Martian in the Land of Lilliputians

“Are you really from Mars?” Saif asks me in his usual pitch of voice: loud. He apparently presumes I am sitting on the ceiling fan. 

“Saif, I am near. I can even hear you whisper. Yes, I am from Mars.”

Saif tries to lower his voice a notch. He doesn’t succeed.

 “No, you are not. You make up stories, and you don’t understand the language of birds and animals. You have made up also those stories about Selfishia and Kayseria.”

“Saif, first you doubt my Martian antecedents and then you challenge my communication abilities. Okay, if you don’t want to believe it, don’t,” I say with Martian nonchalance.

“But why do you say so? Okay, now that the Curiosity Rover has landed on Mars will you go back?”

“I don’t need any curiosity rover. I can go there on my own volition, just by snapping my fingers and closing my eyes.” Martian nonchalance helps to make your point.

“I know this can’t be true. You are not from Mars,” Saif asserts his nine years old adult-hood.

“Okay, don’t believe it,” I shrug my shoulders like a Martian who doesn’t care a wee bit about what the earthlings say about her.

Saif now turns towards his father: “Baba, is your sister from Mars?”

Baba is working on his laptop but manages to look up, pause and utter, “If she says so.”

Now the statement that Baba makes does not stem from any sense of familial obligation. It is not made to validate the antecedents of a Martian sister. The thing is when you are CEO of LumenSoft, which Baba is, then nothing else in the world is worth commenting upon unless it has something to do with Candela. And Mars can only become an interesting place if some retail brand decides to open up a store there.

Here Saif now turns to Dado.

“Dado, is your daughter from Mars?”

Dado is like: “Khamkha. She is my daughter.” Dado asserts her ownership rights.

Now Omar comes running to give his verdict on the situation at hand. And he hollers as if communicating from another room. I decide not to play the role of 24/7 nagging adult and ignore Omar’s voice rising to a crescendo and probably resonating in our neighbor’s living room. Besides, what Omar has to say needs to be proclaimed loud and clear:

“I know she is an alien. She doesn’t sleep at night and she drinks tea and coffee all the time.”

Omar’s proclamation has piqued Roshan’s interest. “Do you have four arms, are you hiding two?” he asks me.

“No, I am a two-armed alien. They are a step up in the evolutionary ladder. Better than four-armed aliens.”

Roshan, of course, ignores my Darwinian eloquence.

Omar’s mind is racing, weighing cosmic considerations.

“So when you fly back, can I hold your feet and fly with you?” Omar is excited at the prospect of charting the cosmos by hanging on to my feet.

I feel good, somebody believes in me even if it is just an imaginative five years old. 

A perfect day.