Flying Angel _____________________________________________________________________ "The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves very lightly" - Chesterton _____________________________________________________________________ I pursed my lips. I mean - its one thing if one is not able to fly. But its another thing altogether being mocked for the same by a sparrow. One counts that far ahead in one's list of unacceptables. Of course one could take the broad flexible outlook, and term the bird's shaking its head with a fair bit of mirthy chirping thrown in, as mere happenstance, and not in the least related to my vain attempts at flying. But why am I trying to fly at all, you astutely ask. Well - it all started one fine day with, believe it or not, a sparrow. ________________________________________________________________________ "I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?" - Calvin ________________________________________________________________________ I was just minding my own sweet business - raking my garden, when it happened. A sparrow fell right in the middle of the pile of leaves i had painstakingly raked, and started making frantic chirpy noises. I growled and continued to pile up leaves in the pile. The reader at this point would narrow his eyes and wonder at the heart of stone of the raker who unmindful of the chirpy claims of the wounded sparrow just goes on piling leaves upon it. Tis - i reckon - a propah point to make a flashback to a similar scene just a few days ago. Nice man cheerfully humming, cheerfully raking. Sparrow not so cheerfully dropping down in middle of pile of leaves. Nice man, frantic for the bird, tearing the pile apart for the bird - rendering his efforts for the past hour void. Nice man finding the bird at the bottom of pile. Finding a minute later, that its not a bird at all, just a brown stone, coupla feathers, and a microphone which was still chirping. Nice man, with wounded heart and soul, searching near and above, and finding no trace of the pranksters. Nice man going back to his raking, not so cheerfully, and not humming at all. It is in this milieu then, that one should view the apparent heartlessness behind the nonchalant behaviour of the raker, yours truly, toward the wounded sparrow - or should i say not so wounded brown stone. I even gave a smug smile in all directions to show the pranksters their folly in thinking that they could fool me twice. It was with a gay heart's humming that i supplanted the microphone's chirping. "Ah" someone growled. I gave a baleful eye at the pile of leaves. All said and done, one could sustain chirping by microphones with iron force and will, but one draws the line at growling "ah"s. Twas after another growl or two that i could perceive that the perpetrator was not the microphone but somebody behind me. I turned around. Her eyebrows were twitching like there was no morrow, and her eye had that murderous quality which would would not have been askance in Attila the Hun. I racked my brains as to what i had done to offend the formidable female, racking even more so since i didnt even know who she was in the first place. Fresh from my victory over the pranksters however, i managed a nonchalant smiling "Hi there, what can i do to help you" while leaning stylishly on the rake. "Ha" she growled and gave the rake a violent shove. Darned indecent of her, i thought, given how stylishly i was leaning on it. But we gallant Kumars tend to take a broad flexible outlook as far as the fair sex is concerned, and tend to strew benefits of doubt like there is no morrow. Still smiling, though not standing so stylishly one must admit, given that the rake was lying a good many feet away, i said, "Hi missy, what can i do to help you...?" "My name is not 'missy', tis Aparna, Mister, and you can do something to help not me but yourself" she hissed. Twas after a moment's deep cogitation that i could perceive something of immediate gravity, and i retorted, if a bit smugly given my quick deduction, "umm...You are angryyy?" She hissed once more. Her cheek twitched and i could hear her teeth grinding. We Kumars are of a lightning disposition - and i immediately grabbed the rake to forestall any violence. History is strewn with the bodies and blood of men who didnt act fast enough, and i was determined not to be one of them. She gave a sorrowful eye to the rake, as if deprived of a means of goring me, and resumed her malevolent hissing. "Mister..." she started. Twas at this point that i pointed out that twas rather unfair that she could keep calling me "mister" while preferring not to be called missy. The name's Kumar i added. But she just hissed it away with an imperious wave of her hand. "Mister," she said doggedly, "there is a wounded sparrow underneath your pile of leaves" She gave a searching one-eyed scowl, as if searching for but a dreg of humanity in the wretch before her. "A life is at stake - and you prefer not to disturb your leaves..." she spluttered, shaking her head at the philistineness of certain Misters. We Kumars, if i have not alluded to this before, are of a quickish nature, and i could immediately see that the matter could be resolved mighty fast and - more importantly - bloodlessly. "haha", i laughed, as mirthfully as i could given a murderous eyebrow-twitcher scowling at you, "it is not a sparrow, it is a..." Twas at this point that the consistent chirping stopped. Ah - at last the microphone has stopped, i thought cheerfully. My cogitations were rudely interrupted by a loud wail. Dabbing a tear away, the female said quietly with pursed lips, "the sparrow's dead" "haha," i started again, leaning stylishly once again on my rake, "it is not..." In movies, heroes lean stylishly on rakes or even just sticks all the time, and females go all gaga over em. It just goes to show what a warped image the movies present of actuality. Before i could complete my sentence, the female lunged at my rake. But then we Kumars never make the same mistake twice. I quickly side-stepped her and jumped to the other side of the pile. The female just glared at me, reached into the folds of her skirts and - woebegone - drew out, of all things, a switch. We Kumars think on lightning lines, and i could immediately perceive that the battle was on an uneven footing. If one should picture Hell, the image of fighting for one's life with a mere rake against a growling athletic female with a switch comes foremost to the mind. With a Karatesque yell she sprang towards me. Twas with an equally Karatesque yell that i sprang out of the fence, and ran down the road. Flapflap. Flapflap. Those were the sounds of my trying to fly. To cut a long story short the athletic amazonian had caught me in a matter of few minutes, and quite convincingly with a twang of the switch, made me see the inevitableness of making bird-like noises and trying to fly like a bird in the middle of a field. Any exhortation to go back to my garden and look underneath the pile of leaves - that it was microphone and not a bird - was met with a stiff "ewww - you morbid fellow" I glanced at the sparrow perched on the tree again, unblinkingly watching my valiant flying efforts. Twas definitely laughing. _________________________________________________________________ "Reality is what, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - A. Einstein _________________________________________________________________ I arrived back to my garden tired, after an hours worth of flapping, and what do I see - no pile of leaves. An hour's worth of work all strewn around. Indeed if we Kumars would have been made of less stern stuff, I would have dropped down on my knees and wept inconsolably. Just then, it occurred to me that if I could get hold of that stone with the microphone, and show it to that ... Nothing. There was nothing. No stone. No microphone. No wounded sparrow even. For one swirling moment i thought whether it all didnt happen at all, whether twas all a dream triggered by all those leaves to be raked - when the ache in my arms due to the flapping and in my ankles due to an askance stroke of the switch pointed out otherwise. I never saw it coming. Twas a good hour later that i woke up in my bed, with a doctor at my side, and an awful ache in my head. The doctor smiled at me, and so did the lady who lived two floors above me. "Sorry for that" she smiled sheepishly, "i was swatting away a sparrow on my window sill, when the flower-pot..."