No wild imagination, this!

Parbina Rashid

AS my dongle stopped working in Guwahati, I had to find an Internet café close to my house. The chap who managed it was a friendly sort.

Soon we struck a conversation. “Oh, you are visiting the house where a python appeared!” It was more of a comment than a question. I was bewildered. A python?

“Yes, a huge one. The people from the forest department caught it after a long battle. Mediapersons also came,” he replied.

I was hurt. Not because I heard about the drama from an outsider, but because, I have always been fiercely loyal to my roots, so much so that after four rounds of lawa-phera when I became legally entitled to a new surname, I let it pass. I did not want to cut the umbilical chord with my father. And now, my identity was being ascertained not by my clan name, but because some fat, lazy python chose our boundary wall to take a mid-evening nap!

That night, I closed all the windows of my room which I normally like to keep open as it overlooks a river, though a sick one now.

However, to my consolation, I was not the only one to suffer from such an identity crisis. 

To find out one of my distant relatives’ house at Sangsari, we did not even have to take his name. All we asked a passerby was, “Which is the house where a tiger was seen recently?”

To narrate the incident, hearing the pet dog bark, the lady of the house opened the door. But she froze in her track as a huge Royal Bengal Tiger was sitting on the verandah. She, thankfully, had the sense to retract her steps and shut the door. The tiger took the hint and walked away without creating a fuss.

As I got busy meeting family and friends, the fear of pythons and tigers was beginning to fade. But no, I was not to be left in peace. 

The local TV channels flashed the news of how a man in Guwahati found a ghung with four cubs in the house next door. Hearing some odd sounds in the house, which was vacant for some time, he tried to peep through the broken window. Seeing him, the huge beast charged towards him but since the window was secured with grills, he survived to tell the tale to the channel guys.

As I was not familiar with the word ghung, I asked my aunt what it meant. “Bagheera”, for want of the English word, she took help from Kipling’s character to explain. 

A black panther? My God! I was not amused. “People have encroached the hills, where will they go…” my mother justified. But I was in no mood for such a rational analysis. I like Bhagheera, but only on the screen, not as a neighbour!

I rushed to secure the iron gate of the verandah. It is one thing to be known as a visitor at the python-wala house and quite another to be remembered as someone who came from City Beautiful to City Bountiful to be devoured by a Bagheera!