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It was one of the quieter afternoons. I realised there were more squirrels around than usual. Then I realised they were all looking at me. What I didn’t realise was that there was an even larger number of them on the neighbouring trees. Every one of them was looking at me.

Most of them were not even from any place nearby. I knew pretty much all of the squirrels near my house. They usually sat on ledges and waited for biscuit crumbs. And there were only two of them, a couple by the looks of it.

One of the squirrels leapt at me. I instinctively moved my arm to block it and felt something sting me just above the elbow. There was a small white wooden cone stuck in my arm. I pulled it out and saw it was hollow and was dripping thick orange goo. The one that had stabbed me had leapt off and was standing in front of me.

“It won’t last long,” he said to the squirrel standing next to him. “Let’s get this over with. We can’t afford another injection.”

I suppressed an idiotic gape. The injection was making me alert and somehow also making all this believable. My surprise quickly melted away.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I was answered by the one who had stabbed me. “I am Chimpu Kumar. Captain of the Sundarvan Sabertooths.”

“Which Sundarvan are you talking about?” I asked.

“Sundarvan is everywhere!” they all squeaked in chorus. Apparently they were sentimental about this. I decide not to press the point.

“Sage Valmiki will now talk to you,” Chimpu Kumar informed me and backed away along with several others. A human-sized image flickered into clarity in front of me.

It was an old man, ancient even, dressed in white like an ascetic. If I didn’t know better (it was some kind of hallucinogen-induced holographic projection), I could have sworn the image had been photoshopped. The man looked too clean for comfort.

“You would be the one that has been stealing from my epic,” he said, ancient and annoyed.

“Not really,” I said. “I… See it’s not really…”

“Silence!” he roared.

“Listen… O sage Valmiki… may I call you Val?” I suggested, trying to break the ice.

“You most certainly may not,” said the sage sourly.

“Miki then?”

One of the squirrels came forward and stamped on my foot. It didn’t hurt, but it was very insulting. Especially since several of them pointed at me and laughed derisively after that.

I kept my wits about me, “I am not the only one that did it. Your work has inspired hundreds of others all over the world. And besides, we write in different languages. You did verse, I do a blog.”

Valmiki raised an arm to silence the odd squeak from here and there in the crowd around us. Then he said, “Everyone will be held accountable. And you must stop any more of your retellings.”

The Sabertooths cheered. Already, my understanding of their talk was failing. I didn’t like this at all. Nobody tells bloggers what to do. Nobody!

But I knew I had little chance of bringing down Valmiki. He is immortal. And he used to be a bandit. The thing to do would be to distract him. Get him working on something that would keep him occupied for long.

Chimpu Kumar moved forward and said something. I didn’t get any of it. It couldn’t possibly have been anything nice, because they all laughed immediately afterwards. An idea came flying into my head from somewhere dark and nasty.

I lifted my leg and brought my foot down upon Chimpu Kumar, pinning down his right hind paw under my heel. His face grew contorted with pain and his eyes watered. I hated myself for doing this and tore my eyes away from the squirrel.

The rest of the Sabertooths were frozen in shock. Partly because they had not expected this from me, and partly because, murderous or not, they were still little squirrels. And then I saw the sage. He was as much in pain as Chimpu himself, perhaps more. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes were brimming with tears.

Then he started mumbling. I took a second or so to realise he was mumbling in Sanskrit. And it rhymed. It was a pity I didn’t understand a thing.

The sage faded, flickered and vanished. Chimpu Kumar was gone from under my foot. Gone also was all of the Sundarvan Sabertooth squad. With any luck, Valmiki would get to work on his next epic and forget all about the Ramayan retellings. I imagined Lord Ganesh flexing his fingers and packing his bags for Sundarvan.

As for Chimpu Kumar, he would thank me someday. He and I would share footnote space in the new epic, like the Kraunchya bird and the hunter.

Posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 10:35 am and filed under adventures, ramayan.

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