The Nightmare

Mother was picking me up from a friend’s place (it was most likely Neethu, my childhood best friend) and it was quite late in the night. Close to midnight we were driving back home, on a road that appeared to be a freeway (there are none in my hometown). The car was an SUV (not the i20 that we actually own) and for some reason I was sitting in the backseat, behind mom.

Then, somehow we lose our way. We take a wrong exit and mother doesn’t seem to remember which way to go now. We decide to halt the car in the hopes of enquiring directions from a stall owner on the side of the freeway. While the car is halted, the dream shifts slightly and its nearly daybreak now (though seemingly it was midnight only minutes ago). There is no one at the stall and there is little to no traffic on the road. I am frantically looking at google maps for directions and mother is considering our next move.

Just then, a slow running jeep passes us a few lanes away in the opposite direction, carrying more than 15 men, as many as possible sitting inside, the rest hanging out the jeep doors. My attention is immediately drawn towards the AK 47 like rifle in each of their hands, and the white and green flag of Pakistan, held from corner to corner by two of them in the middle seat.

With horror, the sinking realization of the gravity of our position dawns on me. I don’t see them noticing either me or the terrified look on my face. There is complete silence, I hear nothing, think nothing, do nothing. Then with a nearly inaudible scream I tell my mom to duck under the car seat, and I hide myself, hoping against hope that they do not notice us. We stay hidden for a few seconds or few minutes, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t feel or measure the passage of time. But I know they would notice us soon and realize that we need to get out of there, and get as far away as quickly as possible.

So I tell my mom to drive, I yell, drive drive drive, and she begins to drive. We slowly get off the freeway and take an exit onto a narrow city road. It is hard for mom to drive as there seem to be large obstacles on the road. I shudder to think if they are bodies. For a moment the dream changes very slightly, I see my old brown snake skin clutch, one I had in college, falling off the car, right below my feet, which is odd because such a drop could happen on a scooter, but we are still in the same SUV. I am baffled by the drop for a moment, but I shift my attention back to our precarious situation.

The car had barely gotten any far on this road when the car begins to slow down. Why on earth was mom was slowing down? I move sideways into the middle seat to look at her. I see her keeling over the steering wheel, going unconscious. She had been hit. Two bullets in her arm, one in the abdomen, she is bleeding. I couldn’t understand how? I did not hear any gunfire. And we were in a car, we should have been shielded by it.

The car stops somehow, I drag her out of the car, and frantically look around to get help. The city is peculiar merge of LA and New Delhi. I could barely see anyone out here in the street. There are houses around us and a small train station straight ahead. I do my best to carry her to the train station, she is bleeding out, barely conscious. I seat her at a bench and look around for help. There are very few people at the station, and a few of them are policeman, seemingly unaware of what has been going on. I urge them to help, they do nothing. I am screaming for help all around, yet people simply look on, barely any movement of facial muscles. They don’t move to help us or express any shock. They look at me with a blank expression, neither knowing what to do, nor wanting to do anything. I continue asking for help in vain, crying, feeling utterly helpless, unable to think, with my greatest fear ever, moments from realization…

I try and try only to fail, and she bleeds to death on that bench. 

I wake up crying, more terrified than I have ever been in my life. I could not stop crying…

The Sky as Seen by a Dandelion

Hawthorne Flowers - Story of the Gas Leak

Dandelion....

Encounters With a Grey Kitten

I was walking by a beautiful street, terribly upset with tears in my eyes. The avenue's bounty wasn't enough to cheer me up. But you know when you love nature and when nature loves you back. In the middle of the street, I stumbled upon a grey kitten on this beautiful, sunny, Saturday morning. He was the furriest, cleanest and most playful grey stray kitten I had ever seen, with whiskers twice the size of his face. Had I met baby Thomas? In that case, where's Jerry? ;)

I fell in love with him instantly, and it looked like he forged a connection with me too. It feels weird to be able to speak a language without really understanding what you are saying. The kitten and I mewed for some time. I wish I had any sense of what he took from our conversation. He obviously wanted to play with me, but as the scared little kitten he was, he was wary of me and kept his distance. 

They say cats place other mammals in the food chain by the mammal’s height, relative to their own. Meaning, they fear animals taller than them. I tested the corollary of this hypothesis by crouching low, to see if this would ease his fear. I sat down still with my arms wrapped around my legs. The kitten moved closer, but ran away at the slightest noise or movement around us.

He tried to come closer with his eyes fixated on me, only to run away from me. He ran under the safety of a car, stopped and looked at me for some time, as if evaluating whether or not I could be trusted. He then came close again, but bounced away into a bush of ferns, stopped and watched me again. This went on for quite some time. He obviously wanted to play with me, for he kept observing me, following his every move, curious to see what I would do next. He certainly found me a better playmate than his fellow companions - a suspicious, grumpy old white cat who eyed me narrowly and a grumpier and older fearless black cat who seemed bored with all of us. Who wouldn't wanna play with them! ;)

I wished I could stay there all day, but following an inexplicable goodbye, I left. He followed me at a distance for some time. Then, he finally galloped back to his plaything - a dried up, fallen branch of a tree.

I passed the same street the next day. Crouched up in the lawn, the kitten was preying on a squirrel, ready to pounce. What’s funny is that the kitten and the squirrel were nearly the same size. Never before have I seen a bolder squirrel or a more focussed kitten. For it looked like both were preying each other, unblinking. The kitten was in some serious hunting mood. But not only did his prey hold the higher ground (up a tree trunk), given its size and awareness of the kitten, it was difficult to hunt too. The kitten could calculate this, and so he held his ground.

I tried to distract the kitten with a little mewing. To my great surprise, both of them were distracted and turned to look at me. Cats are indeed intelligent creatures, for the recognition in the kitten's eyes was striking. He remembered me :D, Yayyy! The next five minutes were pure pleasure, unexpected and bewildering. Both the kitten and the squirrel would look at me and then resume preying each other, calculating every move of the other, then back to me again. It was most peculiar! The kittens expression read "its her again. Hmm, What's she up to today?" And the squirrel seemed to wonder "who's this third party? Who's side is she on?"

How I wish I could watch them play, all day. How I wish I could take them both home and pet them. Tearing myself away from them, I said my goodbyes and moved on. I hope I see the kitten again next week when I pass through the same street.

The departed childhood, the restricted adulthood! 
I may be the most evolved and dominant species to walk the earth,
But unlike this ball of fur, I am not really free to jump up and down a tree, chase birds, and dare to challenge a mammal large enough to hunt me, anymore.