Saturday, October 27, 2007

There and Back again...


Once upon a time, there was a chicken who lived in a dusty little pen with his family. The chicken was very inquisitive by nature and, though he was very proud of his pen, he always wanted to take flight and reach beyond the fence, to see the entire farm with his eyes.

One day, the chicken woke up to find all the birds and animals gathered in the field. On going closer, he saw a duck called "Professor", quacking to everyone around him about his pond. The chicken was really impressed by the duck and the way he quacked and asked him if he could accompany him to explore his place. The duck agreed and together they left for the west.

On reaching the pond, the little chicken couldn't believe what he saw. The ducks had pushed back the waters to make some land where they could bathe in sun. Everything was so neat, clean and green. The ducks were really nice to him and so were the other birds. The females, called the "chicks", were so much prettier too. He made loads of friends and discovered many wonderful things.

"Professor" asked the chicken to make an "Ultra Low-Power Cardiac Sense Amplifier", to which the chicken gladly agreed. He was having a lot of fun, doing his work on weekdays and "birdwatching" on the weekends. Every now and then, his friends took him to the brewery and slurped the liquid they called "high-without-fly". They also showed him some kind of grass, which made them act like cuckoos!

Everything was going great till the time chicken realised he had to fly back to his pen. He finished the amplifier, bid farewell to everyone and left for his trip back. Though he felt guilty about it, he wished he could stay there forever. Last three months were the best three months of his entire tiny life, and he felt a little sad going back to his noisy little bird-cage, in a pen littered with bull-faeces.

Though settling down in a foreign land was tough, this journey back from the unknown to known has been a lot harder than I ever expected.

5 comments:

Ashima Sehgal said...

that was one tasty dish.. i cud eat you, chicken!! anyway, there is another pond to cross and a world even further to explore.. and i sure hope that no matter what lake ur swimming in with wtvr chicks, u still feel a lil pen-sick at the end of the day..

AA said...

With his work in Delhi all done
ol' Gaj went to Holland for some fun.

So much did he mix
with the babes and the chicks,

that he came back thinking he IS one.

Shiwali said...

I absolutely loved this...

Anonymous said...

You're good.

...this journey back from the unknown to known has been a lot harder than I ever expected...
You know, maybe the pen is not quite known. Maybe when you look at it now, you'll see something different from you did before - maybe the visit across the pond opened your eyes somewhat.

iff, i.e., if you don't automatically rank everything like Indians usually do...

Ushasi said...

I second what Camphor says. It's hard...even after a visit of 10 days to cleaner and prettier places where I wasn't shoved even once, I felt a pang or two on my way home. So i can imagine how you felt.
That said, once you learn to skirt the bull faeces in your crowded pen, there are quite a few upsides. :)