Fuck, of all nights, tonight had to bitch with me. Pretty bad timing.
But of course, it had to happen. It had to be this night, it was meant to be this cold. After all hadn’t he just watched on T.V., that weather’s gonna be pretty chilly tonight. In times like this, he wished he was back home, where the suns took out their turn to shine all the time and hot wind sweeping over the ground ruffled the upper-hairs of his tentacles.
But, here he was. On Earth, of all places…
On this nondescript, dull and misty little rot of a planet. For a millionth time, he cursed the Administrator for sending, practically forcing, him here. And what a job he had…
Observe people.
Seriously. When he was first told about this job by his administrator, he had to ask him to say that again. And of course, the fucker took his time, giving whistle to his words slowly and deliberately, with a disdainful smile playing on his face.
He pulled the jacket tightly around his body. The streetlight overhead flickered and spluttered, ready to die out any moment, but still clinging on to the last bout of energy held within.
He was wrecked. Of course, he was being demoted. Why the hell couldn’t he stifle down his whistle sometimes? Why the Creator, or whosoever it maybe that makes the universe function – maybe Random Probability – gave him such an intricate and robust throat and an equally loose tongue that all he did was quack rude things about people behind their backs only to be reported back by sycophants and back-stabbers.
And here he was, on this ‘nobody’ of a planet. Amidst bipeds with wheatish skin, with no particularly appealing dressing sense or etiquettes and faces he could not distinguish between. These human beings all appeared same. At times, he had difficulty in distinguishing between male and female. His reports back home would of course be riddled with blunders of these kinds, as he was among the first batch of ‘sleepers’ introduced to this planet well within the ambit of Goldilocks’ ring of the Solar system.
Not that, he would appear appealing to the masses whom he was supposed to observe. At 6’11”, with a skin as green as the leafy trees hovering above him, he might have passed as those powerful Gods with his eight tentacle-like hands, but of course instead of appearing formidable and commanding, he would simply appear grotesque. His lanky frame would have given jeepers to all the toddlers. That’s why he was supposed to make himself invisible almost all the time. Not that he liked doing so overmuch, but he was oath-bound to do so.
And that is exactly why no human being ever got the opportunity to dissect them. Not only was their camouflage powerful enough to render them invisible, but it also was capable to subdue their body odor and mingle it with the other stronger whiffs dominating in the local atmosphere.
And one of the primary skills that Dursa possessed was that he was an excellent skirter. He dodged incoming and outgoing throngs of crowd quite easily. No human being was ever hit by an ‘invisible bulk of spongy wall’. Not that he gave them many opportunities. He mostly carried out his ‘ape-watching’ exercises in the region with low crowd-density or quite early in the morning. But of course, he sometimes was supposed to observe them during their festivals.
His foots clicked the pavement, sounding more like hooves of a horse. The faded jeans jacket that he was wearing was ill-fitted for creatures like him not familiar with this arm of the Milky Way.
Diwali was horrible, he winced at the memory. It had taken all his skirting abilities to be able to dodge the whooshing rockets which instead of going up in the sky, somehow managed to aim for the unknowing people’s asses, the big bang Sutli Bombs exploding in a high decibel burst, and crowds chasing each other with sparklers in hand. All the time he was out there, he was constantly nagged by a worry that should a cracker manage to penetrate his camouflage suit, he would have a wardrobe malfunction unlike any other that Earthians might have ever laid their eyes upon.
But tonight, he flashed his self with gay abandon. For too long, had he suffered in that body-cramping suit…
The yellow reeds that grew out of his head danced with his each movement. A few overeager strands stood out to obstruct his vision. He scooped two of his tentacles over his head, forcing the tousled mane backwards into a bunch of squiggly worms.
But in the dead of the night, there was hardly anyone present to admire his stark naked grotesqueness. The Local Officer had demanded that the reports should be delivered long after the humans have fallen asleep. So here he was, manually delivering this week’s reports. The L.O. was a Paranoid Anti-Android. He feared that the emails would be checked by the government spy agencies, which would then become suspicious and crack down on them.
Not that their reports were worth a fig. He himself was frivolous when it came to writing his reports. Time and again, he resorted to fantasy when noting down facts. More so, his reports were sort of memoirs in which, he noted down, with fantastic detail, his brushes with death and skirmishes with Fat Rich Aunties. The Local Officer didn’t care, as he himself indulged in this particular behavior when writing down his reports. Of course Dursa and others have to eulogize about their L.O. in their reports time and again…
Lost in thought, he didn’t hear the gong till it was too late. At first he thought that it must be coming from the nearby mandir, but then, how would God give the priest prasad if he continued disturbing him in sleep. It then struck him that this must be the watchman of this locality.
Sooner than he thought, he saw him. Clad in a khakhi full-sleeved shirt and pants, with a woolen scarf covering his ears, a golden gong in one hand which he was beating with the stick in the other, the watchman cried hoarse his trademark catchphrase, “Jaagte Raho.” (Stay awake.)
How the hell didn’t I see him?
Coming from the opposite direction, the watchman was just meters away. A sudden pulse of fear hit his brain. He was fucking gonna get caught….!
He ducked out of the road and sped to the nearest cover that would, he prayed to Random Probability, somehow manage to hide his lanky self.
The watchman continued walking towards him, quite oblivious.
Blasted luck, why didn’t I wear my suit?
His heart (the alien version) was beating quite fast. The upper hairs on his tentacles stood on its end. Not that he was mightily afraid of this puny man, but for the fact that he did not want to be the first of his race to unintentionally spur the contact between the two races, quite before the appropriate time. In short, if he got the smell, his boss would peel off his hide for flouting the Space Regulations regarding not wearing his suit. Kurlkas is an extremely mild and genteel race. Perhaps nothing matches their mild, posh manners as their fiery anger and extreme short-temperedness. A Mountain of Doom awaited him back home, if indeed he was to be discovered.
But our sauntering and a bit inebriated Guardian of the Night who was partially deaf in one ear definitely didn’t hear the whimpering whistles of the fantastic creature that was squatting behind the Maruti Alto, and was casting surreptitious glances in his direction. And they might have never chanced upon each other and this story would have lost half its purpose, had not the stick with which he was beating the gong slipped from his buttery fingers and clattered on the ground only to roll between the two legs of our terrified neighbor from the sky.
The author must do the watchman some justice. As he got down on his knees, searching for the stick, he found to his horror, his precious stick lying demurely between the two giant squat green stems jutting out from the concrete ground. As it has been mentioned before, he was sozzled, so the impact of this discovery didn’t hit him immediately. He gripped the left stem for supporting himself to stand up, as he picked up his stick. So it must have come as no surprise to you, dear reader, when it is informed to you by the author that the watchman was indeed shell-shocked to see the hideous-looking scarecrow standing just a few stinking breaths away.
“Jaagte Raho,” said the watchman quite stupidly.
Afraid still, was the alien in question, fearing that his secret was out. So he did the only thing that anyone in his place would have done. With his powerful hands, he clutched the little runt of a species’ neck and with a sudden flick, he snapped it side wards. The watchman flopped down on the ground, face forward.
To be continued……
Alienman 