Regal

We were playing hide-and-seek in the park when a large furry creature raced past us into the adjoining woods. The seeker being notorious for finding hidden kids, we paid the creature little more than a glance before resuming our game.

“NINETEEN. TWENTY. Ready or not, here...”

The rest of the words were never heard.

              

A sudden barking of dogs forced us to look beyond our game. A score or so police cars had pulled up in front of the park gate, accompanied with a multitude of policemen on bikes. The police leapt off their vehicles and raced into the park after their dogs. Pedestrians were screaming everywhere.

And then we heard it, amidst the cacophony of honking cars, barking dogs, and the terrified screams of civilians, a loud roar – the roar of a lion!

I’d recognise that roar anytime. It wasn’t the roar of just any lion – it was the roar of Regal, the main attraction of Central Zoo. I remembered seeing Regal the last time I had visited the zoo a few weeks back. He was a majestic lion – muscular, with a flowing mane. All the same, I had never wanted to see him up so close.

Regal’s head appeared in the woods, breaking my chain of thought. Everyone stood frozen. The youngest of us kids promptly shrieked and fell. Only the police officers, it seemed, remembered how to move their limbs.

The lion was chased by dogs.

It was over within a few minutes. Regal was gone. So were the police. The reporters had replaced them.

Messing around with mikes and cameras, they had no end of questions. They were interested in the vivid descriptions of the terrified citizens, and the heated remarks thrown at the “careless” government and the “negligent” zoo.

No one paid much attention to what I had to say about Regal’s eyes – sad, questioning eyes that yearned to know what being a lion truly meant.