A Day of Unfortunate Events…(written some 5 years back)
One day he woke up, and found water all over his face- it was leaking continuously through the ceiling!!!
Quite angry, he washed up his face, brushed his teeth and prepared his breakfast. When he saw that the rain had ended, he went up to the verandah, opened the door, took a chair and the breakfast and sat out in the morning sun to relish his hand-made breakfast.
Many birds were flying overhead. As he held out his food something fell on…..not him, but on his food. I know the readers might have guessed what it was..... It was that of a pigeons’. The man saw above with wrath—the bird was just over his head- hovering around.
“Hush…hush… Go away from here…” said he to the pigeon grudgingly.
The next minute he saw the same thing fall on his near-bald head. This seemed to have erupted the volcano in the man. He went inside to pick his gun. He wanted to end the life of that bird. When he opened his cupboard, he found that everything that was in there—the gun, sixty bullets, his hunting clothes, his hunting shoes…all were eaten up by the… termites!
Suddenly his feet felt wet. What he saw below, was like a bolt from the blue to him. The leaking water had covered all over the ground, and what was surprising was that the water was steadily flowing towards somewhere! The man had never marked this earlier, his teeth rattled when he found that the floor was slightly sloping, and it had a hole in a corner where all the water was going; just the type of arrangement you have in your…bathrooms!
Aghast at this scene, he thought of taking a bath first, and then reporting this to the owner of the house. He went into the bathroom, only to become angrier. He bared himself, and then opened the shower and one of the taps. Here, no water was coming! He roared, “I will kill that bastard owner…He cheated me… He took all the money from me… He has destroyed my imported bed, he has destroyed my guns, he…”. Before he could finish his speech, he found hordes of ants over his feet—they moved with immaculate discipline towards—they were going…upwards?
How can a retired militia be afraid of the ants—even if they were going… upwards? The big man swore, he was not going to be defeated by the ants. He emptied all the left-over water in the buckets to his legs. Hundreds of ants fell to the ground, but there were thousands of them… will the burly man like to be handicapped—because of the ants? Now his face bore more panic, than anger. Somehow he fought with the ants and then defeated them, not before he had bore numerous stings on his legs.
He had just finished with this, when he heard a lot of noise. He opened the door of the bathroom—and what he saw made the floor slip beneath his feet—a group of monkeys had stormed his house—they had opened the freeze and were eating the fruits inside. Red with anger, he went to the abandoned store-room to pick up an iron railing. He picked it and as he came out, he saw a big number of monkeys there. The strong man had to flee from there, bare-bodied.
Luck did not go with him outdoors either. Just when he had taken a few steps out of the cursed house, rain and storm came smashing down on him. But he continued to walk. He thought, he would go to the road leading to the town, and then maybe someone would see him and help him. But little did he know, destiny had something else in store for him…
A little way ahead a diversion was there. There was also a board showing the mark towards the town. The other road went into the jungle nearby. By the effect of the storm, the board had been destroyed. When the man reached at the spot, he could not remember which way led to the road. He thought for a few minutes and took to a path.
He had chosen the wrong one. He came to know about it after a few minutes when he found that he was entering the forest. Quite dejected, he turned back. This time he will take the right path, he muttered.
Recently the country had started a search for a near-extinct tribe. A Discovery Team expert had earlier found the signs of the tribe living in that forest. They had sent their team with the cameraman, to the forest. They were to enter the jungle by the road this man had entered.
The sun had set. The storm had receded. The man was walking slowly towards the highway. Suddenly, he saw a caravan coming towards him. He lifted both his hands, and shouted at the top of the voice in his mother tongue, “Da pia helwa mi” (meaning ‘Do please help me’). The vehicle stopped near him, two people came out, and took him inside. Then it went back towards the town.
Where did the man go, was never heard of again.
But it is my duty to let the readers know that after a day, the headlines in leading newspapers were—“Nude man discovered in the jungle, experts say he had been living there for more than half his life...”
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