I'm the kind of person who can get lost in the lane beside my house, so I was banking entirely upon my friends' sense of direction to take me there.All of a sudden Poornima shouted "Lets get off now !!! " And we did. Almost got hit by a scooter in the process.All of a sudden I felt a rumbling in my stomach and realised I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.It was then that my eyes fell on Sree Bhavani Chaat Bandi.I Felt a sunnden urge to have Samosa Ragda and ran down the pavement to the bandi.My friends followed suit, laughing because they thought I was acting like a lunatic.
The chaat was average to say the most, but what I cherished most of my chaat experience was yet to come.As I was really hungry I was done eating in two minutes (literally !) and I had to wait for my friends who were still slowly working their way through the not-so-tasty chaat.I leaned against the railing beside the Bandi titled my head backwards to get some rest.BAD IDEA.The sun pierced my eyes like a thousand needles and I closed my eyes for a proper five minutes , till the bright orange in my eyes faded out.
It was then that I heard IT ! Initially it sounded like the crunching of a piece of plastic paper.And then I heard the Squeak! I turned around and looked behing the bars of the railing.Six feet under me on the other side of the railing was a dumping ground , and there, scurrying among the trash were ten or twenty rats. I have never seen them so close.[Well actually I did once, but I screamed loudly enough to wake up the neighbours and jumped so fast onto the bed that I did not really get to SEE it]
Usually I would have been disgusted but God knows why, that day I was amused ! I looked at one of them, nibbling a piece of trash, twitching its nose and squeaking out to its friend.Its friend joined it and they twitched their noses together and stared into the distance like long lost lovers, completely unaware that one blundering fool was disrupting their privacy.
As usual I flicked out my phone and clicked a few pictures of those cute little rats.I cant believe I'm saying this, but they were really really cute ! With big black eyes and twitchy little noses.If I had been a rodent lover I would have definitely taken one home and put it in a little glass box with a treadmill and a water bowl.Alas ! A bus blew its horn really loudly on the road behind us and it sent the many Stuart Littles scurrying away into the trash. [In case you are ging to tell me that Stuart Little was a mouse, stop right there.I will not appreciate it .. hehe]
I turned back to face the road, cursing the bus driver for having ruined that moment.And suddenly in my mind's eye I could see Remy cooking up his Ratatouille, smiling under his toque with stars in his beady black eyes.. And then those black eyes became the eyes of the twitchy little rats I had just seen.I wondered ,"What would they look like in an apron?"
I went back home that day and switched on the TV, tuned into cartoon network and smiled, wondering what must have inspired the creators of Tom and Jerry.Must have been something like what I had just seen.
