Life!
I was speeding to work, and as usual, was engrossed in the early morning calls on the mobile, when I noticed it. It was clinging on for dear life, to the front windscreen of my Indica.
Actually it was right in front of me, almost at the eyeball level. That I missed it for the first couple of minuets of my drive, tells you how distracting it is to talk on a phone, even if you are using “hands free.” The phone engages the mind rather completely.
The wind hitting my car must have seemed like a raging hurricane to it. Try smashing the glass of your car’s windshield and then drive at around eighty km/ph. You would realize the force of the gale that hits you.
I forgot the phone, as I marveled at its tenacity, its ability to stay on the slippery surface.
I braked the car to a halt and peered at it through the see through barrier. It was frozen against the glass. It was tiny, just as big and thick, as my little finger, with a curved tail, that was almost twice its length. And it was petrified. A thin sheath of skin covered its small, protruding eyes, and its tiny jaw was frozen in determination, as it struggled to hang on. The almost non-existent claws of its feet were trying their best to dig into the hard, impenetrateble glass.
It was a newborn, common lizard, which inhabits our homes along with us. Just how did it choose to come along for a ride?
I am no lover of lizards. In fact they are downright eeky. Yet, I did not want it to die so soon after it was born. So I tapped at the glass trying to shoo it away. It did not move a muscle, except for a small, softly vibrating, twitch at its minuscule throat.
It was breathing. Other than that, it may well have been a small rubber stick-on toy that kids play with. As it chose to ignore my knocking, I wondered if I should get down and poke it with a piece of paper perhaps, to make it run away.
But instead, I started the car and moved on. This time, I eased my foot on the gas pedal. The wind pressure lessened. My tiny friend suddenly moved. It darted to my left, and in an instant disappeared down the hood.
There was a scalding hot engine there! If it survived that, it would encounter a host of pipes, not to mention a fan with wicked, ruthless blades!
Will it survive, I mused? I felt a kinship with the brave fellow, so far from home, so far away from his parents. Don’t we all cling on to something every day to live?Our work, relationships,status? Then I shook my head clear it of the defeatist thoughts. That is what life is all about.
That is the beauty of the life cycle. The moment you take birth you want to live, no matter how desperate the circumstance, how steep the odds against you. It is nature’s most deep-rooted principle. The survival instinct. The reason why the world is. Even that tiny being was not willing to give up on life without a fighting for it. All the way.
You may be a miniature, insignificant insect, doomed to perish the very night you are born. Yet for those few moments you celebrate. You zip around; you flirt with a flame or a skylight. You die, but before you die you live, Fully.
