One of a Kind

                       

                                The year was ending with a twist. And the twist came in the form of rain. Trivandrum rains have always been a beautiful sight to behold, especially to the tired after-office eye. Most evenings were blessed amply with a fair amount of rain or at least a slight drizzle, which made my short walks from the bus stop to my home through the lane a pleasurable or a deplorable experience, depending on factors like the centimeters of rain received, wind speeds (to fly or not to fly with a flipped umbrella) as well as my ability to dodge the mud-splashes contributed by passing motorists.

                              One evening it so happened that I was late by an hour and dusk had set in. The rainy skies only served to darken the scene further. The streetlights were not yet lit and I was at my regular dodgy best, maneuvering myself smoothly across pools and puddles. There were hardly any people out of doors and the roads wore a deserted look. The cemented walkway was mossy and slippery & from time to time made me look as if I was on invisible skates. In the darkness, I looked into the old temple drummer’s dimly lit compound to wave at his little puppy, a recent addition to his family. But for the adorable black spot around its right eye, the puppy used to be totally snowy white until that morning. But that evening I thought I could see little dull black spots in the white as well; a Dalmatian? Or was it
just the darkness playing tricks on me? 

Squinting down carefully at the path that stretched ahead of me I moved on, when! Lo… behold… manifested before my two feet a phenomenon that nearly made me jump out of my skin!  Out of the blue, a portion of ground that lay right in front of my feet was lit up with certain multicoloured lights which jumped and danced in a frenzied pattern. Applying sudden brakes, clutching my chest, I exclaimed incoherently but quite audibly, in what I now think must have sounded like crow language. The scenes that flashed through my head in the brevity of that second were epic. My mind which had zoomed into fast-forward mode was conjuring up images of a UFO right atop my head waiting to suck me up through one of those famous beams (dancing beams?) of light that our imaginary (?) cosmic counterparts were usually pictured as transmitting down dark alleys to abduct unsuspecting human specimens. “What in the name of…?”
                               
The sound of my exhaled shock was broken by a giggle from somewhere up above towards my left. The spell was broken. I was looking right into the amused face of a man standing atop the balcony of his house holding in his arms a toddler who was admiringly looking at a rather intensely built polychrome Christmas star, the multicolored jigging lights in which had just been switched on for the tiny tot to see and adore!

Embarrassed enough to sink right through the ground and vanish, hoping that the man wouldn’t have noticed the polychromatic expressions that had crossed my face; I wasted no time in defrosting myself & disappearing from the scene. Re-appearing in another scene in front of my home, I chided myself for forgetting that it was the beginning of Christmas month & resolved in my head to grab a monster star exclusively for myself to practice not-getting-scared of any such Christmas atrocities going ahead. Also chiding myself for watching scary UFO movies over and over again, (Ohh.. but then ‘The Fourth Kind’ was definitely one of those movies I'd never get tired of watching a hundred times over again) I opened the door and walked in secretly resolving in my mind that it’s time I watched E.T and Independence Day as well, one more time, and perhaps yet another time, as time & sleep would permit…Yes!  "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate...................” ;)

Pic Courtesy : Phil Scroggs (artist) - http://www.phillustrations.com/