The Toad

I was 6 or 7 or 8. and walking home from school. My parents always made sure I was accompanied to school by someone. A maid or someone. It’s still a profession in suburbs by the way.. Old women who walk children to school. They carry all their schoolbags and waterbags or tiffin baskets. But you have to be a woman and you're preferred if you're old.

I pretended to be sensitive as a child. So I never gave my school bag to the lady. But I always asked her to walk from as far away from me as her conscience would allow her to. So I’d feel asif I were walking alone.

I’ll talk more about walking alone a bit later.

So I was walking home. It was raining. I must've lost my umbrella as usual or I must not be wearing my raincoat so that I could feel the rain. (I told you, I pretended to be sensitive as a child.) I used to really like the rain. But I always thought a man may choose to become anything he wants in life, but he should never become the rain in Mumbai. You’re hated for coming and you're hated for not coming too.

I’ll talk more about Bombay rains a bit later.

So I was walking in the rain. Drenched. My schoolbag getting wet and the maid looking on helplessly at me from her umbrella from as far away from me as her conscience would allow her.

There was a small playground with red soil. Very dusty. And always behind a closed door. But during the rain, it'd be full of mud. i imagined quicksand must look like this. Anyway.

So one monsoon, i noticed HUGE frogs sitting in the mud. They were HUGE. as big as a big rat. Frogs toads, whatever, it's called 'Bedook' ( i think that's a better word anyway.) so Big yellow bedooks. And spots all over them. Also getting drenched in rain.

I loved animals. (For reasons I have specified earlier) but something about those bedooks really scared me. I was never afraid of cats big dogs, even cows with horns. But the bedook scared me.

It was asif it was a being stuck in the middle of vegetation and animals. It had big eyes and it never blinked. Raindrops went into its eyes and it would not blink. And some of them croaked, but they didn't open their mouths when they did that. They had yellow ski with spots and looked like a diseased human skin. I mean they had no fur or pincers or any of that stuff. Plain skin and they did not react to anything. But they were alive.

They scared me. And I flung a stone at them. Not a pebble, a stone. I wanted to see them move.

The stone landed in the mud and splashed a bit but they didn't move. Then I targeted one of them. A big one. And threw a stone straight at him. He didn't even blink. The stone hit him, he reclined a little, but that was more like how a sofa would go in if sit on it and got back to its position staring straight at me.


I ran as far away as possible from those things.

I didn't know what scared me really, but it was this numbness I felt. This coldness. This tendency not to even move after being hit and this half alive state. I don't know. I was really scared.

Later when I went home I found out that they are hiding during the rest of the seasons and come out only during monsoons. I didn't want to see them again.

I thought a man may become whatever he wants to in life, but he must not become a toad.


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The Toad.