March 31, 2026
I was out in my home-front garden taking a night stroll after finishing a couple of whiskey pegs and dinner. At once, I was startled by two weird figures lurking behind trees. I didn’t assume they were ghosts knowing full well that I do not encounter spooks and ghouls when I am under drunken stupor.
“Who are you?” I demanded authoritatively, because the place belonged to me and I paid property taxes ever so promptly enjoying early-bird discounts.
“We are aliens,” replied one, as bluntly as someone saying ‘I’m Minister’s son.’
Silly characters! Could they be the members of chuddy gang doing nightshift? But then they appeared creepy, as if donned in Halloween costumes and masks. I reckoned they were 3-foot-6-inches tall with big red eyes, long arms and slender legs. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, trying to calm down myself for I didn’t want my blood pressure to shoot up, resulting in a sleepless night.
“To warn you,” said the same character in a voice that resembled a young boy’s. He lifted his right hand and pointed an accusatory finger at me. “We are sick of being the butt of your jokes. If you write anything, anymore, about us aliens, your life will be in great danger.”
”No danger will befall me as long as I don’t dwell on taboo subjects,” I said confidently. “I enjoy complete freedom.”
“Freedom my foot!” he barked. “You’re lying just like you do in your frequent false writings about us. I know how much freedom you have been enjoying ever since you got married years ago. I even know the date of your marriage.”
“Leave my wife alone, will you?” I said, as angrily as my wife Jemima gets at me always. “You have no business to talk about her.”
“Our business is our mission. To make you unconditionally agree that you would stop writing about us.”
“But I write satire. I love comic fantasy. Humour is a necessary part of our existence. Laughter is the best medicine after all. Laughter, hatred and resentment cannot reside in the same space. My goal is to save the planet from an impending doom and humans from extinction. There has been so much bad going on here of late that has put the Earth on the brink of annihilation.”
“But not at the cost of others’ dignity, belittling and mocking us, no matter how far we live in the universe. Every breath you take and every move you make, we have been watching you.”
“That’s ‘The Police’, the English rock band,” I said, freaking out on my impeccable musical knowledge. “Sting has sung those lyrics.”
He conveniently ignored what I said. “You’re invading our privacy. And there is a limit to what you write.”
“Sky is the limit for me. I write what my mind dictates, vicariously travelling across galaxies and fetching plots for my universal comedy. I get overly thrilled when readers laugh.”
“You are a stubborn, thick-skinned earthling, refusing to bend to me.”
“I have been bending to you all the while talking ever since you came in here. You two are too short. Dwarves. I can scoop you both up together and fling out over the compound wall.”
“That’s our physical attributes. We may be small in stature, but big in thinking. You cannot even fathom our intelligence. We are from a far more technologically advanced world with our brains having evolved millions of years ago.”
Praising oneself is a fundamental human tendency. These cannot be extraterrestrials. “Are you trying to hoodwink at me? You two are high school kids attired in fancy dresses having just finished a school program and are now putting up a late night show in my compound trying to scare me off. Probably a third kid is making a reel hiding somewhere – so-called practical jokes and pranks. It is me who, being the rightful owner of this place, should warn you for trespassing and wasting my time.”
“Time is precious for us and within a short Earthly time that we have been assigned, we got to fulfill our pressing commitment and depart for our world. It is our job to stop you completely from writing crap about us and getting that nonsensical stuff published anymore.”
“Prove it to me,” I challenged. “That you are aliens.”
“Didn’t our looks alone reveal to you already?” He shook his little butt and began dancing, moving ever so slowly, causing me to yawn at his every lethargic step. I couldn’t determine if he was doing Tai Chi or dancing. I became restless, my fury escalating by the minute. “Nothing special in that dance,” I said. “That doesn’t prove you are aliens.”
“I wasn’t dancing, you fool,” he retorted. “I was just doing stretching exercises having travelled from a distant galaxy. Your eyes will pop out and splutter if you watch us dancing. Your girls dancing to Boney M’s Rasputin song that you call ‘fast and fantastic’ is nothing but tortoise crawl. We have been in existence for more than 10 million years and 5 million years ago, we did our first waltz.”
“Anybody could come up with such lofty claims. I won’t buy that,” I rejected. “What will you do if I don’t give up on writing about you guys?”
He bawled. “First and foremost, get the bloody fact right, we are not guys. We are aliens and will abduct you.”
If my wife had been out with me, she would have sung: “Alien, Alien, Alien, Alien. I’m begging of you, please take my man.” Dolly Parton’s song “Jolene” has been my wife’s all time favourite and she would have blissfully omitted the word ‘don’t’ from the second lyrical line.
“And take me where?” I sneered.
“To our world located light years away. So distantly in space it exists even your Google Maps have no clue about it. Neither could it be observed by your most powerful telescopes. Once reaching there, we will punish you severely.”
“And how long does it take to reach your world by foot?” I cackled with laughter at my own impromptu comical one-liner, which I thought would beat hands down a Hollywood Screenplay writer’s dialogue.
“We have a spacecraft.”
