Flight by Rumjhum Biswas
Yesterday I felt waspish. I looked into the mirror and saw that it was true. I flew out of the window and found a leaf whispering
to a breeze. I saw an open mouthed flower sway on its hips. I felt a water molecule sizzle into steam on the bristles of my legs.
I felt good.
The world below me looked bright and beautiful. The world seemed to be waiting to be seized. I surveyed the show below my
whirring wings. I believed that I was a superior creature. I was beyond the copulations of a population in dismay of itself. But then,
I was feeling waspish, and I wasn’t going to pass that up. I had to do something waspish. So I zoomed around looking for a victim.
The flower faded into a distant blur. The breeze was a whistle behind me. Dust particles whizzed past in the opposite direction. I
swept my way through. The sun grew maddeningly hot. I flew with a shiver, the gelid touch of vaporized sweat on skin spurring me on.
I flew faster and faster. The cityscape slowed almost to a halt beneath my speed. A trickle of perspiration stayed suspended before
dropping like two thread syrup from the harried man’s jowl. I watched his eyes as I buzzed by. He was so sad with his worries. Oh
he was so sad! My sting quivered with pity. But I let him be. He was too sorry a figure to be my victim.
I zipped past the singed metal of vehicles that drag bodies to their destinations. I sneezed on the coughed up remnants of undigested
dreams that trailed in sooty spirals behind the cars. I took the nearest exit and landed in a library where my next venture stood,
contemplating the circles and dots that rise in air that has been stared at far too long.
There he was. Sitting with his words in ink and lead print, all scattered about him. Some words hung in the air open mouthed, too
shocked at being rejected to shut up and move. I could tell that he was an intellectual type. Perhaps a poet or an art critic. He took
his pot with pendulous ease. He seemed exciting at first approach. But when I went in for the kill, I found in him the limpness of a
spent blossom. He also had dirty fingernails.
My third was a female of uncertain age, preserved like Gorgonzola cheese. I am by nature heterosexual, but in times of famine my
tastes turn eclectic. I circled her a few times, before drawing close. But then before my horrified eyes, she turned. She turned right
around into a Tarantula. Her furry eyes eyed me greedily. A surge of adrenalin made my sting quiver. We could, perhaps we ought,
but my self preservation instinct overpowered the rest of me. I left her to taste the pheromones I scattered in the air as I zipped
away.
I cruised along the highway till I felt sick of the fumes and dust of movement without end or purpose. My head grew dizzy. My
sting turned flaccid. I felt ready to drop any moment. I needed a drink to soothe and revive me. Fast. I headed towards the
haven of spiked flora. The nectar I needed would be there, I presumed, and hope became a silver chalice in my bosom.
The scent of my descent captivated me. I reveled in my downward journey. I was sure to find my ecstasy here.
He turned out to be a delectable mass of ruddy flesh. An oasis to one just returned from the salty seas. A vision of earthly delight
in a tubular steel and glass covered paradise. This was a busy place of ecstasy seekers, some even courting annihilation. While
some stretched out supplicant hands in search of Nirvana.
Here, in this place of seekers, I was a loner - a solitary buzzword in a crowd of silence- mongering sheep. I felt myself, nay,
indeed I knew myself to be an evolved creature; one that was more self assured and confident than Narcissus.
I descended with easy spirals into the slow motion of real time. My body moved with liquid smoothness. I savored every second
of my descent; my sting poised and ready to spring.
The world was a haze above me, behind me and beside me. Ahead was this manly manna from heaven. At first in a slit and then
in a tunnel, I could sense the nectar redolent beneath. This time the world moved with dizzying speed, whereas I wafted in a time
warp exclusively mine. I hovered. I dipped. I dove in for the kill.
I would give him his money’s worth and ensure that the look of ecstasy remained long enough for the officers of societal law and
order to be satisfied with the pictures they took. I would ensure his carapace was worth it even after I had emptied it to the dregs.
I believe their flights of fancy must ride on one filament of truth. I believe I owe my victims that much.
They say you believe what you wish to believe. You see what you wish to see. The path to death is lined with silk. And self
realization always comes a second too late. True, very true. But that is a philosophy for the victims, not me.
I need only look into my mirror. And my mirror never lies. It was right there on its smooth polished surface that I learned the
best and hardest truths of life. As for my latest escapade, well, I did say that I was feeling waspish.
________________________
Rumjhum Biswas’s fiction and poetry have been published in all five continents in print and in
online journals and anthologies. She has won prizes in poetry in India and was long listed in the
2006 Bridport Poetry Prize. One of her stories was among the notable stories of 2007 in Story
South’s Million Writers’ of the Year Award. Shewas a participating poet during The Prakriti
Foundation’s poetry festival in 2008. In 2009 she was a featured poet at the Poetry Slam jointly
organized by the US Consul General, Chennai and The Prakriti Foundation. She blogs at:
http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/
to a breeze. I saw an open mouthed flower sway on its hips. I felt a water molecule sizzle into steam on the bristles of my legs.
