The Day Everything Changed
A short story by Nethra Jayagopal
It lay on the sand, unmoving. The mass had been there for quite some time now. Stationary. Still. Stalled. It was almost as if it had jumped the hurdles of a thousand storms and was now exhausted. I called out to Appa. The shrill pitch of my voice carrying out for miles ahead. Appa came dashing, perhaps like the mass had done, in fear of danger to his only daughter.
He dashed and then with a surprise, stopped. His eyes widened as he stood on his tippy toes, and every hair on his body stood along with him to see the wonder that lay in front of us. He stood. He stood. And then he stood some more until my curiosity could no longer wait. “Well! What is it?” I shouted, hoping either the mass or the Appa would answer me. He replied in the usual demeanour. Slowly. Calmly. No hurries. “Kondai” he replied, “That is a jewel. A true treasure of the sea.” I couldn’t believe it! A jewel the size of Mt.Everest? We would be rich! But Appa wasn’t done yet. “That is a Blue Whale. We thought they were extinct, but thankfully we were wrong.”
As we made our way to it, Appa began explaining the stories they had heard and the thrilling sights they had seen. He explained how one day, bad men came from big offices and shot at every single one, till they lay dead in a sea of their own blood. “But why Appa? Why would they shoot them?” I asked. He chuckled. “These men have but one goal in life — corporate greed. They shot them so that they could afford expensive fur coats and leather shoes. They shot them for personal gain and selfish luxury.”
With that Appa walked to its head, searching for signs of survival while I walked around it, curling my nose up at the stench. Despite that, it was beautiful. It lay there, a balloon of navy blue, with eyes bigger than our home. Its skin was soft and slimy, and touching it gave me the stories from a thousand years. Lost in my own world, I hadn’t noticed Appa running to get our first-aid kit. As he started to treat the whale, I cried out “What’s wrong with him? Is he sick?” Appa paid no attention but instead sent me to get a large pail of water from the house.
We had been pouring water for hours now. The whale still sat. Stationary. Still. Stalled. Appa was sweating, almost as much as the whale had. First, he untangled a net from the whale’s fins, then he cleaned the plastic off it and then the madness of the water began. Throughout the whole process, Appa wouldn’t utter a single word. The wonder in his eye had been replaced by frantic panic.
The hair on his arm no longer stood. He was defeated. He turned towards me, head bent low, eyes away from me and mumbled “There’s no hope. Give it your goodbyes.” I looked at it, as one last breath of water escaped the mass. With my tiny self, I hugged the mass, wishing to never let go. With one groan, all went still. Stationary. Silent.
And that was the day everything changed. Because revenge was coming for us and the bad men, with its vicious eyes and merciless soul. It would change everything, just as we had.
Nethra Jayagopal is a 10th standard student from Bangalore who loves going to the beach and visiting Aquariums with her family. But then one day she read about whale hunting as a sport in Norway and how the quota for whale hunting in 2018 has gone up by 30%. “Reading that was really unsettling, so I decided to write something about it” says Nethra. You can find more of her writing here.
