The Zoo By Night
Bombay is wild things at play.
On Friday I took the Animal Express to Marine Lines. After a brief wait at an unremarkable platform, it pulled in, weary and dying, and as it pulled in, it sighed. I felt a strange sadness, looking at this once great beast, now trudging on without resolve, yet with an inescapable finality, towards that cool, shadowy part of the forest we often call Death.
Its insides were wondrous. I entered to the gaze of a thousand semicurious eyes, peeking out from an assortmrnt of sooty, yet visibly riotous plumages, or complex bony visages…I could barely decide where to look.
Suddenly there was commotion at the doors…a clutch of rather festive peacoks had just alighted. Quite a sight too, decked in hues that would put the most surreal candy shop to shame. There was a strange sensual mystery in their eyes…almost captivating enough to distract from their androgynous genitals, which they displayed with noble pride and quiet defiance. One of them walked to me, waltzing through the riffraff like a jazz tune, and began to preen and prance for my benefit. For a moment I resisted, but was soon charmed, and paid due tribute, as was expected of me. She leaned down, softly nibbled my ear affectionately, and went her way.
I was sitting amongst quite a bunch of characters. In front of me sat a world weary rhinoceros who seemed to have misplaced his horn. (How, I can only speculate, but looking at how bent out of shape his once smooth, polished dome like head was, I do not expect that it was under pleasant circumstances.) The fronds of hair he so carefully groomed to appear as if they had appeared spontaneously, from behind his ears, in a miracle of masculinity, instead served only to highlight his constant emasculation.
On his right was a most extraordinary creature — an owl, undoubtebly, but with some sort of compound optical instrument over his eyes — an array of thick, round, pieces of glass that had begun to reflect each other, and as a result, seemed rather opaque. I wonder how much he could see through them, still from whatever little I could see of his eyes, I surmised that he seemed rather foolish. Not that it seemed to matter to him, preoccupied as he was with a tiny music box made of ivory and granite, playing a hypnotic percussive melody, accompanied by some frenetic singing in what seemed to be Tamil.
The announcement was soon made, my platform was next. The rub of time had faded the paint from a patch of wall near the exit, making it smooth, silvery, as reflective as a mirror, and it was always used as such. A quick comb of the feathers here, a stolen glance at a sweetheart there, this unremarkable patch of metal was the All Seeing Eye of the Animal Express, and I was no stranger to it. With one eye on the approaching platfrom, I tilted my head around a bit to find just the right angle, the one that made my snout look noble, yet my fangs fierce. I almost found it, arched my brow, admired myself, smug and oblivious and self-consumed for a thrilling moment as the platform rapidly drew nearer, and as the great old beast finally pulled in to Marine Lines heaving and sighing, I jumped off before it even stopped, suddenly electrified with an unreasonable joy, finally disappearing beyond the reach of the sodium lights, now and forever, a creature of the night.