Episode 7.1 (When Frodo flew......Alas!!!)

P.S. : The following is a slight detour from the normal course of the story and should as well be printed after Episode 8. However due to some reasons, its printing was essential. May the readers know Frodo the way Prashant and Karuna did.

They say turtles live for over hundred years. The paradox was self emanating from the situation no one had wanted and no one had foreseen. It was only minutes before they would discover the lifeless ‘Frodo’ floating in silent peace in his blue tub; the water muddy probably with his last act of self loathing or his first act of silent disapproval.
Wait! I never told you about ‘Frodo’ then! Did I??

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Prashant was brushing his teeth in his flat that morning, admiring the new strands of goatee that had grown overnight after he had shaved and cologned. There was an inherent laziness in this act. He used to call it ‘calculated precision’, but the taxonomy was invalid. It was just dismal laziness. Not far from where he was staying, Karuna was tending her hair in front of the mirror humming softly “Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna…” oblivious to the death which had silently crept into the blue tub which lay quietly disarrayed near the window.
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A few minutes later Prashant received the call. Karuna was crying at the other end. What he heard did not make much sense. He heard the muffled words ‘Frodo’, ‘dead’, ’why’ and ‘Fuck’. He stopped the narcissism, splashed his face with cold water, rinsed quickly, bespectacled himself and ran. It is not that there were no taxis outside. It was just that running seemed the perfect escape. It consumed him with exhaustion tripping his brain from thinking too much. For a moment he cursed himself for the selfishness and his hatred for reality. The scene however could only be delayed but not avoided.

He reached outside flat 4/110 of Juhu Tarang building and rang the bell with a heavy heart. In some ways he had anticipated the gloom inside the hall but as he entered, the intensity of the loss hit him tremendously. Karuna sat near the window staring into her phone. He walked silently up to her. He wanted to say all sorts of comforting things but he ended up saying
“C’mon! It was just a turtle!!”
He knew he had delivered the most impolite condolence. She slapped him in his face and clung to his shirt. The crying was inevitable; the loss was not!
“How?” he asked putting a hand around her back.
“I don’t know. Why?” He had no answer.
“Maybe God works in mysterious ways and they are stupid most of the times.” She answered the question she herself had posed in silent dejection. It sure was a ponderous question. Intuition is at such a handicap at such times that the mind forgets see through things.

“Let’s go out for a walk. It will help you feel better!” his consolation continued.
“I don’t need a fucking excuse to escape the scene. Don’t you get it? Frodo is gone. The flying Frodo is no more. He has probably flown aw…..ay too….fa..r” she tried to shout but her words failed her. But now that she had got all verbal, the fact that the tiny turtle was dead was all the more hard hitting.

“I need to inform Aksu but I can’t do it on phone.” She sat fiddling with the phone but not gathering the courage to make the dreadful call.
He sat clinging her close to her thinking about the day he had first met Frodo; the day Karuna, Aksu and Mala had painted Frodo’s shell with nail paint; the day he had held Frodo on his palm and he had poked his head out of his tiny shell , slowly turning it in all directions like a visitor exploring a newfound city; how he had spread his arms and legs like a bird making his first attempt to fly out of his grasp- that was the day he had named him ‘the flying Frodo’. He remembered his quick recoil in his shell as he had tapped him on his forehead. ‘Ahh!! Shy Frodo!!’. So many names seemed nominal now that the face behind them was lost in water. He felt an itch and remembered how Frodo used to dig his tiny nails in his hand as he looked for a stable substrate to walk upon. He laughed in futile irony!

“Fuck this! I am leaving!” He had tears in his eyes as he said this.
“I’ll come with you.” They did need an escape from all this but the silently floating Frodo in his blue tub was probably smiling beneath his shell.

Prashant scanned the room one last time. At one end was Frodo swaying in his humble abode and at the other end on the table lay the yellow cylindrical bottle titled ‘ToTo Food’ staring in blank dismay at the sudden death of someone it had so happily fed and probably tried to feed during the last minutes as some uneaten pellets of ‘ToTo Food’ lay untouched in the blue tub.
****** end of episode***