AFTER THE FALL
The travelling circus. The cursed lion.
The day he found his parent's being gobbled up by the lion. His kind circus
manager who turned out to be his grandfather. Staying with his aunt and her
dog. Over-fondness to Tandoori chicken. How he recoiled at the very thought of
Dhoklas. How he killed his aunt and her dog. The man stealing dhoklas from the
shop, who was actually a penniless drug-addict
stealing the drugged dhoklas to extract the cocaine from it later, and
the same person who shot Pingo and handed him over to the dealers.
The Dhokla scandal. Whirring machineries. The
drugs. The injury on his hand. The pain. The fear. The success. The fear again.
D.H.O.K.L.A. The fall.
Pingo's life was flashing by him as he fell
several miles an hour from thousands of feet in the air. The fall. He
barely remembered it, although it all took place not more than a minute ago. He
vaguely remembered an air-hostess. A smile on her face, and then a dark look
which glowed with hatred. It was very cold. He shivered hard. Furious winds
gushed against his face. A leg of Tandoori chicken fell out of his pocket. It
fell a long way, splashing against the ocean below. After a few more minutes,
due to the freezing winds and the gushing speed, Pingo could take no more. He
blacked out.
After being out for like something which
felt like forever, he slowly started to regain consciousness. Slowly, he
drifted back to life. Soon after, he discovered the reason for his regained
consciousness was a bowl of Tandoori Chicken in a bedside table. He wasted no
time in finishing off the bowl. Now, energy started oozing into him and he got
up from his bed with a start. He felt powerful and strong, and not like someone
who was violently pushed off a plane mid-air. But before he could move any
further, a volley of questions flooded his mind.
Where am I? Who saved me? What happened
after I fell? Where's grandad?
He took a quick look around his room, and
found it to be bright with colours. Everywhere he looked, he found fan posters
of popular superheroes. He found Superman, Green Lantern, Iron Man, Hulk.
Pictures of them were stuck everywhere. He felt like he was in some Hollywood
poster shop. The bed he was sleeping on had a Spiderman blanket. Apart from
that, the room was mostly simple. It had
a closet, a bed-side table, a cupboard, a study table, two chairs and an exit
door. He walked out of it and found a huge sitting room with a large round
conference table. There were wooden cushioned chairs placed around it. Most of
the chairs were vacant but some had strange teenagers sitting on it. Strange in
the sense, their dressing sense was a bit unconventional. The one who was
sitting closest to him reading a newspaper wore a black tight-fitting jump-suit
with little silhouettes of umbrellas printed on it all over. Hearing Pingo,
this umbrella-guy swept around and said in a cool clear voice,
“Hello Pingo, welcome
to the House of Heroes.”