“Ha, ha, ha! You have a spacecraft,” I laughed boisterously. “Is it a Flying Saucer or UFO? Probably you have a UFO Burger.” I looked all around. I couldn’t find a bullock cart, let alone a spacecraft. My tied-up dog Sirius was howling seriously and incessantly. “You mischievous kids,” I screamed. “Take off those costumes and masks and get lost before I let my vicious dog loose on you.”
He waved his hand at Sirius and the dog abruptly stopped yelping and fell into deep slumber. I was not convinced though. Whiz-kids these days learn magic tricks from YouTube and by employing those illusory, hypnotic acts deceive onlookers just for fun. As if that was not enough, the boy inserted his hand in his pocket trying to fish out something. Confused, he looked towards his companion. “Where’s the remote control unit, Zigzugutta?”
“I have it, Chief,” said the second character, handing over a tiny unit. “My bad.” The Chief pressed a button. As if he pulled a rabbit out of a hat, a small craft manifested right in front of my eyes. It had been parked there, but remained invisible all the while. It was spherical object of bright metallic luster. A small ladder was resting on the Earth. Standing heroically, he chided, “Lucky us, we didn’t have to approach your house by road like your aircraft taxing on the runaway to the airport terminal. Your roads are full of potholes.”
Meanwhile, the second alien wandered away to a mango tree. I thought he was going to squat down, relieve himself and poison my tree. Instead, he plucked a low-hanging mango and was about to take a bite.
“Don’t eat it,” The Chief screamed in horror. “It’s chemical-laden - full of pesticides. Do you want to get buried six feet under in this godforsaken, paradise-lost world?” He confiscated the mango, spat on it, ambled toward the tree and restored it to its former glory with the mango now hanging and swinging.
I panicked. Now it dawned on me that these beings are really from a magical world. Aliens as he had proclaimed. The sorcerer’s acts sobered me. But I wasn’t about to give up. Not yet. I belong to this earthly soil which has produced many world-conquering heroes. I want to demonstrate how strong we humans truly are. I wish he had watched Bollywood movies, heroes saving the planet by killing a bunch of villains and winning the heart of the heroine. After all, this world belonged to me and they had been standing in my property.
Poised with those gallant thoughts, I screwed up my courage. “No amount of evidence will frighten me,” I said bravely. “Throughout my life, I have been subjected to many “Don’ts”. ‘Don’t eat this.’ And ‘Don’t drink that.” And I am declining another otherworldly ‘Don’t’. Now that you have revealed yourselves who you really are, there will be tons of humour on aliens.” I stood my ground.
Suddenly, I was lifted off the ground, legs dangling and hands flapping like a bird, gasping and choking. He didn’t lay his hands on me. It was his psychokinetic power at play. There was severe pressure on my neck as if an invisible big fist tightening around it. I found difficulty in breathing and mumbled in plea, “I surrender.” He dropped me down at once and I took a deep breath.
Throughout my life, I had taken alien subject for granted, freaking out on their existence through my writings – poems and humour - using fecund imagination that had been truly out of this world. Simply put, for me aliens didn’t exist at all. Writing about someone who does not exist is the surest bet to save myself from potential trouble. Fictitious characters would in no way result in FIRs. Unfortunately, this alien was real and capable of causing death. Oh, my God. Aliens are real. We are not alone. I exclaimed.
As if he read my thoughts, he drawled. “I will leave you alone if you give me what I want.”
“I sure will,” I stammered. “Would you aliens like to come inside for some hot tea? It’s cold outside anyway. And you need to experience the warmth of humans, especially the Indians for whom guest is equivalent to God.”
“And cricket game is a ‘religion’,” he added.
I was amazed. “Ah, you know this fun fact. That’s mighty brainy of you.”
“There’s nothing that we don’t know,” he boasted. “For our own good, we don’t eat or drink anything from your world. We have learned a lesson from a past experience. Six of my compatriots who had eaten Bhel Puri that had been offered in good faith, had died of Diarrhea on their return journey and we had to retrieve the craft sailing aimlessly in the expansive space.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said, as I have been reading a lot about the contaminated food of late. “Hereafter, I will not be writing about you aliens. But please allow me to write this one last episode. I will send it to no other publishing world but Daijiworld.”
“As a goodwill gesture, you have my permission,” he said. “Just once though. No sequels. Get serious now on. Forget about worlds lying beyond Earth. Just focus on your home planet. Always write about your world, your soil, your people, your problems and global warming. There is an infinite amount of home subjects under your sun to write about.”
“You have my word. Should I give it in writing? Only problem is my cursive, illegible script.”
“That won’t be necessary.” He assured, turning on his heel and pointing to his craft. “Our whole conversation – audiovisual - is being recorded in real-time. Our spacecraft has been taking care of it, automatically. Our intelligent spacecrafts are as alive as ourselves. We are mind-bogglingly advanced. And the recording being done will remain saved for posterity.”
“Time for us to bow out, gentleman,” he added. Next moment, they waved at me showing yellow teeth and boarded the spacecraft which took off vertically. In a flash, it vanished with low whistling sounds, allowing my wife and dog to enjoy uninterrupted sleep.
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