Wednesday 8 April 2015




Glow-worms

The temple was surrounded by an unkempt garden; there were shrubs growing everywhere without restraint; monkeys that loved to jump and play; chirpy birds and any number of creepy worms and beautiful butterflies.

Mother insisted that, on the eve of school examination, I had to visit the temple and seek Lord’s blessings. Every prayer had to end with three circumambulations of the temple.

It was already dark; and I was scared. But still I had to go. I prayed and began to circumambulate the temple with some trepidation.

Backside of temple was poorly lit and every shrub appeared like a sleeping monster. Suddenly power went off.  Darkness enveloped me; in an instant every monster in the garden awoke from its slumber.

Scared, I just stood rooted to the ground.

And then, to my astonishment, I saw little stars twinkling everywhere. It was amazing and unbelievable. Some twinkling stars were flitting around me; a couple of stars landed softly on my arm.

Carefully, I pocketed two twinkling stars.

“Why did you catch glow-worms? Release them,” mother admonished me, pointing at my shirt pocket.

“These are stars from the Milky Way.”

But mother was right; I had two glow-worms in my pocket.

I released the glow-worms and still felt elated.
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G for Glow-worms

You may like to read my earlier posts

11 comments:

  1. how lovely... I love glow-worms :-)

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  2. Reminded me of my childhood days.. now its a concrete jungle where I stay.. No glow-worms!! only in stories :(

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  3. I see why your blog is entitled "Oblique View!" I really like your slightly off-kilter observations. Thanks for stopping at my blog, and have fun with the rest of the alphabet!

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  4. Delightful! And such innocence. She deserved to pass her examinations that's for sure.

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  6. We used to capture fire flies in a jar then let them go. No sense keeping them as they die quickly. At least in a jar. Probably because we didn;t know to poke holes in the lid so they could breath.

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