I felt good.
The world below me looked bright and beautiful. The world seemed to be waiting to be seized. I surveyed the show below my
whirring wings. I believed that I was a superior creature. I was beyond the copulations of a population in dismay of itself. But then,
I was feeling waspish, and I wasn’t going to pass that up. I had to do something waspish. So I zoomed around looking for a victim.
The flower faded into a distant blur. The breeze was a whistle behind me. Dust particles whizzed past in the opposite direction. I
swept my way through. The sun grew maddeningly hot. I flew with a shiver, the gelid touch of vaporized sweat on skin spurring me on.
I flew faster and faster. The cityscape slowed almost to a halt beneath my speed. A trickle of perspiration stayed suspended before
dropping like two thread syrup from the harried man’s jowl. I watched his eyes as I buzzed by. He was so sad with his worries. Oh
he was so sad! My sting quivered with pity. But I let him be. He was too sorry a figure to be my victim.
I zipped past the singed metal of vehicles that drag bodies to their destinations. I sneezed on the coughed up remnants of undigested
dreams that trailed in sooty spirals behind the cars. I took the nearest exit and landed in a library where my next venture stood,
contemplating the circles and dots that rise in air that has been stared at far too long.
There he was. Sitting with his words in ink and lead print, all scattered about him. Some words hung in the air open mouthed, too
shocked at being rejected to shut up and move. I could tell that he was an intellectual type. Perhaps a poet or an art critic. He took
his pot with pendulous ease. He seemed exciting at first approach. But when I went in for the kill, I found in him the limpness of a
spent blossom. He also had dirty fingernails.
My third was a female of uncertain age, preserved like Gorgonzola cheese. I am by nature heterosexual, but in times of famine my
tastes turn eclectic. I circled her a few times, before drawing close. But then before my horrified eyes, she turned. She turned right
around into a Tarantula. Her furry eyes eyed me greedily. A surge of adrenalin made my sting quiver. We could, perhaps we ought,
but my self preservation instinct overpowered the rest of me. I left her to taste the pheromones I scattered in the air as I zipped
away.
I cruised along the highway till I felt sick of the fumes and dust of movement without end or purpose. My head grew dizzy. My
sting turned flaccid. I felt ready to drop any moment. I needed a drink to soothe and revive me. Fast. I headed towards the
haven of spiked flora. The nectar I needed would be there, I presumed, and hope became a silver chalice in my bosom.
The scent of my descent captivated me. I reveled in my downward journey. I was sure to find my ecstasy here.
He turned out to be a delectable mass of ruddy flesh. An oasis to one just returned from the salty seas. A vision of earthly delight
in a tubular steel and glass covered paradise. This was a busy place of ecstasy seekers, some even courting annihilation. While
some stretched out supplicant hands in search of Nirvana.
Here, in this place of seekers, I was a loner - a solitary buzzword in a crowd of silence- mongering sheep. I felt myself, nay,
indeed I knew myself to be an evolved creature; one that was more self assured and confident than Narcissus.
I descended with easy spirals into the slow motion of real time. My body moved with liquid smoothness. I savored every second
of my descent; my sting poised and ready to spring.
The world was a haze above me, behind me and beside me. Ahead was this manly manna from heaven. At first in a slit and then
in a tunnel, I could sense the nectar redolent beneath. This time the world moved with dizzying speed, whereas I wafted in a time
warp exclusively mine. I hovered. I dipped. I dove in for the kill.
I would give him his money’s worth and ensure that the look of ecstasy remained long enough for the officers of societal law and
order to be satisfied with the pictures they took. I would ensure his carapace was worth it even after I had emptied it to the dregs.
I believe their flights of fancy must ride on one filament of truth. I believe I owe my victims that much.
They say you believe what you wish to believe. You see what you wish to see. The path to death is lined with silk. And self
realization always comes a second too late. True, very true. But that is a philosophy for the victims, not me.
I need only look into my mirror. And my mirror never lies. It was right there on its smooth polished surface that I learned the
best and hardest truths of life. As for my latest escapade, well, I did say that I was feeling waspish.
________________________
Rumjhum Biswas’s fiction and poetry have been published in all five continents in print and in
online journals and anthologies. She has won prizes in poetry in India and was long listed in the
2006 Bridport Poetry Prize. One of her stories was among the notable stories of 2007 in Story
South’s Million Writers’ of the Year Award. Shewas a participating poet during The Prakriti
Foundation’s poetry festival in 2008. In 2009 she was a featured poet at the Poetry Slam jointly
organized by the US Consul General, Chennai and The Prakriti Foundation. She blogs at:
http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/