Rear Vision

 

It happened a few days back. I was on my way to work. My drive is about forty-five minutes in the morning. We start work quite early, well before traffic picks up. The only problems I encounter are the occasional traffic snarls at the junctions near the schools, which also open quite early in Chennai. This was an uneventful day, I had crossed almost eighty per cent of the distance to my office.

As I turned from one road to join another and picked up speed seeing an empty stretch ahead, I saw something falling from the sky on to the road right in front of me, just a little beyond running-over distance. I thought I saw something splotch flat on the road, stay still two shining eyes looking at me scared, with a bushy brush-like hind portion.

Adrenalin pumping, I quickly swerved a little to the right to avoid running over it. Now that both I and ‘it’ were safe, curiosity got the better of anxiety within a fraction of a second, and I wanted to see what it was that fell on the ground. Could it be a squirrel? But there was no tree above me. Could it have been a bird of some sort? But, surely, there were no wings. A rodent with bulging eyes, perhaps? I couldn’t figure out one with a bushy-brushy back, either.

I decided to stop guessing and see it myself to ascertain what the hell it could be. I adjusted the rear view mirror – and there it was, the brush-like portion lifting and flying vertically upwards! Confused, I adjusted the mirror to catch a better view, but all I could see was that a crow was holding this damn thing tightly and soaring up fast out of my mirror.

Obviously, that animal must have been some prey that somehow escaped the crow’s clutch, falling on the road from a height only to lose consciousness and sit dazed for a moment before losing the battle again to the crow.

Well, life unfolds in different ways for different lives.

July 5, 2020