... and yet it's true!

They were not of this planet. Not even of this galaxy. Their home was a few million light years away from the furthest point of the universe. They were the reason for dinosaur wipe-out  It was not an asteroid. It was their spaceship. They had run out of gold. Their ship had been pulled into a worm hole the size of a peanut and the next thing they knew, earth was pulling them down. They escaped in an escape pod just as it entered the atmosphere and hurtled towards Mexico. That country has still not revived completely. The ship ran on nuclear energy of ladders. So when it crashed the nuclear explosion was so to say… elevated. Everything was gone. Well almost everything. Rodents are cunning creatures. They survived. They knew The Subway was always free of unnecessary heat and radiation.

Their home planet was mostly ice. They had evolved on ice and ice they needed to keep themselves alive. So they hung around the poles looking for gold and a way to escape. On their travels they realized what a big mess they had created. The dinosaurs were gone. The continents were breaking. So they decided to stay and make things right. The sky was full of smoke, ash and clouds of colors like shit. There was no light. So they accumulated these clouds and stacked them together. The sky was clear. And there was light.

A few of those shit colored clouds had scattered around in this endeavor. But that was permissible. They regrouped as much of them as they could and made them rain over a vast landmark that people later called Africa. It was big enough to allow a significant amount of space for what they called a desert. The scattered clouds made similar small deserts at the other places they had spread out to.

After clearing up the sky and making the deserts, they believed they deserved to have a proper place of operation for themselves, something like an office. They pulled in a few strings with the continents and assembled them in the certain way. Some of the bigger landmasses had to be broken away. This partition was more effective as well as practical. Boundaries were separated by water. Yet the dragons were heartbroken. They couldn't have their barbeque smokers anymore and flying across continents was expensive. Also there was this whole new concept of jet lag. Maybe that’s why they decided to commit mass harakiri. Only three of their eggs were left behind. Time turned them into stone. That’s how Daenerys Targaryen found them anyway. But that’s a completely different story. The continental drift, unlike Tokyo drift, lasted longer.  Of course it wasn't an easy job. They still tend to shift wayward even after eons of discipline. Though the pace is very slow. It was much like driving traffic on a jammed road. There was a lot of collision. Fortunately, by mistake, the Indo-Australian ran like a raging bull and rammed into the Eurasian plate. The land sandwiched between the two made the Himalayas. They had formed other home too. The Alps were one of them. But the excitement of a new home is hard to kill. Besides the Alps were ancient. So they waited for it to grow and gather ice.

Meanwhile the rodents and mammals had evolved significantly. They still felt sorry for the dinosaurs. It was fun watching the little raptors draw doorknobs on tree barks and try opening them. The Orange heads were reminded of their igloos back home. This gave them the idea. They set out to make humans. They set out to make them in their own image. They had no idea how much they would hate it later. It took a lot of work and a lot more Gold. But the time span it took the humans to learn what sarcasm meant was most excruciating. Even more than raptors making door knobs on tree barks and knocking on them. To some, sarcasm is still a foreign language.  

They tried telling people the truth about themselves and their stories the whole time, but something more important always cropped up. Alexander, Genghis khan, Hitler, the plague, the world cups and puppy love affairs are a few examples. The Sumerians were smart people. They made clay tablets about the Orange heads. Okay they were probably not that smart, but still. Who can tell if Steve Jobs actually lifted it up from there? The Vikings didn't find it hard to grasp the fact of another world. The rest of the world bi-polarized it into heaven and hell. It wasn't as precise as the Vikings had envisioned it but who was complaining. At least they were true to its heart. Heaven was a cool place which almost always appeared blue. Like ice. Hell was fire.

But the best were the Indians. Some of them at least. They came up with a theory that left even the Orange Heads baffled. ‘Everything is an illusion’. Now how can one argue with that? And then they grew Cannabis  One puff of hash and everything was actually an illusion. Even the Orange heads couldn’t deny that. They loved it so much that they became a kind of brand ambassadors for it. One of them once smoked so much in one day that his throat became blue. He sat on a mountain and didn’t get up for days. His friends, the other orange heads, tried to scare him up by putting a snake around his neck, but he still didn’t move. Finally when he got up he told them he had seen God. They understood that he was permanently high. It couldn’t be reversed.

The rest, as they said was history.

The massive use of gold had led to the scarcity of the mineral. Hence it became precious. Everyone wanted them. It became hard for the Orange heads to accumulate it. Life was hard. Hash was banned. They began spreading out into the human world, living human lives. That’s when they started hating it. The humans were still struggling with their shaggy dog stories. Yet the one thing they probably loved as well as hated about the human race was their inability to understand and appreciate a good joke.

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                                                                                                     -- kafir.

One Step From Love. (an excerpt).

She insisted on walking the whole way back to the beach but I was worried for her. If I was tired by now, she had to be exhausted as well. I decided to hire a taxi since we had had enough of foot walks by now. Soon enough we reached our destination. The place was throbbing alive with people. Everyone seemed to have come out of their houses to enjoy the sunset over the sea. Children played on the beach as their parents watched them contended to find them happy. Some people even took dips in the sea water and played over the waves mad in the moment.

