The lucky slug

 The slug, a kind of shell-less snail found in damp corners in gardens and wet places, has set out on a long journey. It’s a few meters voyage from one flower bed to another. But in slug-world terms it’s equal to miles for a human being. It has a right to set out on a long journey in the evening and reach home by night. Its path but lies across the main walkway in the garden. Walk carefully fella, you have a responsibility to avoid crushing a slug on its path.

There is a thing called luck. The slug hits a jackpot, gets airlifted on a dry guava leaf and is safely placed at the destination. It takes a few seconds. It would have taken almost two hours to do the same at its pace, if it had escaped getting crushed on the way, the chances for it being rather slim. The bed where the slug has arrived has some weeds and I start pulling them out. A tailorbird finds it as violation of its property and sets out on abusive tik-tikking rhetoric, a pitiless pouring of sharp words. It considers the yard as its house; exactly similar to my feeling that it’s my place. Both are almost the same feelings at their own hierarchy of existence.

A peacock looks expectantly from a neighboring roof. I get a chapatti and invite him in the yard for some evening snack. It lands heavily. I throw tiny chapatti pieces in front of him. It’s hungry and eats with caution. It cannot trust me completely. But this much trust is sufficient that he has come to the garden to eat at least.