ALIEN

 ”At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, I will awake to an encounter with people from the other world. 

This will be my tryst with Aliens.”

As the clock on the steeple of the far-away church in Matheran struck 12 and the church bells gonged I opened my eyes and started my journey along with my three friends.

I had decided I would find the wormhole and encounter these aliens by hook or by crook. 

Tagging my three best pals the journey had started. 

We were young and full of zeal. 

It would be Mission Accomplished.

Living in deep forestation somewhere near Matheran hill stations we were always discouraged to travel far from our habitat.

There was a wormhole in the border of these forests and legend had it that if you found and navigated through this wormhole you would land up in the land of the Aliens.

It was a terrifying prospect for us due to the fear psychosis created around the aliens and the location of the holes.

My uncle who was a master storyteller always gathered us kids and used to entertain us with stories and folklores.

As kids since we had nothing constructive to do this was our major time pass.

As we were always restless and frolicking around, getting our attention and keeping us tied down to one place would normally be a difficult chore but as his stories were engrossing it was magnetising and we managed to stay captivated in our places.

As we waited for his grand entry we would be picking each other brains or ticks from each other's bodies.

As we sat lazing under the banyan tree he would start his ’Bol Bacchan’ sessions.

More bent on stature than most of us he would shuffle himself into our midst and when we all cried out in unison ’Uncle Story, Uncle Story Please’ parking himself under the Banyan tree he would pacify us and settle his back against the uneven bark of the tree to start his narration.

He was ’Mr Know It All’ and was one hell of a ’Monk’ipedia.

He specialised in stories of Aliens and how they interacted with members of our species.

He would go back to our forefathers especially the one called Han.

He would beautifully narrate how Han encountered and befriended the two alien brothers Ra and La. 

This tale took Han across miles and miles of the hinterland to assist Ra and La in building bridges and participate in a daring flaming recce. 

The final invasion of the ’Land of Gold’ culminating in a bloody battle and blood bath was a damsel rescue mission weighed with the battle between good and evil.

There was another tale of interest Uncle narrated brilliantly.

It was one of our forefathers, King Lou, with the drama of an alien called Mowg.

Our forefather had seen this small lost alien roaming in the woods and tried to befriend him. 

King Lou knew the alien had access to privy info of how to create magic by striking two stones.

Sparks would burst out creating flames that could create a furnace.

King Lou desperately needed this information to strengthen his supremacy.

Mowg being a small alien King Lou tried his best in trying to trick him, pacify him and wiggle out the secret. 

But it was futile.

Mowg kept saying, ”But I don't know how to make fire”

This alien really did not know about this art of fire-making.

The next interesting alien story which Uncle always narrated was the one where one of our brethren Abu encountered this alien called Al.

This alien Al possessed a flying contraption which was a textile knitted vehicle. Never seen by any of our forefathers this story took Abu along with alien Al and his alien lady love Jas over hills and mountains to ’A Whole New World’ in a magical ride

The story and climax were interesting as it involved a lamp, a genie and another alien villain Jab.

The most frightening and spine chilling narration was the story where a whole Alien Planet and it's inhabitants were taken captive by our forefathers.

The aliens fought us sequel after sequel in bloody battles and rumour has it that these sequels continue in today’s day and age.

Would be a victory for us but warfare is a dirty business and our generation would never agree to invade, capture and enslave an entirely alien land and it's inhabitants.

Young as we were looking up to life the aims we had set were high.

We wanted to create history and stop these wars.

So along with my three other young friends, we had decided to journey to this wormhole,  traverse the transition and encounter the aliens.

We would then approach the aliens with caution, befriend them and make a generation pact assuring them that we do not intend to capture their world or enslave them. 

This assurance should negate the animosity they have towards us  -- building bridges of friendships for generations to come.

Managing to trick out the location coordinates for the wormhole from uncle we started the treacherous journey travelling in leaps and bounds.

Travelling at night it was a long dark journey and it was tiring.

But we had our daily quota of nutritive nuts and fruit - banana to sustain us.

Keeping under cover of darkness we targetted that we should reach the location at the break of dawn.

As the sun slowly crept up shooting the first rays of its brilliance over our side of mother Earth we reached the spot.

This was the first time in our lives that we had travelled so far away from our homes and our comfort zone.

Reaching the location we came across the dense patch of foliage that was the entry to the black hole. 

As per the information we had we did not need any special vehicle to transport us to the other side. We needed to carefully crawl on all fours.

