Narcissus’s unlikely ‘Ark’:

Men argue; nature acts - Voltaire

The birds at home had stopped chirping. The Day, for all the tyranny she had wrought in the form of heat and humidity, looked tired and jaded. She was just refusing to congeal into a cool, breezy evening. The sparrows, having had no luck finding food, looked ill. They would find it difficult to get sleep, they felt. The pigeons and the crows on the other hand, looked excited with their catch. They sat for an evening discussion when they heard a loud thunder. One sparrow looked-up--clouds were tar black--it felt like they had just experienced a monstrous oil spill. The inmates of the garden sensed an impending catastrophe--observing the wild convulsions the trees around were experiencing. It was not autumn yet but the leaves had gone dry and lifeless.

Narcissus looked after the garden. An introvert, he lived alone at home. Being a consummate nature lover, he meticulously looked after the garden and its inmates. He was a scientist by profession and trying to come up with a new concept to control global warming. The news of the receding Arctic ice cap worried him.

He was not a Believer, yet being a culture lover, he had stocked his library with many religious texts. He had just revisited the incident of ‘the deluge’ which he found an interesting piece of fiction. Sensing a wave of melancholy in the air, he came out and looked up. He felt terribly depressed observing the woebegone faces of his feathered friends.

The schizophrenic tenor segued into an asphyxiating avalanche. It felt like a barrage of bullets dropped ad hoc. Little had the city inmates realized that they were sitting on a powder keg all these years. Heavy construction activity had left the city shorn of greenery. Narcissus’s garden was one of the few ‘bright green’ spots in the entire city. The environmental activists had done meticulous work over the last decade warning the State of the need to plant more trees and to avoid indiscriminate construction activity. The Meteorology Department had forecast heavy downpour over the past week. But even they could not have presaged such monstrosity.

The residents nearby were gasping for air running around. Many attempted to drive out of the colony, in the hope of getting better supply of air. Unable to come to terms with the situation, some of them fainted.

Narcissus had an air-proof cabin where he conducted his experiments. He kept an artificial supply of oxygen nearby. It could accommodate a maximum of 20 people at a time. Managing somehow to catch some of his feathered friends, he ran-in and got into his cabin. Sensing that good supply of oxygen was available, he also tried taking a few neighbors in.

Meanwhile, one could see shabbily piled-up bodies lying. Whether there was life left in them, you could not say. Narcissus was able to bring 15 of the nearby residents in.

Meanwhile, the downpour would not stop. The Gilgamesh lake nearby was boiling. The mini-cabin at Narcissus’s home had turned into a refugee camp of sorts. Survivors spent the night exhausted, petrified and stiffened. They could look at each other but were too scared to speak; their minds were not able to register what was happening. Perhaps they were subconsciously trying to welcome Lady Death lurking around the corner.

The night passed. Narcissus was the first one to get-up--awakened by tweeting of the sparrows. He went out, experienced some sunlight. The sun was smiling mischievously at the horizon--as if nothing had transpired! He switched-on his solar powered radio to get some news. His suspicion was true--the lake Gilgamesh had experienced a Liminic Eruption, the massive flood had just followed it. The whole city had only 16 survivors-those in ‘Narcissus’s Ark’