A Short Story: Humanity

Zarin went a little closer to the orchid and adjusted the lens of her camera. She saw a drop of dew slipping through its purple petal and now she was waiting to capture the moment when the dew leaves the petal to meet the soil. Click ! Perfect picture.

Zarin was a not-so-proud New Yorker who left her picture perfect life to take pictures of true life. From her childhood days she had a fascination of non-human life. She would spend hours in the backyard of her Dad's house to look at the grey-colored frogs jumping from one bush to another.

Zarin's grand-mother always blamed Zarin's mother for making her so unsocial and for keeping her away from real people. In spite of her grand mother's efforts, Zarin could never make any real human friends and ended up making wildlife photography her career.

Her current project was to capture the wildlife of the north-east India. Her ancestors were from India but this was the first time she was connecting with India. After capturing the magnificent rhinos and elephants of Kaziranga National Park, she reached the border of Assam and Nagaland.

The sight of heavenly tea gardens and sloppy farms of pineapple  took her breath away. She sighed over man's stupidity of longing for the neon-dazzled life that is so far away from this beautiful sight. She let her guide cum driver, Durgadas, leave as his daughter was sick and he needed to take her to the doctor. This was the forth day in a raw Zarin was coming to this same sight hoping to capture some natural  whereabouts of wildlife. Zarin emphatically let him leave, feeling confident about this beautiful neighborhood that seemed like home to her by now.

After Durgadas left, She saw this pair of hog deer eating grass by the bushes of bamboo trees ten meters away from her. She quietly positioned herself and her camera. She saw the deer through the lens and moved a little closer losing sight of the broken trunk ahead of her and tripped over. She fell with a massive thud which scared the deer away. She shrieked with pain and saw that the sharp edge of the trunk had torn her thigh. She was wearing safari shorts and the stream of blood was running from her naked thigh. She could not move. She opened her bag and took out her cell phone. It had no signal. She was stuck.

The blood was leaving her body with a rather dangerous pace. There was no sign of human life anywhere. She started feeling weak. Her eyes were not able to stay open anymore. She saw an army of  ant crawling towards the puddle of blood where she was lying helplessly. Even so, she was not scared. These ants, and that snake that looked like a hanging branch of a tree seemed much less harmful than her abusive boyfriend who she had dumped right before coming to India.

She was drowning into the deep darkness when she heard footsteps by the bushes of bamboo trees. She was too weak to feel scared of an wild animal. She laid there motionless. She saw a man who looked more like a standing crocodile walk towards her. His skin was black and thick. His teeth were long and sharp. He cautiously moved towards her with his red eyes widening as he saw her.

Zarin saw him opening her backpack and drowned into her ocean of darkness again. After sometime she woke up by a drop of dew that fell on her cheek. She looked around by only moving her eyes. Her bag was still there. Maybe he just took the money. At least he didn't kill her and made her his dinner. Or worse, he could have raped her.

She was feeling the life leaving her body. A slideshow of her life just flashed in front of her eyes.Her mother caressing her hair, her best friend- her dog Bittu, her first wildlife exhibition in Manhattan, her scared face when her boyfriend came home every night from Wall Street where he worked, the rainbow in her backyard, the smell of her favorite coffee - all of these and then there was just blank screen. She had left her world.

When she regained her consciousness, she found herself in a white room that looked like a hospital. She was surprised that she was alive. The nurse came by and told her she was found in the woods and now she was in Guwahati. It took her several weeks to recover fully. She had lost a lot of blood and could not walk for a long time.

The day she was leaving the hospital, the nurse gave her a packet.

Zarin asked - "What is it?"

"The guy who found you in the woods, left this for you when you were unconscious. He called the local police and they called the ambulance and eventually you ended up in this hospital. He said he got this for his daughter's wedding who was almost the same age as you, but she was kidnapped by Bodo militants and never returned.

Zarin remembered the last moments before she fainted. She thought that man had stolen her money. However, her money and everything else was safe in her backpack. She figured he took the cellphone out and took it away so he could get signal and call police.

Living all her life in the big city, full of skeptical and scared people, she no longer trusted human kind and stopped expecting compassion from them. However, now, she was filled with gratitude and love for this man who looked like a standing crocodile, and opened the packet. She found a marvelous Muga silk sari, manifesting the love and care of a father who could never marry off his daughter.