my eyeballs from the inside. It was maybe my first migraine, courtesy of our school gardener, who had trimmed the branches of our big ass tree.

I’ve heard that we even take the things and the people we love for granted. As a dumb kid in school, wet behind the ears, I don’t think I ever appreciated what that tree did for me every day without expecting anything in return. But every day since the incident? I started noticing the small things I so often missed during morning assembly – the rustling leaves, the morning birds, and insects.

It's hard but I try not to take things for granted now. And there’s a reason I wanted to share this story with you. Because there’s no mistaking that ‘Roaming with Royalty’ is about a dog, maybe many dogs. Like with morning assembly though, there’s a method to the madness of this story. It’s the small things that I experienced growing up that allowed me to understand Àngel in all his majesty. I want to walk you through those moments. Along the way, you’ll get to know me better. And maybe towards the end of this series, you just might be able to appreciate the free-roaming dogs of India a bit more than usual, and the one dog who managed to become the most impressive dog I’ve come to know.