Wild Animals

Wild Animals

As Gautam sat in his hotel room he was fully aware of the heavy rain splattering against the window panes. Not because he could hear the splatter but because he saw water flowing down the fogged windows. Being an introvert and a withdrawn person (if one may say), what he liked best about these Five Star hotel suites was the way in which they blocked out all the noise of this ever rushing world. So, Gautam taking occasional short holidays in Five Star hotels (picking the best deals on Group On, Snap Deals, Easy Holidays etc.), carved a silent niche for himself in this crazily spinning world (seeming always to be in the middle of an epileptic fit). Today again (like on all previous occasions) he sat alone, sinking into the deep and overwhelming silence of the hotel suite.

 As he peered out into the darkness from the window, he was taken aback to see the gleaming eyes of the hordes of wild animals crawling on the ground down below - eleven stories below to be exact. Two trails of countless animals with their gleaming eyes were going in the opposite directions. Then he realized that there were desperate men sitting in the bellies of each of these monsters. Who drove or controlled the other was a matter of conjecture - whether the man controlled the monster or the monster had a will of its own and simply carried the man, remained unclear. The horses, camels and the elephants of his forefathers times had all been done away with and were replaced by these small and large mechanical species called the ‘Automobiles’ – which needed no food, but survived only on gas. Gautam for once felt safe and secure in his quiet and silent refuge; lucky not to be in the flow of monsters down below. They never ceased. While the man would die one day, these monsters were immortal; each organ of their body easily renewable.

Gautam suddenly felt tired of all this thinking and speculation; he never seemed to have all the answers anyway. Down below – life in the mad jungle continued.  The monsters with their eyes shining bright in the dark – like hyenas – were on the prowl. But Gautam had nothing to fear. No one knew that he was up here on the eleventh floor all by himself – in the cascading silence and the quiet solitude of his hotel suite. Pouring himself yet another martini, he sank once more into the black leather sofa next to the window, and saw the heavy rain running quietly down the glass panes.