From Loneliness to Lion-liness

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When someone asks me: Hey..How are you doing?

I reply- In every way.

I am like a new lion in the circus. A lion that had been caged for years, out of jungle and out of wildness. I have recently come back to civilization (to find the true uncivilized Me) and am so excited with everything that I get to see or do. 

At circus, they ask me- Hey, can you stand on the stool? Without knowing how to, I tell them that I can. And I do it somehow. They come up with the new suggestions “Hey, can you twist your whiskers while displaying your molars”. “Hey, can you work on part time basis as a leopard”. To which, I invariably reply "Yasss".

Some women were giggling the other day when I was doing a pro-bono overtime for a jaguar. One of them commented- You look so much non-liony when you do that, but I didn’t let that bother me. I slept well that night and the next morning climbed up the stage and followed the ring master’s instructions, carried visitors on my back and let them click selfies, looking at the crowd around cheering.

They laughed their asses off the other day when they asked me if I can be the ring-master and I said “Yes”.

I sometimes get tempted to gulp down the mushy head of the Chinese ring master when he puts his head inside my mouth during the morning show but then I remind myself of ‘giving myself some time before I can be myself’. I had been locked inside a cage for years and haven’t tested my wild-side yet. I don’t know if I can attack, or kill, or chase (or run away).

The life back then in the cage had been so un-happening that for the first few days here, I couldn’t kick down the rabbits they put in my cell for diner. I had gotten so much used to eating meat that I had forgotten to hunt.

I have been so much trapped into my loneliness that that I almost lost my lion-liness.

Every morning when I am getting ready- I have only one thing in my mind “Let the show begin”.

Yesterday a jackal made fun of me seeing me burn my tail while jumping out of the burning rings. That was then, I picked him by his collars and openly intimidated- “I may have forgotten how to hunt but I still know how to roar….”