On a Monday
morning in August Amos is riding a bicycle towards South Campus. Dragging his
extra fat with the help of a burrowed bicycle, he is riding at around 10:30 am
from North Campus to South Campus in University of Hyderabad. Despite his heavy
weight, he sweeps on the road quickly with an air of superiority over his
colleagues. This is because he comes from the same place where one of the five
professors in his dept. (Physics) comes and shares a common language unlike all
his fellow students who communicate only in English with the professors. Hence,
he pays no attention whatsoever on the road where he is riding nor the poor
chameleon which will get run over by his burrowed bicycle later crushing its
head.
Kongbrai is
riding beside Amos. If you put both of them together in one frame like this…
Kongbrai looks
extremely thin and lanky besides the overgrown flappy Amos. Kongbrai, who
otherwise looks perfect, is made to appear scrawny by Amos’s unsaturated fat
which will eventually take his life away in the future before he turns 40. His
boring Christian life is bound to fade with a few heart attacks. No one dares
to make a conversation with him about his perennially bulging belly. It is the
way, he should not be judged on his physical look.
Unlike Amos, Kongbrai
could concentrate on the road because the only thing he does with the air
around him is to exhale and inhale while cycling. There are only rocks on both
sides of the road and it is getting hot, even more so because of the picture of
the dry landscape except for some tufts and concrete buildings for every
quarter of a kilometer. The palm trees are of no help in cooling down the heat.
However, Kongbrai retains his coolness despite the heat and rides beside Amos.
There it is, a
chameleon, camouflaged in the center of the road, one meter in front of the
front tyre of Amos’s cycle. Its greyish pale green skin blends in the road.
Kongbrai shouts
at Amos, nervous and worried, Amos turns the handle, the front tyre screeches
avoiding the chameleon by a few inches.
The back tyre
runs over its head. Plop! Blood streaking out of its head, spurting like a
garden spray for a second. It lays motionless on the road while Amos increases
his speed forgetting about his disturbed BMI. He zooms out from the scene
without even looking back once.
Kongbrai,
devastated, stops his cycle in a jerk and stares at the motionless chameleon.
He has a dream of keeping chameleon as a pet one day. He keeps telling his
girlfriend that someday, he shall get one and feed it and nurse it. This
reminds his girlfriend of Ceasar in ‘The Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ a few
minutes ago. ‘You and your obsession in reptiles’, she’d tell him occasionally.
He even proved that it is hereditary, that he can’t help it, that he loves them
by asking his brother a question in front of his girlfriend who conveniently
replied, ‘Yes, snakes should not be killed just like that. They are the ones
who are afraid actually. Not humans. It’s wrong to kill them every time we see
one.’
Now, this man,
spilling out of his bubble dream rushes towards the half-dead chameleon and
realizes that it is still breathing. He looks around for sticks and twigs which
he finds after a minute or so, with which he takes up the chameleon, carries it
to a side with assiduity and place it smoothly. This chameleon, who is endowed
with the ability to change its skin color to defend itself from its prey ends
up getting a lethal blow owing to its ability. Its own power transforming into
a beacon of its death.
