One day my Dad got the whiff of this and decided to interrogate me. He still believes in my dreams and encourages them generously, no matter how ridiculous it seems. However, this, he thought, needed to be investigated. "So darling - tell me more about your fairies", he started. "Well", I said, they are everywhere and are sent by God to protect me in this universe." "Are they here now?" "Of course they are." "Where exactly?" "Here is a red and purple one, there is a blue and green one, a black spot around there..." I continued, rolling my eyes in different directions to indicate my fairy's habitat. The next day I was taken to the opthamologist and was prescribed a pair of glasses with a really high power. A week later the glasses arrived and gifted me a perfect view of the world. Everything that was normal to me even a second before shone in a new light. The tension in my cheeks, from squinting too often, seemed to relax almost immediately.
I looked at my Dad with complete awe and surprise and just when I was ready to word my feeling, I realized the fairies had disappeared!! None of them were there - I suddenly felt alone and insecure. I quickly opened my glasses and they promptly came back. The result - I tried to avoid my glasses as often as possible. As life rolled on though, it seemed more important to be seeing the world more clearly than my little fairies. Soon they lost any relevance to my existence and became a favorite family joke.
Fast forward to the time when I was in Delhi working and living by myself. I was a pro at contact lenses by then. Soon enough fate presented my husband to me and after quickly falling in love we (along with a couple of my girlfriends) decided to rent an apartment together. Wasn't he the lucky one?
Fast forward to the time when me and my then boyfriend (husband now) sat in his bedroom sorting out bills and discussing the budget for the next month. It was a cool Delhi night. We sat on his bed and let the breeze come in through the veranda. It was late and I let my guards down by taking off my lenses and letting my eyes breathe. Since I was blind as a bat then, he did the calculations while I uselessly ranted about things. My mind was in another place where I was walking hand in hand with my love and weaving our entire life together (over and over again). Floyd's voice in the background ensured uninterrupted flow of the romantic preview to my future. Somehow somewhere my memory of the fairies came back and so did they - crystal clear and real. Just in seconds, I suddenly saw a white sheet appear blocking my view from the veranda. It moved downwards from the ceiling of the veranda as if in slow motion. My pulse started racing and I finally managed a scream.
I believe now that this time the fairies had come back to save and protect someone else through me. It turned out that the sheet was a man trying to commit suicide from the terrace upstairs!! My husband had reacted to my scream quick enough and like a superman with 20:20 vision had flown to the site and to his rescue. A slip disk that my husband had suffered just a day earlier loomed as a huge detrimental factor to the rescue of the man. However, he managed a tight grip of the rail to lean forward and pull the man right from mid-air on to the veranda - all with a screech of gritted teeth to the floor. A hero indeed! I watched everything with an open mouth and a foggy gaze! I would have let the sheet flow into the breeze and reach its destination but something had prompted me to scream.
The man we saved, lives now and is a happy employee of the Indian Navy.
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ReplyDeleteAn old man was travelling on a camel in a desert in one of those numerous uncharted routes that one inadvertently gets strayed into at night. He was accompanied by a young attendant who was disappointed and sad at the sorry turn of events. He was hardly in a mood to listen to the blabbering of the old man about there being a God who looked after lost wanderers in the desert.
ReplyDeleteEventually, the camel reached an oasis, and the two travellers heaved a sigh of relief. The old man instructed the camel to be tied to a post, and retired for the night. The camel was, however, not found at the post the next morning. It had wandered off into the desert wilderness at night.
“But you said there was a God who looked after everyone in the desert,” he blurted, “look we are safe, and I thought the camel would also be safe without the rope.”
The old man said ruefully, “Last night God needed the camel and its instinct to protect us, and He also needed your two little hands to protect the camel.”
To sum it up: God actually needed your scream and your hubby's muscles to protect our navy man from straying into an altogether unknown physical non-existence.
Your story is beautiful and ditto to what I think happened that night : ). Life takes strange turns and leaves us wondering about it all the time. Thanks for the comment Bou!
ReplyDeleteWhen are you going to actually let people know that you have such amazing talent, Madam...I loved it and would like to have you on my blog.
ReplyDeleteAnytime ALpana - thanks a ton for all the kind words. This is a small step I gues : )
ReplyDeletewhat a wonderful story! bless you!
ReplyDeleteThank you Prats!
ReplyDelete