Never click the links from an unknown sender.
My Neighbours: The Gymnast
During lockdown, a lot of my neighbours have been knocking on my window.
This guy wasn’t one of them. He was just minding his own business. Meet Chatters–our neighbour squirrel on the way to becoming a whale.
He lives on the tree next to our window and had been eating constantly all summer last year, all winter (I don’t think he can deal with hibernation– no food for four months!), all spring this year and now half the summer.
He started a puny little thing and looked cute munching on the flowers. But he ate…and ate…and I started wondering how he can climb up and down the tree with so much food in his system. So, when I saw him hanging upside down on the tree branch, I was sure he had taken up Yoga to lose some weight.
But alas, he was chewing the dried beans from the tree. So much for losing weight.
In that moment, he reminded me a lot of another rodent who hangs upside down in the next tree. So far, I had believed that bats were flying rats…but all of a sudden, I could see the family resemblance, the thin fingers holding the branches tightly, the cute puppy face (until you see the teeth), the pointy ears and beady eyes.
As I saw Chatters, still hanging upside down, eyeing Kohl, the pretty lady hanging on the next tree, I wondered if he was trying to impress; as Kohl eyed him right back, whether we’ll see some ‘flying squirrels’ in the coming months…
What do you say?
Photo of the bat by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
My Neighbours: The Squabblers
During lockdown, our neighbours have been knocking on our windows for various reasons. This series is dedicated to them.
Recently, we got a visit from the Jungle Babblers–not sure about their names, since they never got around to introduce themselves.
One of them just knocked on the window at 6 am and, then, hopped back on the tree to argue with another Babbler. Or may be, they were just talking…Babblers can be pretty loud about their views and a simple-minded person like me can easily misjudge it as an argument.
Anyway, when I reached the window to check who it is, both of them looked pretty peeved…but then, Jungle Babblers always look peeved.
So, I felt rather uninvited in this heated discussion, which could be about anything–a fight among neighbours for the best branch rights (it is time to build nests), a lover’s quarrel over who will change diapers once the babies are delivered (Read The Delivery Guy to find out more), or a discussion about the weather.
But it was intense, because discussions are always intense among Babblers.
So, I stood there sleepy-eyed and waiting for niceties and for someone to explain why they woke me up. May be, they wanted someone to mediate but all I could hear was a lot of swearing in Babbl-ish (they have some really obscene words, like ‘crockacrockacrow’ and ‘cruuuckkrrrrr’). So, after 5 minutes, I finally gave up, left them to settle the ‘argument’ themselves…if it was one, and went back to sleep.
I think they felt insulted, since they haven’t visited me again. But, for once, I am not sorry. I don’t want my baby to grow up learning such foul language. Would you?
1 Fairy Woods
Teary-eyed, they put up the sign to let the wanderers know, a fairy rests under the forest floor.
Photo by Chris on Unsplash
The Struggle
For too long,
been trying to fit in
social norms,
shine through
a galaxy of stars,
looking like them
a part of the crowd,
never standing out,
even after a lifetime
wasted…
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Entranced
All night, I sat by the calm sea,
a place untouched by pain or ecstasy,
moonlit with the cool charm of nothingness.
At dawn, I saw you,
warm and sweet.
Entranced, I took wings.
As you drew closer, I pushed
to close the miles between.
My wings ached.
Your bright halo
burnt through my sight
but losing your light scared me.
Searing heat burnt me
but I was a marionette on strings.
Pain unknown assaulted me.
Reason told me to turn back.
Still, ecstatic to reach you,
I inched forward
until I was but ashes…
that were far beneath you…
The People in Zoo (Collated)
I had earlier written this series. Lately, I realised that I could do a better job at it. I have rewritten the stories and collated them since I felt that they make more sense this way. Let me know what you all think.
The Tiger
“Of course, it is better than the circus I was at earlier. The minions feed me well and scrub me often too. My 100×100 feet home comes fitted with grass to lay on and trees to scratch my back. But I miss the drinking straight from the stream, the rush of excitement I used to feel on running after my prey, and most of all, running around the forest with mom.
Don’t know when I will see them again.”
_________________________________________
The Flamingo
“That cramped cage and now this!
Do they really think I’m better off in this aviary I have to share with these minions? How I hate the Gobble-Gobble and the Cackle-Cackle—the constant cacophony of the mindless birds who have never seen the world!
