Hello everyone! Welcome, or welcome back to my blog. Today, I have something special for you; namely, an original short story titled: “A Letter to Mr. LockDown”! As the title suggests, this is a letter, but it is a story in the form of a letter. It has been a long time since I have uploaded one, because it takes much more time and patience to write a short story than it does to review a book. My inspiration for this story was an essay topic which we had got for our English Grammar paper, in which we had to write about our experience of the lockdown. I have tried to be as creative as I could, and also include a bit of sarcastic humour. Nevertheless, I hope that all of you are going to enjoy reading this:
Mr. LockDown gets a letter:
My home, some day of June, 2021.
Dear Mr. LockDown,
I hope you are doing well. There is something I really want to tell you. In order to understand what I want to tell you; you must carefully read the entire of the following. All of us know that currently, you are a busy man. I will, therefore, not waste much of your time:
Life was going fine for humans. Oh! the parties we had! Thin, white, flat thingies which absorbed loads of different colours were all the rage. The colour black was in. Everywhere you looked – from factory chimneys to car exhausts to even sewage – everything was painted generously with black. People loved living on farms and doing for a change what their ancestors had done for eons. Stupid, yes, but what can you do? they’re human after all. Now, all of us know that we humans are copycats. If other people are partying in the middle of flat, open lands, we will do so too. It doesn’t matter if there are not enough farms to go about. We can easily make some. God’s best creation was man, and man’s best creation, of course begins with an M, too. Then why not use something we created to create something that we want?
To just give you an idea of how much we enjoyed ourselves, let me just tell you that all of the aforementioned info barely tells us about 0.01% of all the activities present in our party. Therefore, you have to be nothing short of completely blind, to not know how great a party we threw. Now, what do you do when there’s a party going on and you aren’t invited? You crash, of course, unless you are one of those well-behaved people who move about with their better-than-thou attitude.
Parties as big as this do not go unnoticed. Even so, it took about a hundred years for a group of tiny little things to notice ours. And let me just say that these little things were like regular party crashers, just a hundred times worse. So now, these little guys somehow found a way to give the security guards at the gate the slip (they were invisible, of course), and managed to get into our party.
At first, we pitied these poor guys. So small, and yet they have to live in such a big, bad world. Therefore, we let them in. These guys believed in the saying: ‘the more, the merrier’. Unfortunately, though, we humans and our ways to party did not seem to interest these little guys. And it was then, that they decided that they must have some more of their kind, if they are to have any fun. So, their population grew.
They partied in one place for a couple of months. Of course, they really enjoyed it. While they had fun thus, one of these little guys discovered that the people hosting the party had a house infinitely larger than the room they were in. Now, these guys, of course, were too small to travel such long distances on their own. Hence, they must employ some mode of transport. They then found out the ideal form of transport. Ideal because although humans had to pay for it, these little things didn’t. They thought that since humans had already been so nice to them, they wouldn’t really mind them hitchhiking on their shoulders. So, as you can see, these little things at first, contended themselves by taking only a yard.
They held council. It was to decide which of them will undertake the first journey and find better lands for their people. It will be very difficult and dangerous. For sacrifices have to be made by some, in order for other to lead a better life. Therefore, none but the best, and the bravest would do. Then, it was the great navigator and traveller, Captain Cov-ook. He chose some of his best men, and made for the airport.
They travelled over great distances, discovering the best places to stay. Places where people partied the hardest; places where they could have a gala time. The fun usually lies in the journey, and not the destination. Here, though the destinations were excellent, the journeys were unbearable. The airports and airplanes were cold. In some places, they stepped out onto yet colder places; some places were burning hot. The brave travellers perished in dozens. Then, something unexpected happened. Something, which at first appeared to be another dozen casualties on the face of it, actually turned out to be a boon for them.
Some of them were travelling towards the airport. They entered it, and climbed onto a gentleman’s suit. It was terribly cold. It was then, that some of them sensed warmth emanating from the man’s hands. They travelled and settled themselves there. There were some, however, who had already travelled up to the shoulders of the man. They did not feel like going all the way down again, and made their way upwards. To their delight, they found that the man’s face was just as warm. They stayed there for some time before calling out to their companions to come and join them. But just as they were getting ready to travel downstairs, the man yawned a great, big yawn, and all of them were sucked inside his mouth. Their friends downstairs saw the man yawn and knew that their friends, for sure, had been sucked in, and would perish.
They waited, but no one came down. They gave a sigh, and mourned the loss of their companions. The man boarded a flight. The tiny things outside were, as usual, cold. The flight took off and reached cruising altitude, when somebody called these tiny little things from above. They looked up, and saw one of their companions waving at them. They were overjoyed!
“What are you doing here? Did you survive? What about the others?”, asked one of the downs.
“Survived? We are saved! Come on up!”, answered the up.
The downs travelled up, and asked the up, “What do you mean? Were you all right when you went in that guy’s mouth?”
“Yes, we were! The insides of him were nice and dark, with just the perfect temperature. Neither too hot, nor too cold. Plus, there is a lot of food in there, too. Now we will never have to worry about our people dying!”
