Meeting An Alien

From my childhood, it was my habit to watch the night sky. When my parents died in an accident then I was only two. Death was unknown to me but the people I used to see and feel around me were no more and that loss of love made me cry bitterly. My grandmother took me to the rooftop and soothed my heaving bosom under her calloused gnarled hand imploring me to look at the sky, the new abode of my parents. They became the stars. And even when I grew enough to go and looked at the sky on my own my desire to touch and pluck those stars never diminished.

They were my friends in my pain and pleasure...in my sadness and excitement...all my adolescent buoyancy was tolerated by their silent encouragement. In this house, the house was mine but the real people had gone away, far far away...in that milky way and became stars. The people who were inhabiting in the name of my caregiver cared a fig for me except two times food … meagre and stuffed with chosen reprimands that were enough to kill my hunger. They were my spineless maternal uncle, his heavyweight wife, and my weak tearful grandma. They have no children and they cursed me for their inability to produce one. But at any cost, they stayed here and used my parents' insurance money. In my name, they live their parasite life.

So escaping on the terrace accompanying an old tattered mat with me was the best way to spend quality time far from their nagging. My grandma was old enough to climb the stairs and my aunt was too fat to move, my uncle never crossed a single line without my aunt's permission. So one was there to disturb the solitude.

The most adorable part of my rendezvous was to lie flat on the mat and watch the twinkling stars...count them one after another and give them separate names.

It became my regular habit ... finishing all the odd jobs before going to sleep and visiting the night sky even if for a brief moment. I used to check if any star had changed place, a new star had emerged, or an old star had lost its course into oblivion.

One night I found a big bright star just at the corner of the East Sky. It was not like the star...but something peculiar. Its bright blue colour was sparkling like a diamond. It was blinking constantly. With a hypnotised look I kept staring at it. Then I feel it was coming close...too close... spinning in a round orbit. It was rushing towards the Earth at a high speed. And I was afraid it was coming towards me...as it had detected me awake even at this odd hour on the rooftop.

I was so shocked that I forget to run down and call others. But whom should I call?

After some time I could not see anything. I waited with bated breath and then a peculiar bird came into my vision. It decelerated its speed and slowly plunged into the soft velvet night mist till its legs touched our roof floor

There was a hallow of mist cloaking it. When the must dispersed I found with my greatest astonishment a man was standing there.

He looked like a man if you judge him scientifically but to be more precise he was not like the men I met in my family and surroundings.

His beards and hairs were blue and he had a peculiar square head with blue squinting eyes.

He started watching me with his scanning eyes. Then he spoke out ...some sound ...that I presumed maybe his mother tongue but a foreign language for me. When I didn't respond he approached and sat at the edge of my old mat. My blood turned cold as I feel he is going to kill me.

But his eyes were soothing and kind and it changes colour from time to time. But most of the time it remained blue.

Gathering some course o buttered out valiantly,

" Who are you?"

He looked at me questioningly and then took out a radio-like box from his backpack and put it between us. Then he looked at me questioningly as if pleading for repeating the questions.

"Who are you?" I asked again cautiously.

This time the radio-like box said something to him and he smiled.

Then he said something bringing his mouth near the knob of the box and the box spoke out in perfect English.

" I'm Matihar-361 from Mars."

I understood immediately that the radio-like box was acting as an interpreter. It could convert languages into any language. And this way we started communicating each night whether it was a full moon or half moon. At last, I found someone to share my life...though he was not from my planet there was the interpreter radio to interpret our languages.

And my life changed a lot after this.