I Vs Eye

‘Look into my eyes and continue looking till I ask you to stop’. The eagle stared into the largest pair of eyes it had ever seen. 16mm in diameter it was as large as Haplorrhi’s brain. ‘When I count to three, you will follow my command, 1…2…3..’. Her third finger, as long as her upper arm, waved in front of the poor bird’s eyes as she counted.

At the end of the count, Haplorrhi instructed the dazed eagle to go bring her a juicy mouse. To the horror of the other animals, it docilely flew off, hunted down a plump rodent and instead of wolfing it down, placed it at Haplorrhi tarsals.

It was the worst of times in the forest. The midget, Haplorrhi had learnt to use her gigantic eyes to hypnotise the other animals. She got the elephant to stand on its head (poor thing, had a headache for weeks), the owl to fly at day time (it kept bumping into tree branches as Haplorrhi’s mean laughter rung in the air), the monkeys to tie their tails in knots (they had a dickens of a time untying it) and even the mighty lion was made to eat grass (after which he went on a killing rampage, he had to get that vile veggie taste off his tongue).

Everybody in the jungle began to fear Haplorrhi. The animals who didn’t have eyelids couldn’t shut her out. The ones who did, tried blocking her gaze with skin but were always out waited. She would sit for hours (at a safe distance) staring at an animal. At some point the animal would cautiously open an eye, peek to see if it was safe and that horrible tarsier had gone away when its eye would spot Haplorrhi’s magnetic gaze and all would be lost.

Naturally Haplorrhi wasn’t very popular but she had the power. All the other male tarsiers would queue up to sing a duet with her. For they knew if she choose one of them, they were sure to win any competition, for even the judges were turned into bewitched slaves by her devious skill.

Over time, Haplorrhi turned pompous, obnoxious and a complete believer in her own invincibility. She would arrogantly claim, ‘If death comes, I will command him to go back’. As the jungle racked their collective animal intelligence to find a solution, a small voice pipped up. ‘You haven’t tamed the creature in the lake’. It was a wee kingfisher (fishy-smelly riot of colours). Haplorrhi glared at the little thing and wondered whether she should get it to jump into the lake. ‘Which creature?’ she thundered with the mocking, lazy conceit of the powerful.

Haplorrhi jumped down. Being completely arboreal this was her first time on land. She couldn’t even walk on it. She hopped to the lake and peered into its calmness. There, she saw the creature who dared to question her powers. It had humungous eyes, a long tail and ears with no hair. She looked into its eyes and thought what an ugly face.

She commanded it go sit in a corner, quietly for the rest of its life. Haplorrhi obeyed her orders. Like an unruly ghost tiptoeing past a sorcerer, she hopped back to the tree, climbed on it and sat silently on her branch for the rest of her life, troubling nobody ever again.

Moral: Absolute power always hurts the person wielding it.

Haplorrhi is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com