Stories    
Stranger in a Different World

It was a scientific laboratory. They had named him Poojy. They didn't know whether he was male or female. They didn't know if he had feelings like a human being. He was quite a fat being. 

He had landed inside the garden of their huge laboratory. They were lucky it had not landed in any other place, because otherwise it would have been in the news, that an alien had landed on Earth. They wanted to keep it a secret. Nobody there knew or wanted to know when they would tell the public about this. They kept Poojy in a huge glass cage with holes in it for breathing. But they didn't even know if Poojy needed air to breathe or survived in some other way. 

They took x-rays of Poojy. Poojy had a heart, lungs and what looked like a stomach. They desperately wanted to communicate with it. It had no hair in any part of its body. They wanted to know if the being was from another planet or had been on earth without their knowledge. 

But they were sure about one thing; Poojy was not human or like other animal on Earth.

Poojy had been in a circular vessel and he had crash-landed in their garden with a loud noise. The vessel it was in was a silver one with 3 windows. It didn't have any wheels. There was nothing inside the vessel to give the scientists a clue about his gender or where he came from. But it had many inside parts to it. It had a control center inside, or the scientists thought it was the control center of the vessel. 

What they didn't know was, Poojy was a very intelligent Alien species from Mars and he communicated in Mars by telepathy. He was also male. He had lost his power of communication because of the crash. He could only read their mind but he could not contact them, i.e. the human scientists. To his dismay he couldn't communicate to long distances. 

He had not intended to come to Earth, his vessel had gone awry while he was flying around space. He was only 10 years old. The age system on mars was the same as that of Earth. So, he was a very young person and he missed his family and friends who were in mars. 

Right now all he knew was, the scientists did not mean him any harm. Even though he was lonely he was safe in the laboratory. 

A week had passed. And there was another landing in the park. This time the same kind of vessel was much bigger. And the landing was smooth. Poojy's parents had come from mars to fetch him and go back to mars. Even though Poojy had lost his power of telepathy, his parents had read his mind and found out his whereabouts. When Poojy saw his parents he was overjoyed. He started to jump up and down in his glass cage. His parents communicated through telepathy to the scientists and told them that they wanted to take Poojy home. The scientists were happy and reunited the lost son and parents and waved them goodbye as the vessel started off to mars. 

The only memory the scientists have now of Poojy is his broken vessel in which he had landed. They knew they would miss him. They also decided that this event should be kept a state secret. It was the best idea for both worlds.    

– Lakshmi Kumararajah
October 14, 2001

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