Evening had approached. Sun had begun its descent in the sky. We sat there on the sand huddled close to each other. Watching people do their thing. Everyone around us seemed so happy. And happy was I to be sitting beside the person I had come to love. But every coin has two sides to it. Though as much as I wanted this day to be endless, I knew we had nothing more than a few more hours left to us. Whatever would happen after that was inevitable. It was all probably written down somewhere in the book of the gods. A story of mine and hers’ lost among sheets and sheets of time. I wish I could know what was to happen to us. But that didn’t matter anyway… it was pretty obvious. We would head back to Bandra by nightfall. Take a stroll down the Juhu beach. Reach the station. Say goodbye. Finish. What more was to be expected? What more could have happened? Nothing.

“I wish I were some superhero kind of guy…  I wish I could stop this moment just as it is…” I said looking at her as a gust of wind ruffled through her hair.

She remained silent for a moment and then suddenly pointing in the distance said,

“Do you see that sand castle?”

I spotted a wrecked sandcastle a few meters away. “Yes…” I said, “But it’s broken… or incomplete… whatever… but it’s not a sandcastle exactly.”

“Come, we will rebuild it…!” she said getting up and running towards it. I followed her as she sat on the sand and started work. First I was uninterested but her zeal and enthusiasm drove me deep into it. We built the castle, but every time, either one of its walls would fall down or something else would happen. It was a lot of hard work to bring sea water and put it in a small depression. We had dug it out especially for water storage. But still it was a lot of fun working alongside her. Our dirty hands would brush against each other. Our glances would reach up to meet from time to time.

At one juncture she got so engrossed that I just left everything and looked deeply unto her face. Feeling her interest, acknowledging her movements. After a while she noticed I wasn’t working and looked up at me. I shifted my gaze instantly and started working again. But then i felt it too. The sensation. The prick you feel when someone is staring at you. Maybe she was looking at me… I looked up and found she was! Just as I looked up she removed her eyes as if guilty of some theft, caught in a shameful act. A faint smile lit my face which clearly shone on her as well. I, once again, playfully this time, picked up my eyes and a moment later she picked up hers as well. This time she spoke up,

“What are you doing?”

“Whatever you are doing…” I said reflecting the question back at her.

“I caught you first!” she said pretending to get annoyed.

“Oh yeah?” I said, “You are such a liar!”

“I’m not a liar! You are!” she hollered and threw a handful of sand on me!

I was shocked for the moment. “Watch now...” I said and bombarded her with fistfuls of sand. She hit me and I hit her. Soon enough we were practically rolling in the sand. but the moments caught on to us. We became aware of strange looks we were getting from people on the beach. I even heard one of them say, ‘it seems this guy never saw a beach before! Look at his antics!’ but it didn’t bother us anyway. We didn’t care what people said. All that mattered to me for the moment was the girl. And I cared for nothing more than keeping her happy. That’s what love is, isn’t it? Keeping your counterpart happy… 

After a lot of fighting in the sand, and even more of cleaning up, we again got back to the castle and completed it finally. We placed a boy and a girl made out of sand in the courtyard. Each one of them representing us. After we had finished, we took a few steps back to marvel at our creation. She turned to me and softly said,

“Look, mr. superhero guy, we stopped time…”

I looked at the sand castle. Definitely we had stopped time. There stood a replica of hers and mine looking out to the infinity of sea. What lay beyond, none of us knew. But for the moment we had left a portion of ourselves in those figurines of sand. We had ‘made’ a memory. But that wasn’t permanent as well. A big wave had to come sometime and wash it all away. It wasn’t only with the sand. Had we placed ourselves on a stone even, the same would have happened. Only it would have taken a little longer and would have been much more painful. This sand represented us beautifully, because it couldn’t hold on for long… neither could we. The tide of time had to wash away both of us. Leaving only fragments behind. The fragments called memory.

I smiled at her and held her close to me. It was the first time I had touched her and it already felt as if she was a part me. She snuggled her face on my chest and said,

“I wondered why girls were generally shorter in height than boys… I guess I know now. I can hear your heartbeat…”

“Then you probably might know what it says…” I said almost whispering.

“It speaks of unexplained things. Impossible things. It wants us to break all rules of this world.” she looked up and said, “It wants us to live again…”

I gave her a gentle squeeze and held on. We stayed like this for a very long time, watching the sun go down in the sky. Gentle waves of the sea washed up on our bare feet leaving a tingling cold sensation behind. I looked up and found whiffs of clouds colored in various tints of the sunset. All of them moved towards the far reaching horizon. They seemed to be laughing at me. Laughing at my helplessness. They had found their eternal companions in rain and wind and sky and lightening. I had found one too; only eternity had shrunk itself into hours in my case. Yet it was eternity for me. Though by the end of this day I was going to lose her, but a part of her soul was always mine. She couldn’t be separated from me now. We were one.

I looked up at the passing clouds and told them with defiance in my eyes, ‘I had found my rain, wind, fire sky, earth, matter, thoughts, soul, god, everything.’

‘I had found myself.’

*end of chapter 10. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                          -- kafir.