Pocket full of stars

4 [RAHI]

At the bus stop, a woman gave out a frantic shriek.

The crowd, which was standing motionless like a packed colony of bugs, got agitated at the sound and squirmed a little.

I let out a sigh of relief as a heavy man moved out of my face with a grunt as the shriek caught his attention.

Unbothered and uninterested in the shrieking entity, I stared mindlessly at the view in front of me.

Amidst the lush green and vibrantly bright flowers in the park on the other side of the road, the black and brown heads of the people waiting at the bus stop seemed so bleak.

It seemed ethereal.

As if nature was inflating its presence to engulf us in one go.

I wouldn't complain if it did.

"Water! Water!" a young male voice shouted.

"Here it is!" another male voice answered.

A wave of soft murmur passed through the crowd. I could barely understand what caused the disturbance.

"A Leech." The schoolboy standing next to me informed casually to whomever it may concern.

Nobody was bothered.

Maybe if it was a snake, people would have turned their heads or reacted uproariously because anybody can die in a snake bite.

In the eyes of the mass, shrieking on seeing a leech seemed like blasphemy.

The bus wheeled in and rolled out quietly after the passengers boarded it.

Back when I was in class 5, a cobra got into our house.

There was an uproar and a bone-chilling fear played through my veins.

Until then I had only read about cobras in books, but the possibility of seeing one slithering in front of me was thrilling.

I stayed where I was, hoping the snake would reach out to me, discharge its venom into my veins and liberate me from my prison.

I looked around with bated breath for my executioner, along with everybody.

In a wave of ecstasy, the venomous snake seemed like an angel out to break my chains.

When I was almost suffocated with anticipation, the maid announced happily that it had slithered away over the wall.

For a second, a violent image of the snake getting squashed on the road by a heavy vehicle, flashed through my mind.

Angels who fail their mission have to face castigation.

As my mother sat down and breathed a sigh of relief, a prayer emanated from my innocent heart, let the accursed reptile that failed to save a human suffer a punishment of eternal imprisonment.

I never got to know what happened to that snake but I was satisfied with my heartfelt prayer.

Besides not attaining freedom, my additional reproach towards the animal was that it never made its appearance.

Like the desirable men of the fictional world, that snake was also the epitome of a lie.

Nobody saw it except the maid or maybe not even her.

She must have been lying or maybe it was just an illusion. Certain objects look scary and threatening at first glance. On looking twice, you realize it wasn't what you thought it was.

Eyes can lie too.

I looked at the woman who shrieked at the bus stop.

She was narrating the episode for the fifth time to someone over the phone.

The person who rushed to her aid glared at her disapprovingly.

Well, listening to the same tale in a high-pitched voice, over and over again was annoyingly exhausting.