Will Wriggly Wriggle

Hiren was six years old when he first came across an earthworm in his garden. It was dark maroon and had a band at the anterior end. Hiren asked his mother, “Is this worm a girl worm, she is wearing a hairband”, Hiren’s mother Neeta looked at Hiren lovingly and said, ‘It is called a clitellum’.  She also read out to him that worms were legless serpents or dragons. She then showed Hiren the animal book and told Hiren the numerous kinds of worms that lived in this world, but this was the earthworm, the most useful one. The slimy creature did not appeal Hiren, but it lived in the large longitudinal pot with the Aloe Vera, the Turmeric and the Ginger Plant. Every day when Neeta poured excess of water in the pot, Wriggly, the earthworm surfaced. Hiren would imagine it choking and coughing. Wriggly was thin dark and just a few centimetres in length. Hiren would sometimes address it as 'baby Wriggly'. He told Neeta, 'Can I tie a thread around its band just as we have a collar for a pet dog'. Neeta quickly brought the permanent marker and made a dark spot on Wriggly's clitellum. One day Hiren saw his mother dump a mixture of vegetable peels in the soil, he felt wriggly would gasp for breath and die. Neeta told him, ‘this is food for wriggly, it will decompose this food with its saliva and give the plants some energy too. True to her word wriggly began growing sooner. It was longer, stouter and pale pink now.

Hiren found an earthworm that had lost its posterior limb in the school garden. He felt sad and ran to his teacher and asked her whether the worm would die. His teacher Greta said, ‘Earthworms can grow their body back, they are almost immortal”. It sounded like music to Hiren. He imagined wriggly growing into a six-footer just as him over the years. Over time, Wriggly grew long and there were many more earthworms in the pot. Hiren would wonder which one was wriggly but he always felt that the longest and the stoutest was wriggly. He would often try to locate the black spot but could never find it. The earthworms moved everywhere in the garden. Neeta and her husband Ravi collected a few in a bottle with water and left them in the man-made forest. They took Hiren along but he felt Wriggly was one of the earthworms as he had seen the black spot on a pink healthy earthworm. Neeta told Hiren that wriggly could grow the best in the natural environs. Hiren loved the forest, the greenery and the magnificent sky. He could see only a streak of the sky at home, but in the forest, there was a blue canopy covering the greenery. He quickly left Wriggly and the other earthworms in the soil by dumping them in the soil bed in a large clearing at the foothills of the man-made forest.

The onset of the festival in the month of October brought festivities and fervour as there was a temple of Goddess Durga close to the lake in the forest. It was early in the morning, the sky was changing its hues, the grey sky slowly split welcoming orange and dark red to merge in its shelter. The morning walkers sped up the cemented road between the lush green foliage. The pool in between the rocks, the thicket of grass, multitude of plants and fertile soil was a haven for wildlife. One can never notice what they walk on in the dim lights. It is just a haste to keep oneself healthy or spiritually satiated. The October month was the hottest that season before the onset of winter, and it mimicked a summer.

Hiren, Neeta and Ravi were in the forest for their early morning walk. Hiren missed Wriggly and wanted to see how it thrived. As they walked up the tarred sidewalk, they saw a few earthworms lying dead, dry as the autumn leaves around them. Hiren was aghast, he yelled and wondered whether it was Wriggly. Ravi ran to the nearby tree where a plastic tray was mounted with water for the birds. He quickly lowered it and picked a slender twig from the bushes. They toddled to pick the earthworms with the twig and then transferred it into the plastic tray with water. It was a bid to save the few whose bodies had the last bit of moisture.  Neeta saw a stout earthworm at the end very close to the bush. It had managed to cross the sidewalk successfully but could not reach the soil. She wondered whether it was dead. She picked it slowly, it did not move but she saw the ink mark on the clitellum. With a muffled scream, she put it into the plastic tray. Many of the earthworms had stopped moving to indicate they were dead. The strong heat had threatened these earthworms to search for cooler spots but they were either trampled by the morning walkers or eaten by birds. The last few that had managed to cross the stretch had died when the humidity on their skin evaporated.

Hiren, Ravi and Neeta rushed the earthworms near the pool where the soil was wet. They kept fresh leaves around them to digest and recoup. The stout one seemed to be Wriggly. Hiren called it lovingly, he felt sadder than ever. He remembered his teacher's words but Wriggly seemed lifeless. Hiren and Neeta dug the wet soil and placed wriggly in the soil with tender leaves. It remained motionless for long, then miraculously they saw Wriggly wriggle. It then burrowed into the soil made its way over .....