The ditched lizard

The late morning sky looks down with stern infinitude, somehow with a heavy desultory feeling as if overloaded with the immensity of its own reminiscences, the weight of its past and the ever-exploding present.

Probably his girlfriend got angry with him. I saw her crawling down the curry-leaf tree with a moribund mindset and move on the ground to sneak out of the garden passing under the iron gate’s lower frame. He followed her after a few minutes later. Of course, you are supposed to go following your girlfriend. But he doesn’t go out. From under the gate he looks out for some time and turns back to take a survey of the garden. ‘Rascal, already thinking of new love to fill his life,’ I think.

I’m sitting on a chair a few feet away, reading a newspaper. He is not excited in love at the moment and looks pretty ordinary with his dusty earthen color. A kind of arid angularity of defeatist nature clung to his persona. I draw his attention. He looks at me matter of factly. He isn’t scared, I can see. What is there to feel scared about those who simply read newspapers, the long sheets where even engineered pogroms and bloody vendettas are presented as almost harmless random chance happenings? Why be bothered about the one who gets intimidated by the smartly customized narratives of an increasingly regressive world to tame mass psychology? Why take seriously the one who tries to write his agonies and responses and makes silly attempts at assumed joy sometimes? And who is a small-time writer? Well, he is an innocuous byproduct of the agonizing agencies of fate, institutions, norms, customs, expectations, jealousies, hate and failed attempts at love.

I glide a very small round clod of earth in his direction. He isn’t bothered. He has turned into a statue, almost miraculously motionless. If your girlfriend has left you in bad mood, you hardly care about struggling writers trying to boost their spirits by playing with sullen and surly garden lizards. Well, rolling the little piece of earth suddenly reminds me of the past that I once played marbles. I pick out tiny soil granules and take an aim, the marble-throwing aim. A few bombs land very near to the target but he isn’t bothered about me even now. Then one lands on it. Not much in the league of giving pain because of its tiny size. But it hurts and affects his sense of dignity. He faces me straight. The hero raises his torso and tail in a manner that is at least aggressive to me. He seems like a little dragon in fact. ‘He has turned suicidal after meeting disappointment in love,’ I think.

Jilted lovers can be very dangerous. They have a peculiar set-asiding quota of sadistic sweet pain that makes them turn their face from life. They may dash to get squelched under tyres, wheels and even feet. But if the latter happens to be the case they may give a bite, thus pouring out all their pain, anger and suffering in the form of that bite, before getting trampled to death. I raise my feet and put them on the chair. But it’s a tricky world. The garden lizards aren’t so lucky to deal with small-time writers only. A cat has been sleeping in the corner behind the overgrown hibiscus. So here it springs up to grab its share of joy in the world. The aggressive romeo takes to his heels. The cat follows him across the garden and then the trees. It’s a youngish cat. I can feel its palpable adolescence. But the lizard is lucky to escape. The sporadic spirals of life and death, love and loss, agonies and ecstasies, that’s what life is about. He has to survive first to make love some other day. He should hang out there, who knows she may come back. The cat has sharpened its claws on the soft trunk of the parijat tree marking it like the leopard in the Morni hills. Well, let it be more resilient in spirits for the next hunt. I’m happy for the jilted lover. It’s good that he ran away without showing attitude.