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Along came a lizard
As soon as I stepped into the corridor my sixth sense gave me a red alert. I was about to enter the girls’ common room when one of the girls of my class literally jumped out of the room, with her hands on her ears and shouting so loud that I thought I would lose my hearing ability.
Okay, okay, this was nothing but an exaggeration. (Forgive me for any inconvenience this may have caused. The words just flew out of my pen with no one to stop them).
Back to the situation at hand, the girl (in reality) stepped out of the common room with a horrified expression. She was followed by a few other girls. For a minute I thought she must have seen a ghost. But then I thought that this isn’t possible. “There are no such things as ghosts,” I tried to convince myself, “and even if there were, why would they choose the girls’ common room as their residence (maybe it’s a female ghost) and why not go and haunt classrooms so that we may live in peace, after all you too will be at peace, if you didn’t have to attend classes all day long.”
Thinking about ghosts and smiling at the prospect of ghosts haunting my college, I hesitantly put my hand on the door knob and turned it. (Did it make a squeaking sound? Did it always make a sound or was it just my imagination. And wait a minute why suddenly is there not a single sound in a corridor which seems to be brimming with vocal people all the time. Why is it that when you even think or talk about ghosts the entire world tends to become silent?) As I turned the knob, a ghost popped into my head, followed by another absurd image. And in a millisecond millions of images of what I would see in the room chased each other in my head, each more bizarre than the other. But none came close to what I actually saw… and that was nothing. Yes, nothing. There was simply nothing. I was even prepared to see a lion standing in the middle of the room (excuse me, for this incongruous notion, but I had watched The Chronicles of Narnia last night) but what I wasn’t ready for was the nothingness that greeted me.
I hurriedly entered the room, all this commotion about ghosts and lions was making me late for my class, I took my books and was about to step out, when I saw a lizard lurking on the floor. “Oh please don’t tell me, this lizard is the pioneer of all this turmoil.” I warned the lizard in clear words “If I get late for my class missy, I’ll kill you. Mark my words.” In the class, too, the hot topic of discussion was none other that the lizard in the common room. “People, why don’t you name the lizard, if you love it so much. How about Liz or Lizzie?”
And with this a thick book came crashing down on my head. “How can you joke about such a thing?” was my friend’s remark.
The entire day, girls didn’t even go near the common room. In my two years at this college I had never seen the GCR completely deserted. I started seeing signs of desertion in the room, as it is depicted in the movies. A wilted leaf, for instance. It took me a few minutes to realise that the leaf belonged to the tree just outside the window.
Even worse than the abandoned common room were the stories that were being exchanged among the girls. The girls for some reason had become a little shaky. One of the girls even shrieked when a spider jumped on her copy and decided to stay there until it was forced to leave. Thank God other girls hadn’t lost their composure and the spider found support in the remark of one of my very nice friends “Spider hai, Spider Man nahin hai” (“It’s a spider. Not Spider Man”)
I too had a story to share, but was doubtful about the reactions I would get. Of course, I didn’t want someone to faint.
It was a few years back when I was a chatting freak. I would stay up all night just to chat with my friends. It was one of these nights when around three in the morning I started fighting with my friend (see, I can even have an online fight). I decided it was high time I switched off my computer and went to have a glass of water before going to sleep. I had seen a lizard on the wall near the cooler. And as the first drop of water entered my mouth, the lizard jumped on my head and then jumped again on the counter and then ran away (most probably finding refuge from my unparalleled anger).
I washed my hair thrice after the event and made up with my friend the very next day. So now you know why I gave up late-night chatting.
Reliving this story in my mind, I decided not to narrate this to any of the girls around me. It wasn’t just about people fainting around me any more; it was now a matter of my ego. Maybe they would start calling me names like Liz or Lizzie behind my back.
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