It was a lambent morning, lit up by the sun , blazing gently in the far-off , cloudy sky . Wind rustled around ; Birds winged around, chirping and cooing . Rehen sat smugly on the wooden chair , flipping through The Times Of India , by the window , looking out on sprawling a tree .

A couple of yellow wasps buzzed through the window into the room where Rehen's little , adorable son , Isha , lay fast asleep , safely hedged around by a mosquito net . The buzzing sound left a trail behind , which caught his attention. He looked up and then , around , trying to make sense of the sound , the buzz now reduced to a low hum . He stood up from the chair , leaving it swinging back and forth like a pendulum , and stealthily , paced into the room , following the humming trail . He was glued to the spot , seeing the wasps , hovering over the mosquito net in which his son was in sound sleep . The newspaper lay firmly clasped in his right hand .Sensing potential threat , he started swinging the newspaper around while hissing tremulously , in a desperate attempt to drive away those pesky wasps . Now , the wasps , being alert , buzzed away right through the window of the room . Rehen's eyes followed them outside through the window onto their nests that hung from a tenuous branch of the tree that stood by the window where he sat , a few minutes back , cozily reading the newspaper .

He was rivetted to the ground, noticing two sturdy nests which a swarm of wasps had surreptitiously built in the tree contiguous to the window. He, at once , pictured his sleeping son , being invaded , swarmed and stung sharply by an army of wasps . At this , he felt his spine chilling down . He thought hard ; wracked his brain , envisioning ways ----- ways to dispose of those invaders , camouflaging in the tree . He sank into the chair , fidgety and was lost in absorptions , weighing up options : he would have the window sealed perpetually ; would chop down the bulky tree ; would pelt something at those nests , dashing them to the ground . He thought, paced up and down the room ----- and found no option tenable enough to stave off the menace in prospect. Minutes passed . He came over to the cupboard by the dressing table and and drew out his prayer mat from it . Stepping out on the verandah , he unrolled the mat on the marbel floor ; then , crouched on it ; and offered his prayer to God . Seconds rolled into minutes and minutes into hours . Stll , there was no iota of way out at hand . He gave up : he sat up from the mat .

The sun slanted through the narrow window, beating down on his cheeks as he stood by the window , gaping at the threatening nests , seeming , as it were , to bombard the room in which little Isha lay fast asleep. Helpless and anguished , he kept standing there for some time when his glance happened to descend on an article in the newspaper lying wrinkled on the floor , reading : " The rioting mob torched several houses in the village.!

"Eureka , " he mumbled within . He dashed up the stairs on the rooftop of his house and came before a long , slim bamboo attached to the parapet , used for putting up washed clothing . Eyeing the bamboo for a couple of seconds , he brought it down the stairs onto the floor to make a torch out of it with torn rags soaked in kerosene.

As he mapped out every nook and crane of the tree scrupulously in great details , he felt a surge of adrenaline flowing . Trepidation crept over him , making him shake in the knees as he set light to the ill-fated nests . The wasps' nests burst into crackling flame , causing swarms of wasps to smoulder to death .

He saw ! he saw the calamity! he saw the Apocalypse before his eyes .

He found himself instinctively holding his hands up , praying ,unconsciously ,to God , murmuring incessantly .... Weighed down by a heavy conscience , he spent the whole day long , reciting to himself from the the Holy Book , praying and meditating , to atone for his sin ---- the sin of exterminating an entire family of innocuous insects .

Every morning, he would gaze ,repentantly , through the window at the charred remains of the wasps' habitats ------ and his eyes would brim with beads of tears . The charred debris remained there ----- as an epitaph to his atrocities, perpetrated on those innocent insects , a few of them might have been as little , adorable as his little Isha in the mosquito net .



-------- Debasish Sinha .