'The word of an Ant' ( a very short, short story)

Once upon a time there were two ants. The male ant was terribly in love with the female ant. He would always ask her to meet him for coffee, or samosa( with or without chutney), tea, dosa, basically whatever came off the land or kitchen they visited. The woman kept throwing tantrums and kept tarrying.

Once, both of them were walking inside a book. The book was a huge one and seemed to be full of dark and dense words that grappled with each other in trying to prove who was the better of the lot. They saw some wise looking greyish( as opposed to black) colored ants walking up and down these pages too. They more or less had the same posture, style, silence and pauses too, before they acknowledged the greatness or smallness of each word. The male ant observed curiously that their means of deciding greatness was always by making themselves stand against the word and measuring it up..instead of looking at its size and gravity from a distance.

In spite of his observations, the male ant hardly gave all this much thought, as he was primarily occupied in his endevour of get his lady love to have some coffee, tea with him. He was on page 6 and she on Page 3 when he called out, 'hey how about grabbing some tea, this place looks great." Fed up of his persuasion, she called out, "meet me at page 350".

The male ant was ecstatic, he did a little boogie woogie to himself and landed on some muddled words. He smiled at them and dusted them off from where they stuck to his pants, laughing and poking him. He didn't care a hoot about their laughter and in utter show of happiness, jumped and almost floated over pages 100 and managed to land rather ungraciously on page 250. 

What he saw there astonished him, all the words there seemed to be very happy, even the ants who were on this page looked more than satisfied, in fact they walked around with swollen chests and bent backs. The words had formed different circles, starting from small to big ones. Every now and then one would turn and pat the other's back and soon the other would do the same for the previous one too. It seemed a very happy and contented world. The male ant paused and wondered how they distinguished who was better than the other. But then how did that concern him, he thought and jumped on again. 

This time he landed right on page number 350. But he did not see his lady love anywhere, he kept looking around, North and South, East and West, but all he could see were a swirl of words..angry words, loving words, happy words, unhappy words..he wondered if they had been accepted, rejected and been in anger and sorrow just like himself. 

Suddenly, there was a snap, the huge book closed and with that the life of the ant and his dreams of page number 350 ended too and along with it the world full of love and that of some words he had imagined too.

'Never believe in words, especially vacant ones", were his last in-depth words.

©  2014 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury