Musings of a Miniature Reptile

Yet another exacting week laden with issues

Surpassed. To restore a semblance of work-life stability

I desperately sought to re-energize enervated tissues

Helped on by a night of much needed somnal tranquility

Saturday morning, contenting myself to green tea and wafers, aberrations

From my usual menu, l meditatively ambled thru the hall

Paving way for dispiriting corporate ruminations

As a crackle directed my attention towards the papery wall

First thoughts were wilted leaves withering

Outside, aftermaths of the preceding night’s blizzard

Only to realize sounds were indicative of slithering

By a squirmy little pale greened lizard

It slowly crept up behind a beetle sitting dull

Blissfully unaware of the danger lurking at heel

Seconds later ensnared by the salivating pull

Of the lizard, as it embarked on its meal

As the lizard was halfway thru the munching

Keenly scrutinizing a nearby cricket taking flight

I scornfully resumed my own brunching

Cocking an eye at the lizard pitying its plight

It must be thinking, I surmised, the poor creature

"I am pitifully left to wallow

On walled edifices, to the mercy of nature

Little insects are all that I can swallow"

"Whilst my prehistoric ancestors, now long gone

Strode like colossuses on the surface of our planet

Ruling every piece of earth they set foot upon

It's miserable that I hardly land anything in my dragnet"

"Let alone the dinosaurs", pondered the lizard

"How I wish I could for one day return to roots more native

If only there were a portly wizard

Who could transfigure me to my not-so-distant relative"

"The deadly crocodile that infests rivers

Commands fear and awe from one and all

Indisputable fluvial emperor, sight of which sends shivers

Down the spine", mused the drop of crocodile on the wall

"Neither do I have the enviable agility

To glide and grab the far-off prey without a pause

Nor the resources, wherewithal or capability

To rip apart the hapless game with fanged maws"

"Leave aside the crocodile too, perhaps a shade too Utopian

At the least, I deserve something akin to my elder cousins

The Rupestrine Iguana or the Arboreal Chameleon, not a Dystopian

Reality - Relegation to the dregs of residential dustbins"

"Thankfully, regards my appetite I won’t inveigh

To the mysteries of evolution I will kowtow

A beetle a day keeps the doctor away

Suffices to serve as my living motto"

"All in all, of my existence, there isn't a fraction

Of awe-worthiness, except my walled perambulation

Courtesy Van Der Waals forces of attraction

If that’s a mere ounce of consolation"

The miniature reptile thus concluding cogitations in darkness

Sluggishly moved towards its zone of twilight

Snuggling comfortably in the dampness

Of the ramparts adjoining the flickering tubelight

Beneath the light, on a chair, four feet below

Nibbling the last of wafers, picking an apple

I sat, sighing, turning a despondent fellow

Staring bleakly ahead at the tribulations dispensed by life to grapple

Take the lizard’s case, I mused, effusing sympathy

"It considers its life as a rootless existence", I concluded in a gist

Exuding a virtuoso exhibition of reptilian telepathy

Which might have aroused the interests of any herpetologist

Inwardly though on self-introspection practically

I couldn’t but help feel the passing of identical themes

Of Self-pity gripping me not so antithetically

To that of the lizard's on absence of life in more exalted realms

We Indians, aren’t too different, aspersions  

Cast apart, we too were mighty rulers, with no close match

Falling eventual prey to divisive strategies of foreign incursions

Presenting a deplorable sight, slowly building from scratch

First the Greeks followed by The Arabs, The Mughal

Empire, and lately yet most impactfully, the Europeans, the prime invader

Plundered us, looting the country and its people of wealth so regal

Upshot of the rapacity - Our Esteem, Pride and honour plummeted rungs down the ladder

For the lizard atleast the evolutionary harbinger

Was purely biological, it needn’t suffer pangs of guilt

To Darwinism it rightfully will point its finger,

Unlike us men whose own fate, block by block we built

Nevertheless today as it remains destined

Pandering to indulgences of Mutual condolence

Human and reptilian fates remain intertwined

Nobody gives a bloody tuppence

On a note thus melancholic and near lachrymal

Two hearts now beating as one, to the lizard, my hat I doffed,

When rudely interrupted by my British Boss, I stopped waxing lyrical

The slave in me awoke, answered the phone and courteously coughed

Servitudinal remnants from the evening before, carefully canned overnight

Were back at the grand old stand again working with all their might