The fear of Lizards!
I once read somewhere on the internet that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly we are not the same afterwards. Today, I feel the same.
It was just three-four days ago I was attending a lecture at North Campus on Meta fiction. What I had gained from the lecture was the power of epiphany and how the stories written in books and enacted in movies are one way or the other inspired by somebody’s lives. Writing about life- It was pretty boring from the past week because, to begin with, the writer of this post had achieved the superlative degree of laziness in her life.
Yes, I was sluggish, inactive, not willing to use my energy on anything. Five days passed from the calendar of the month of fall and not even for once, I did make an effort to go out and do some work. The assignments, meetings and commitments were piling up and I didn’t seem to care a bit. For me, an entire day was all about gluing at my laptop screen for Netflix and futile stuff over the internet. Dates kept on changing and my monotonous life was made up for researching all about terrorism, sex and what imbecile articles I could read while eating French fries and sandwiches in bed.
That’s actually not a 21-year-old plan on when she has a job and freelance articles to submit. After, I was done watching the videos, movies and documentaries — (I was not done, the laptop’s battery dozed off), I just stared at my ceiling for hours to recollect how to dissipate my days were. It was happening for the whole week and it just had to stop. I forgot I did take showers at 7 pm in the evening to stay awake the whole night — writing. So, today the day was going exactly like I UN-Planned. But, I did alter it a bit. I decided to shut down the laptop and bang on the treadmill at the gym. I went straight to the kitchen after a hot bath and boiled some water to shed a few calories — never helps! After almost ten minutes, I had bygone about the water. I turned off the burner and thought to cool it down.
With almost very strong hands, thanks to the dumbbells I lift up. I began pouring out half the water in the vessel down the sink. In half a minute, I literally had tears in my eyes. I was burned (from inside). I saw a tiny lizard hopping and jumping in pain because of the water that I was pouring on her. It was unfortunate. I swear. I felt awful and suffocated. The immediate moment post that; I turned on the tap and helped lessen her pain with the cold water. She tried to twist for seconds and then went numb. I had nothing but tears and tears flowing down from my eyes. I just couldn’t do anything, knowing that I had burnt her. I had not. I was deeply sorry. Tears kept on flowing down and I kept mumbling ‘I am so sorry’ to her. I had no courage left to even touch her.
I ran away from the kitchen and stood out in the balcony desensitised for half an hour. My eyes fixed on the ants near the Tulsi plant. I kept thinking about LIFE and immediately terrible thoughts had begun a marathon; one after the other. For the record, I am a vegetarian and I have never seen an animal being brutally killed in my entire life of 21 years. I have seen humans dying in hospitals and people tell me that I am strong. I know. I do not need anybody’s validation to feel that. But, I felt a lot different today. I am still figuring out an answer while writing this.
They say, when a person dies he/she gets seven minutes of his ending life to recall back the whole of life. I compared us with a lizard. Did she have that too? I mean her life. I don’t know if that was about eating flies and insects on my house’s wall or latching out of the eggs or even about sleeping in my kitchen’s sink. I felt sorry and traumatised.
It was an accident a friend of mine tells me over Whats-app, who once accidentally killed a pigeon in his balcony. But, I just cannot forgive myself for pouring out that hot water. I should have looked in. I don’t know. This feeling. This agony- I had to put an end to it. I wore stupid clothes and went out when the city was all wet. The smell of rain rationalised my senses a bit and I did my part to feed the dogs at my street and also the beggars who stopped near the auto I was travelling in.
I was literally wishing something exciting and extravagant to happen in my life, lying for days in the bed. But, not this way. People will tell me that more than half of the world’s population is non-vegetarian but I know that we all are designed by somebody up above in a special way. Also, I will have texts on my phone yelling out ‘You are a dumb kid’. I am unaware of emotions in animals/insects but I do know that they feel something too. Even if science and technology tell us that we are animals too what makes us different is that we have a brain!
All living things do contain a measure of madness.
PS: When I got home, my mother told me that there was nothing in the sink.
Saumya’s first book Daughter of a Drunkard Monk, a romance fiction made it to the national best-seller list in 2015. She has held a number of varied jobs in marketing across different industries in the past. In her freelancing career of over 5 years, Saumya has written for major print and online publications such as Your Story, Women’s Era, Entrepreneur India, Women’s Web and The Speaking Tree. She has been the editor of two anthologies — ‘Miles Apart’ and ‘Meri Kalam’ and also contributed to ‘Minds at Work 3’ — an anthology compiled by female writers of India. She loves travelling, blogging, doodling, playing chess and most of all spending time watching cricket. She was awarded ‘Best Blogger of the Year’ by Times Network in July 2018 for her blog ‘Insanely Sane’. Saumya lives in New Delhi, where she does marketing for a Real Estate Giant. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as (isaumyakaushik) or write to her at kaushiksaumya09@gmail.com View all posts by Saumya Kaushik
Originally published at kaushiksaumya.wordpress.com on March 11, 2016.