Rummaging through the foliage we cleared a path and pushing our way through we went into a freefall.

Tumbling over one another we landed with a thud on the other side as we fell on the hard ground.

We had hit ’Ground Zero’

Closed eyes covered in black and brown dirt we straightened up and started dusting ourselves. 

Opening our eyes we saw a sight of marvel.

We could see a line of the UFO whizzing past black tar strips

There were two solid beams of light shooting from the front of these contraptions of solid metal.

The UFO’s were of varying sizes, some small some very large with their backs topped up with heavy loads strapped on under tarpaulin material.

It was lightly raining and the gleam of lights on the shiny UFO paths was eerie.

Some of them had been adorned with different coloured red, blue, green and yellow light and once in a while a shrieking cacophony of horn sound emancipating from them made us look up in awe.

Pleased that we were all in one piece we climbed atop a tree gathering in the sights and digesting the information from the surrounds we saw.

We could not sight any alien as we assumed they were all in the ever fast-moving UFO’s

Wondering what our next POA should be we were astounded by the sound of a screech as one UFO came to a grinding halt right below the tree that we were sitting on.

It was a bright red coloured contraption and it's lights were on full beam. 

It an instant the whirring sound stopped as all our eyes were glued to this marvel so near to us.

Visual observation enlightened us to the fact that there were four black round masses on which the red metal corruption sat. There were areas you could see through in to the UFO as they had some transparent material patched on the front, sides and it's back.

Suddenly on a side closer to the front beam, a sheet of the red material yawned open and we saw with mouth agape the outline of an alien getting off the UFO. 

What a sight!!

It looked like the alien was structured like us with four limbs and a head attached to a torso.

Compared to how all of us were it was more erect in its stature.

The difference was the amount of body hair that it had from us.

The other difference was it was covered in some material (never seen something like this before) in some parts of its torso.

If you imagined us evolving in thousands year's --- it represented a ’Future Us’ 

It was unaware of our presence as we watched it's every moment.

It was holding a pack of some items in one of its limbs as it approached the base of the tree we were on and sat down tired.

Opening the pack it took out a small piece of material and put it on its head.

Resting against the bark of the tree it closed its eyes with the new piece of material lying neatly on its head.

Sitting atop the tree closely watching as the whizz of other UFO’s continued we realized that the alien in our vicinity must have dozed off as there was no activity.

Taking courage we slowly approached the sleeping alien.

It was a close-up sight to behold.

It lay still apart from a roaring sound coming infrequently from its nostril accompanied by the heaving of its chest.

We noticed the open pack that was lying on its side and in a jiffy,  gathering courage, I snatched it and climbed back up into the tree.

It was similar material pieces which the alien has adorned his head with.

Copying what the alien had done we did the same and used all of them to put on our heads.

We must have been a sight with so much material on our heads and all this excitement and chatter we were creating must have aroused the alien from its slumber.

All our eyes on its new activity we noticed it gave a big yawn a big stretch of its upper limbs and reach out one limb to where it had placed the packet.

Surprised that it was missing the alien looked around and could not find it.

Suddenly it looked up and saw the four of us with our heads gracefully displaying it's head wear.

It now looked piercingly toward me.

Our eyes met for the first time.

It curled one end of its torso’s upper limb and gestured gnarling at us.

We did the same action.

It started hurtling abuses in its language.

We replied with equal furore in ours.

Frustrated  it bent its torso, picked up a stone from the ground, straightened up and threw the stone at us.

In that instance all four of us realised that war had been declared by this act.

The peace pact we had in mind would now have to be temporarily kept on the back burner.

We had to retaliate in self defence.

We had to protect ourselves.

We had the higher ground.

We plucked some fruit from the tree and threw it back at it.

The volley from both sides continued for some time.

It realised that we were mirroring whatever it was doing and four against one there was no chance it would win.

Exasperated it took out it own head material and threw it to the ground.

Aping it, all of us foolishly did the same.

It did not expect this to happen.

All of it's head wear had been thrown back on the ground.

Expressing happiness that it had got its lost possessions it quickly collected all the material from the ground and hurriedly advancing towards it's UFO starting the ignition zoomed away in a Vrrrooooooom.

As it was leaving we heard these words being shouted out towards us.

”WHAT A MONKEY YOU ARE??”

We did not manage to negotiate a pact of peace and non-invasion with the Aliens and we did not make history.

However, I think, we will definitely go down in the storybooks as the monkey characters in the story ---

’The Cap-Seller and The Monkeys’