The OTHERS

'When you face a dilemma in your life just listen what your heart tells you. Do not bother to reason or doubt your decision later', my father always motivated me. We were siting on the heap of ice on a cold afternoon. Now you may think that this fella must be from some northen europen side or above Canada regions, because there are quite less places in the world which gives cold afternoon. I was on the southmost part of the Earth. I was on the Antartica. Don't misjudge my statements, I was not born here, but our family migrated here. Thats a long story. 'Antartica has the toughest atmosphere for living things to survive', I often heard my father telling his fellas. But frankly speaking, I never found any problems with the surroundings. You could see the white ice all upto the horizon and never bother to focus on the fact that eyesight was the most vulnerable part of your senses, there. We were always moving from one part of the shore to another. We had to leave near the shores because as far as we were concerned, 'fishes are the only dishes!!' even the harder part was the determination which one has to achieve to take a jump in the ice cold water. When your body first hits the water, the splashes of water are more like the fire trying to burn all your skin to reach your heart and tear it apart. But the good thing was all in my family were good swimmers. My mother used to tell me the stories when she and my father used to go to the depths of ocean to grab our food when I was a kid. Now I hunt for my own. My mother never like the word 'hunt'. She used to say that what we do is far more sophisticated than what real hunting was. There were many stories about the OTHERS. Some told that they were the creatures from the far lands, some doubted that they came from sky. But no one was sure about their existance except for 'Piago', the oldest member of our tribe. He told us the story of his first and only encounter with those creatures, far years ago. He was lost in the ocean while fishing and went in the exact oppposite directions of the shore, after swimming for nearly half an hour, he realized that he chose the wrong path. He turned around and started swimming back but suddenly what he saw made his whole body numb. He saw the black silhoutte of something underneath the water. It was coming near him. He tried really hard to resemble the shape of the thing with any known sea creatures but it was nothing like he have ever seen before. It approached him with fast speed. Somehow he managed to dodge it. He heard screeching sound even in the water. He swam with the every bit of his strength and after any hour of swimming he reached the shore. Till today I feel the sweat on my neck every time I hear the same story. Once I asked my father, 'Could there be life other than ours?' 'This world is more hostile than what we can imagine.' I could sense he did not want to talk about it. So that was it. Neither did I care, because after all, we believe what we see. But I never knew I will have to see what I never believed.
It was the dark days as, 'for 6 months the Sun was the guest, we managed without him for the rest' We were all moving down the shore to the warmer parts with more fishing opportunities. Suddenly I started hearing some strange voices and the earth started quivering. 'This must be the ice breaking from the island', my father said anxiously. But the sound started becoming louder and louder. Suddenly, we all realised that it was not the ice, the massive structure from the sky was coming near to the island. 'Others have come, run for your life', Piago shouted and started running away. Suddenly the panick rose into the tribe and everybody was horrorstruck. Everybody started running to the shore. 'Run and swim down to the other island.', my father cried to all the tribe members and jumped into the ocean. my mother and little brother followed him as did the rest of the tribe members. Suddenly I was the only one left of the shore. 'Why should I go? This is our land. Why should we run?', I thought to myself. I remembered my fathers words, 'This world is more hostile than we imagined', a wave of shock reached me. Suddenly I turned back to see the bird like structure from the sky landed on the island, and then for the first time I sa them, OTHERS. They came from within the huge structures with many things on their hands. There were many flashes of lights on hands and faces of many of them. They seemed to be from some other planets. They were scary but not hostile for sure. On one side, I saw all my tribe members and family running for their life and I saw the strange creatures standing on the island. I remembered my last talk with my father. He said, 'When you face dilemma in your life just listen what your heart tells you. Dont bother to reason or doubt your decisions later.' I started approaching towards the OTHERS. One of them saw me and cried with happyness. The other creature threw the dart from something towards me. Within the two seconds of the dart approaching me, I realized that I took wrong decision, but this time I was not going to doubt my decisions. After all life is all about uncertain and random possibilities. The dart struck me right into the neck and my visiblity started blurring. Before I felt unconscious, all I heard was hostile creature telling to the happy creature, 'Jimmy, At last we found Penguins on Antartica!!!!!'
[Writer got the inspiration from the movie HAPPY FEET.]