Chintu!

The school bus gently crawled to a stop and 3-year-old Zwee waved at Rui from the window.

As she jumped from the last step, Rui caught her in mid-air and hugged her tight, as she did every day. After 12 minutes, Zwee was on the high chair chomping on crispy Bhindi (her absolute favorite) with a ghee laden chapati. Rui had promised her a chocolate after lunch because Zwee had got a star on the back of her hand from Meenakshi teacher. For good behavior, i.e. for not talking to Sayesha and Ananya.

Sayesha and Ananya were Zwee’s imaginary friends.

And Meenakshi teacher gave a star to everyone in the class, each one of the 25 little children in Nursery (D division). The crux of the matter was that there was a chocolate waiting for little Zwee. By around 2.45 PM, Rui was reading a story book to Zwee in an attempt to put her sleep. The book’s cover showed a lion trapped in a net, talking to a small, blue mouse. However, in Zwee’s dreams, the mouse was pink with red dots. And a few inches taller than her. The mouse said “Qweek” and started sprinting on two feet. Zwee ran behind it. They entered what looked like a big brightly lit room. This room was much bigger than her classroom and there weren’t any children here. There were no Mickey Mouse paintings on the wall either. Everything was painted in white.

About the same time, Zwee’s father, Ron was writing an exceptionally long mail. His office cubicle was about 42 KMs away from the cot in which his daughter cuddled her favorite pillow. As Ron leaned back on his chair to check for grammar and other errors in the mail, he heard a faint, familiar “Baba!” from behind. Zwee was standing, with her pillow in her hand.

As if on instinct, the first thing that he registered was the stain of cooked Bhindi on her dress, but he was too shocked for his thought to materialize into words. “Zwee!” he screamed, almost. It wasn’t unnoticed by others. “How did you…?” he looked around for Rui, but she wasn’t around. If Rui had mentioned anything about her plans of travelling to his office then her words had failed to make an impact on his memory, but she hadn’t. Zwee was alone. “How did you..?” Ron was still struggling with words. “Who got you? Where’s mumma?”

“Mumma’s reading book,” Zwee said, “Mama gave me Chocolate today. Look Star!" Ron's reaction was amusing little Zwee and it was evident. Ron got into the fake-stern mode that he gets into whenever Zwee completes any of her mischief-bouts. "How did you get here, Zwee? Where is Mumma?"

"Chintu got me here.” She pointed at the space under the chair that Ron was sitting on.

“Chintu?!” Ron exclaimed. Something wiggled near his feet. He saw a pink tail with red spots.