I can see the sky from here. The way the Sun and clouds call to me and the wind lifts me up only to crash me in the damned fence—never before had I thought that hell was real.”
_________________________________________
The Lion
The Lion growled at the flash of the camera.
“How I hate them when they pry in like that. Is there no privacy here? What’s the point of giving me a mate when I can’t even nuzzle her without hearing a camera click somewhere?
Well, if I can’t be alone with her, why even bother? Let them think I’m not interested.”
_________________________________________
The Stag
“I see her sad eyes filled with longing across the wired high fence. I feel the same longing deep within; a loneliness I never thought could exist. A bondage that I never realized cuts through me in every waking moment and dreams too.
Of course, I have a herd. They have given me five mates.
But in this moment, I feel I never had a choice.”
_________________________________________
The Alligator
“Where have all the eggs gone again? I had buried them in the sand under the tree. Did the birds find them again? But I never saw them descend…
I’ve scoured every inch of land within the enclosure. Did someone steal them and took them away?
But no one came…Well, except the cleaner…But he wouldn’t do that to me, would he? He must know how much my babies mean to me.
Maybe they hatched when I was eating and are hiding in the water already. But where are the shells then?”
_________________________________________
The Hippopotamus
“They have sent me a new ‘wife’! Do they really think she can distract me?
They took away my real wife four months back when she was several months along. I let them because the guy who treated my leg was with them too. Ever since then, I’ve waited for her to return with the baby. But now I hear her and the baby in a distance from another enclosure. I called her and she called me right back.
I tried to break the walls to reach her, but they were too strong.
Now, they have sent me a new ‘wife’! As if I care! Damn these walls!”
Beautiful
What do you think of the woman in this picture?
I see a woman who doesn’t care what you think anyway–someone like me.
Beautiful, isn’t she?
Free photo by Unsplash
Fasting: A Fish-eye Perspective
Disclaimer: As a converted Muslim, my experiences with Islam are rather new. My newly found love, faith and peace of heart, I cherish. Still, my perspective is a bit out of place, like a shellfish in the trees.
Ramadan is the month of praying and fasting for Muslims. We observe fasts for a lunar month where we abstain from food and water starting an hour before sunrise till after sunset (12-17 hours). It is meant to help us connect with the Almighty, and also, to heal our body from the damage done by the daily assault of cooked food.
Ideally: After a day of fasting:
- When I’d break my fast with dates and 2 glasses of water, it’d cleanse my system and heal it.
- After I had offered prayers, I’d eat very light food, and my body would concentrate its efforts at healing me, rather than digesting fried chicken.
- Healing would continue all night, so that by the end of the month, the vehicle of my soul is a newly-polished limousine rather than the cluttered, rusty truck I had made it through the year.
Reality: After a day of fasting:
- When I break my fast with processed dates and lemon sherbet, both of which contain refined sugar (that in turn contains fluoride), my system absorbs the chemicals at lightening speed. My rusty old truck is now purring with excitement.
- Then I eat fruit salad, that also contains refined sugar, refined sea-salt (sodium), and fruits (grown using chemicals to ripen them overnight to cover the demand during Ramadan). The rust now turns a darker shade of red.
- Then I continue eating fried potatoes and onion pakodas, fried chickpea… Combined with digestive sauce containing refined sea-salt, the food spikes the purring of my (heart) engine to a racing-car level.
- I have to pray, so I try to stop, but hey, who will eat the lamb chops?
- And wasting biryani is a sacrilege I shall never be blamed of…and the vehicle of my soul, already cluttered, has no space for my soul to sit in.
- I’m thirsty after the day-long fast but I can’t make the space for two glasses of water. So, I settle for a cup of brown tea with refined sugar and a spot of milk–acidic but heavenly.
- Now, my engine has collapsed. Acceleration of any kind leaves me dizzy. Like a zombie, the vehicle of my soul drags along during the prayers, whirring complains of how the ‘lack of food’ has left me weak at knees.
- By the end of the month, I am a bigger, rustier truck with a failing engine and full to brim with the clutter I have collected during the food orgy I lovingly call ‘fasting’. My soul opens the door to fit itself in, and hangs in there with the help of more medicines than usual, throwing up every now and then because of the stuffiness, and reminds itself to go slow next year.
If only, I’d remember.
The Date: Wider Angle
The story is now part of a short-story collection available in black-white and coloured prints and as an ebook. I will share the links soon.
Short Stories 