It was narrow, damp, dark and shrinking by the day due to their increasing numbers, but the frogs had learned to call it the whole world.
By Raphic Burdo
Bux and Becky lived the well. It had always been their home. It was narrow, damp, dark and shrinking by the day due to their increasing numbers, but the frogs had learned to call it the whole world. Chikoo was born there insignificantly. He was ninth in order of birth, among the live children of Bux and Becky. Soon after his birth, Chikoo was left to fend for himself. His mother, despite all her intentions, hardly found time to care for him. She had to look after the older ones more to keep them from harm’s way. She knew, her world was based on survival of the fittest. Or so many believed.
Chikoo’s dady, Bux, was man of the world. He guarded home and family jealously. He generously provided for them. Bux had more priorities of his own. From among the nine of his off spring, he had a couple of favorites. Chickoo was not among them. But Chikoo was not on his dad’s ‘things to do’.
The well was the only world they all knew. It was to be all and end all of their existence Bux, Becky, Chikoo and many others like them were born there. Many others, their neighbors and distant relations were brought up here. Some had arrived here from much worse places. Few had dim, very dim, memory of better places they had been to.
Life in the well was changing. They felt the change every passing day. The waterline in the well, once high, had receded. Now it was more of a puddle at the bottom of deep hole in earth rather than a well. The walls dried into cracked stone. There was little for the family and other frogs to feed upon. Hunger often gnawed at their bellies, but most croaked that nothing could be done. Bux grumbled off and on but did nothing much.
Whenever the discussion of trying a escape came up, someone would yep, “Better this than the terrors of the unknown. At least here, we are safe.”
The older ones would nod, their voices weary but firm. They did not like the smell of fear, so they disguised it as wisdom. Younger among them were trained to trust the wisdom of the old.
But Chikoo, small, unremarkable, hardly noticed in the chorus of daily chatter, thought otherwise.
He remembered a visitor, a young lady frog, Neena, who had once leapt in when the well brimmed with water. Neena had spoken of vast fields, skies without walls, seasons that changed like songs. The young Neena had left quickly, but her memory had remained like a stubborn echo in the heart and mind of Chikoo, who was now same age as Neena, when he had met her. After Neena had left, Chikoo never found peace. In his heart of hearts he had made a promise to one day get out of the well and meet Neena in the better world.
When the puddle was going frighteningly dry and when the old frogs like Bux and Becky were admonishing everyone to stay put in the well and when the youngest were submitting their youthful desires at the altar of the wisdom of the old guard, Chikoo quietly made an attempt. He tried to climb out of the well, without being noticed. When the others were dozing, Chikoo pressed his limbs against the wall. He slipped, fell, and tore his skin. Once. Twice. Ten times.
The others noticed. He got caught. He had sinned against the wisdom of the years. He had defied the unwritten code of honor of the youth.
“Fool,” one by one, they jeered. “Do you think yourself better than us?”
“You’ll break your bones before you break these walls.”
“Even if you reach the top, the world will kill you faster than thirst. Out there, there are birds, snakes, heat, and hunger worse than this.”
Chikoo listened. He said nothing. He was hurt more by their, many of them his own, scorn than his falls. That whole night he lay awake, staring at the shrinking pool, that they still called well.. He imagined what would come when the water vanished: frogs drinking each other’s blood, tearing each other’s flesh. The thought hardened him. Then he thought of Neena. He felt new energy injected into him. He thought of the beauty out there as described by youthful Neena.
The next day, he tried again. His limbs trembled, but his anger steadied him. His desire to see Neena and world out there filled him with unknown strength. He clawed, pushed, slipped, rose again. Halfway up, he heard laughter below. The laughter had voices of his own mixed in it:
“Watch him fall!” they all shouted, one after the other.
“Watch the dreamer die!”
For a moment, Chikoo’s grip loosened. But then he saw, in his mind’s eye, Neena welcoming him with a sunny smile. He thought of fields of green stretching farther than any wall, as described to him by Neena. He pulled himself higher.
At the rim of the well, the air changed. A breeze, cool and strange, brushed Chikoo’s face. He paused. Behind him, the known voices of his very own rose:
“Come back! It’s death out there!”
“You’ll regret it!”
“You’ll crawl back to us begging!”
He leapt.
For a moment, there was silence in the well. The frogs below waited for his scream, for the thud of his broken body. None came.
Instead, above, there was a sound they had never heard before: the soft rustle of grass in the wind and Neena laughing and calling at the top of her voice: Welcome Chikoo!
Read: The Frog in the Well
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