Chizokho Vero
I was trembling like anything but not like a helpless tree during the windy season, eh! Face completely covered with Burmese blanket, like a well packed parcel to be sent abroad for safe delivery. I could find no place for relief from fear. I was badly sweating. Yes, I am talking about one of my encounters with a mouse one late night. This has had me in a web of a terrible, horrible phenomenon which will never fade away from my memory.
The clock struck at 1I:00 when I shifted from exciting TV serial show and later had a good time on bed with Khushwant Singh’s Joke Book. Unfortunately, I could hear a strange whistle, like a ghost who stalks. Then I started recollecting the horrifying scene that I earlier came across quite number of times through film and books. A call for help to reduce the fear does not materialize as all my family members who were in the next room were all in deep slumber with, unbearably snoring away to glory. And that was like adding fuel to a bonfire as far as my insecurities were concerned. I could not leave my room because of the utter darkness all around. And poor men, my dear friend, the power went off in the meantime like any typical night in Nagaland.
What could I do was whisper a prayer as if I could not see another daylight. The trauma continued to be part of me for almost three hours. And think of how much I suffered! But hey! Is there anyone still listening to those sad saga?
I do not know how I fell into sleep, for it was when the sun rays entered my room that I woke up. To my utter shock, the voice of whatever that I heard in the night appeared ceaselessly. At long last the nightmarish drama being enacted just under my bed. I dug the ground only to find five hairless pinkish creatures in a well nested hole.
With anger and surprise, I had a tough time wondering if I had the licence whether to kill or not to kill. Suddenly I felt that it would be wrong on my part to torture them to death. So my kind heart (sob… sob…) decided to spare their lives. Then, I freed three while the other two refused to escape.
So I picked them up and gave shelter to them in an Amulya can. But alas! Tragedy of tragedies! They all kicked the bucket in the evening, might be out of cold or starvation, I presumed.
This incident became a household talk in my locality and assumed more vitality than even the feverish Town Committee election for a week. And people started to riddle me with pranks whenever I appeared in their sight.
