It was a moonless night. I had been to my village then. It was Saturday evening. I was walking around in the farms where I filled my lungs with fresh air. However, something was wierd. An eerie silence engulfed me. Something was strange today. No crickets were chirping. All those irritating bugs were quiet. I looked at the pond. Generally it had waves rising and falling against the shore but today it was not so. I kept on walking. Slowly and silently.

I could see a highland at a distance. I started walking towards it. Contours remind me of stargazing. I loved watching stars from a heighted piece of land, but only till that night. I had now reached the top of the cliff. I unfolded my jacket on the grass and lay on it. I slowly turned my head towards the sky.

The stars, the constellations, and the moon were perfectly in their places. Wait. Did I mention “The Moon”? Wasn’t it a moonless night? My heart skipped a beat. I felt weight in my chest. How was that even possible? I had fixed my eyes right on the moon. I noticed that slowly and gradually, it got bigger and bigger. I kept staring at it wide-eyed.

All of a sudden, it stopped emitting its light. Even in the dark, I could figure out that it was descending from the sky. I got up to my feet, picked up my jacket and started running to the spot where I might see the moon. It landed some miles away from the spot where I sat. As I reached the gate of Ramlal Singh’s mango orchard, I saw a gate opposite to it for the first time. I would generally find snakes here but, tonight I saw none. I was curious, tired, frightened and excited all at once.

I reached out to the gate. It was rusted. As I tried to open it, it made a screeching sound. For a couple of minutes I tried my best to open it but I couldn’t. After a while, with full force and with all the energy that I possessed, I flung the gate open. As I did, I received a heavy blow somewhere behind my head. Then I heard a few feet running towards me and a couple pair of hands lifting me up. I heard some strange noises. It was as if a piano was crying melancholically.

I thrust all the remaining energy in my body to open my eyes. I was successful. My head still ached. My eyelids felt heavy. As I analysed my surroundings and found a few living creatures. They looked like mascots of olympics. There were three of them. All three looked different.

The one to my right looked like a pretty girl until I noticed her tail. Then as consciousness dawned on me, I noticed her eyes that had no eyebrows. She had no lips. Only a gaping hole in place of her mouth. Her skin transmitted vivid light and her skin seemed to be glowing. She looked livid. As she saw me opening my eyes, she glared at me. She was furious at me and I was oblivious of the reason.

She seemed pretty dangerous so I thought that it would be better not to look at her. Then I started observing the one who was standing right in front of me. And as I looked up to his face, I found him staring back at me. He had large piercing eyes. I felt his gaze boring into my skin. He wore an overcoat. He had noodle like hair. To my surprise, his feet had no toes. They were square. This sent shivers down my spine. I tried avoiding his gaze. Suddenly I started floating in air. For a moment or two, I liked it but then that creature hung me upside down. “Can’t you be any better?”, asked the third creature who was himself floating in the air.

That flying creature looked like a hermit. Having an eye contact with him calmed me down. He helped me get to the ground again. And as I sat on the grass, a spooky force bound me. I was not able move my limbs. Then I saw that the hermit like creature had long nails, as sharp as knife. He had a long, elastic tongue that passed electric current. I now regretted my decision of coming here. I wanted to go back. But with half my body paralysed, I could not even stand by myself.

The next scene petrified me more than ever. The hermit like creature held the large eyed creature with its tongue and passed a high voltage electric current to him. This current could have turned human flesh and skin to ash. Then he advanced towards me. In a really hoarse voice, he spoke “Are you human?”. “Yes Sir”, I replied. “Hmm. That means you have no power”, he said. “Yes Sir”, I said.

“Maria, release her of the bond,” ordered that hermit creature. He went on, “I am Bond. James Bond.”

“You?”

“Yes me.”

“Are you joking?”

“No. I am sure. That’s what my mom named me.”

I giggled. “What’s so funny in that?”, James asked me with anger in each his word. I suddenly visualised the electric tongue. And all my laughter turned to fear. “No nothing”, I replied, “And who’s that?”

“Oh that. He is my dear friend David Copperfield.”

“But he had normal eyes.”

“What?”

“Yes. And his hair and clothes are supposed to be messier.”

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t you know them?”

“Them who?”

“The famous characters: James Bond and David Copperfield.”

“No.”

“Anyways. She is Matilda Wormwood. Don’t tell me that is also a famous uhm….character?”, said James.

“I am afraid it is”, I replied, “anyways, you have nice, easy to remember names. Where are you from?” “We are from a very famous planet, Ahra. We were here to explore your planet. But we couldn’t find anything helpful. Could you help us?”, replied David.

I did not know if I could really help them. I felt really sorry for them that they came such a long way to our Earth but couldn’t gather enough information. I was sitting silently and memorising their names. Matilda, David and James Bond. These names could remind me of only one thing, Books. I stood up and cleared my throat quite dramatically. I then announced, “I know what you are looking for. I shall get something helpful for you. Wait for me right here.” And that was all, I started galloping on my feet. I ran all my way home. I picked up my favourite books and ran all my way back.

My feet were all muddy, I had earth all over my clothes. I was out of breath. I stopped for a while and looked up at the sky. This reminded me of my friends or rather intergalactic friends. I started running again. I reached the orchard and was glad to find the three of them waiting for me. I had three books in my hands. I handed one to each one of them. “Surely you know a lot about our earth but I am gifting these books so that you can know more about our literature and culture. In these books you will get to know about the famous charaters I was talking about,” I said.

“Great. Thank you”, said James.

“I am sure that David would be better than I am”, said David.

“And I want to know who Matilda was”, said Matilda.

“Now it is time for us to return”, James said.

“Whenever I will look up at the sky, I will remember you. Do come and visit me again. It was a nice time with you. Bye”, I said, my eyes on the verge of tears, my voice shaking, but my mind happy to have created this nostalgia.

They climbed into the moon. It made some strange noises and in a minute rose up and left our planet. I did never feel that supernatural love ever again. In my dictionary, I got new meanings for the words: Matilda Wormwood, David Copperfield and James Bond.