“That’s great, young man”, said Captain Cov-ook, who was with the downs, “You have done your community a great service. We are proud of you!”
The little up beamed, and then led the downs into the gentleman’s mouth. Everyone was happy. The little thingies soon found out that they could party even better here, owing to the safety of their surroundings, and also the privacy. They did not take long to realise that if one man is like this, then the others must be the same, too. They sent out a message to all their companions, colleagues, friends, and relatives, giving them this good news. This, is how, the Greatest, Biggest, and Grandest party of the century, began. And this also, is where you, Mr. LockDown, come in.
You may feel all of this information unnecessary; but I assure you that it will do the relations between you and us much good. There are some things in this letter which might go the unwanted extent of offending you. Offending to you, that is, if you do not know the context in which they were said. As you know, that ever since you arrived, you have been extremely busy, and so have we. It is therefore difficult to think that anyone could have given you the history behind the situation which you were called in to take care of. This will ensure that you will take into consideration the bigger picture, and then make a well-thought, balanced decision, without being biased. At this point, as I said, you came in.
It wasn’t because we missed you, no. Most of us did not even know you existed. But, what could we do? Those tiny little thingies really were starting to get us down. They were partying harder than we ever had. The only person who wasn’t worse for the wear, however, was our dear old host. Mrs. N had allowed us to party for so many years. And now she was getting a well-deserved break. Now, come on, even though these little thingies were millions in number, they could hardly have caused her troubled even a quarter as much as her. Well, she allowed them to get on with the fun and started tidying things up. She took a long time. If you have had a high-school-ish party at your house and had to clean up after, you’ll know. And ha! There were about seven billion of us!
We humans are sometimes an understanding lot. We would have allowed out host to get a rest. And we had no problem in letting her rest even more, only if the little thingies wouldn’t have troubled us. As I mentioned earlier, they had started by taking a yard. But, by now, they had taken up every inch of the bloody 136.21 million square kilometers we live on! I must say, some web-footed monochromatic beings must be having a gala time! Imagine having the world’s biggest ice rink at your disposal forever, and for free. Anyways, the little thingies’ methods of fun were creating trouble for us.
Wise men all over the world came together. They were to discuss how to stop these things from troubling us. How are they qualified? you may ask. Well, I know that they were really wise men with grey hair on their heads and faces. (Some may say to you, that if grey meant wise, their donkey would be the greatest philosopher on earth. But don’t you worry; they almost never own a donkey). These men could not resolve the problem and they, being wise, delegated the problem to people much better equipped to handle it than themselves. And these much better equipped men, sent for you.
You came as a party manager and saw the state the things were in. You said, “Let these little things have a little more fun. Humans keep getting in the way and interrupt their party. If these little things are allowed to enjoy themselves without being interrupted, maybe they’ll be satisfied, then get bored, and them leave.” Again us humans, kind as we are, allowed it. We took pity on the little thingies’ size. Such small things, not even visible through the naked eye, having to live in such a big, bad world. We let you supervise the games, while we locked ourselves into our houses.
And you did turn out to be a really good supervisor. You made sure that they got all they wanted and were satisfied. And then, just as you predicted, they soon got bored and started to leave. But just when they had almost left, you changed your form again. You allowed us to get about a little; go do a little shopping; buy groceries, etc. A most unwise thing to do! You should have known that a habit which we had been practising for around a hundred years would not go away so easily, and we started to party again.
Then, the thingies who hadn’t left yet, came to know that the party was still on! They called back their friends and the situation were the same as before. Now both humans, and those little thingies were partying. And boy, did it prove to be too much for us! They gave us the scare of our lives, it did. They even scared the lives out of some especially weak hearted people. To think, we had been so kind to them! They were now starting to backstab us! And then, we decided that surely, we must find some way to get rid of them. But while we did that, the wise men thought that your services were still very much in need. And, you stayed.
Now the problem is, we are not sure about the form you take. Sometimes you are just the same as before, sometimes you allow even us to enjoy a little bit, and sometimes you allow us to fully enjoy ourselves. I don’t even know whether I am allowed to go out or not. The poor, wise men do try to explain to us your current status and position, but it is never very clear.
It really is very irritating. And this complaint is not only mine; but of also many others all around the world. We ask you to either be here properly, or go away. If you do decide to stay on, you must only till it is required. It is rather galling to be shut up like that and not be able to do a thing about it. And when you do go away, please make sure you don’t come back. We also ask you not to worry at all, we won’t in the least, miss you.
That is all I have to say. I hope you understand. I hope you do as we have asked you to. We, of course, shall be greatly obliged if you do the needful. Thanking you in advance,
Yours truly,
Arindam Bhaduri
So, that’s it for today, everyone! I hope you enjoyed today’s story. I also hope that it inspired you to not take a positive outlook towards the current situation, especially towards poor Mr. LockDown. If you did enjoy it or even if you didn’t; please subscribe to stay tuned anyways, for you might like my next post. Until then, stay home, and stay safe. Ciao!