What is past if not the memories? Vague
images! Some true, some fictional. Should a whiff of wind just overturn an image,
you might find the past has changed for you!
Leena and Madhu were sisters. One day when
they were returning home from school, when Leena was ten and Madhu eight, they
heard a loud noise from behind the trees in the mangrove, beyond the
boundary wall. Their school was just across the grove. Aaaaa! A loud shrill cry for help and
then silence.... and sound of feet scampering. The two girls walked on, Madhu
was panicking now.
She imagined, ghosts and kidnappers and
all sorts of images. Once they had crossed the mangrove Madhu asked Leena,
"what was that? I got really scared."
Leena, who was tall enough to look across
the boundary wall around the grove said, "I couldn't see it clearly, I saw
a pair of grass scissors and a boy running away. Funny, what could that be?"
And then after thinking a bit she added in a dramatic way, "Let us keep
this a secret Madhu, what if that man with the scissors has seen us and comes
after us, if he finds out that we told our parents about it!"
Madhu thought that made sense. She had to
be careful, what if she gets into some morbid, dreadful trouble. She
constructed manifestations of the event in her mind, most of them related to
gruesome killing of the boy or enslaving him to beg on streets, after making
him blind etc etc...
"How was school?" their mother
met them at the door of their little home with a garden, not very far from the
mangrove. Madhu looked really scared and Mom asked her, "What
happened?"
Madhu would not let out a word. Her mother
hugged and cuddled her and made her feel safe, but when Madhu refused to open
up, mom gave up for the moment. She asked the kids to have the yummy meal that
was waiting for them at the dining table. Mom went about with checking the
homework and lunchboxes of the kids.
Madhu had eaten only half of her snack at
school, mom chided her gently and lovingly. Leena had a lot of homework that
evening, mom spent some time planning how it would be completed. She then
turned to Madhu and sat down with her. The kid sure looked scared and silent.
Before she could strike a conversation, Madhu's friend called her up to play,
Madhu was looking her normal self on hearing from her friend. She remained that
way, till she came back home from play, till she had had her dinner, till she
had had the pillow fight with her sister. Once in bed she had trouble sleeping
that night, but eventually the whole matter had been put to rest.
Madhu asked her mother to come pick her up
from school the next day. Dad used to drop them to school. The girls would walk
back home on their own, because the school was just a stone's throw away from
home right across the mangrove. The roads were safe, Leena was old enough to
walk a few hundred meter on her own. Mom did not mind going to pick them up
that day, knowing that Madhu had been really scared the day before. She hoped
that, whatever it was that scared Madhu, would pass away on its own. Try as she
would, Madhu would not say a word.
For weeks this pattern continued. Mom did
not mind coming to pick the girls, as she got that time to chat with them, without
distraction. Slowly Madhu stopped asking to be picked up and things were normal
again. Or so it seemed.
As Madhu grew up, her parents noticed that
she was not be as bold as Leena was. She needed company to go out. If Leena
could not come, Mom or Dad had to fill in. Oh, the parents said, "All kids
are different! Let her be, she will eventually grow out of it." Sometimes
they complied with Madhu's demands, at other times they refused, or were just
too tied up to help. At times Madhu would not go out to play, because no one
was coming with her to drop her to a friend's house.
Over years Madhu realised her fear would
not leave her, no matter what. She might have been fourteen when one fine
afternoon after school, as the two girls had their meal, while casually
chatting with their mother, Madhu mentioned... you know Mamma, we never told
this to you, a boy was killed in that mangrove one afternoon, when we were
coming home from school. We were afraid he would come after us if we told you
and Papa.
Leena snapped, "That's ridiculous! I
don't remember, when was that? I can’t imagine such a thing."
"But you were right there with
me!" Persisted Madhu. "You told me not to tell anyone."
It was then that Leena burst out laughing,
"Are you talking about that day!!!! Oh I remember that! I was fooling
you...The Gardener's son was playing with him and he was scaring the kid
playfully, with a pair of grass scissors. The kid just shouted out in a
peek-a-boo game and ran off fast, so we could not hear him after the loud
shrill cry. What did you imagine?!!"
"You said I should not tell anyone! I
was scared and I did not!" Madhu said at length, "You said that man
would come after us, remember?" And then after a pause, "but why
didn't we hear the boy again?"
"How would I know? I used to see him
in the grove sometimes, and sometimes hear him laughing too. Maybe you did not
notice!"
"I thought that was the boy's ghost! And
then after some time the laughter also disappeared." Said Madhu now
becoming really interested in this revelation.
"Yes," said Leena, "After
some time I did not see the boy and the gardener anymore, he was replaced by an
old man."
"When I was older and able to see
across, I kept thinking that old man was the killer! I was always afraid he
would recognise us and come after us." Said Madhu trembling a little as
she remembered it.
Leena made faces at Madhu and said,
"It is so easy to fool you Madhu!"
But Mom was not amused at all. She
probed, is that why you are scared of going out alone Madhu?
It was quite some time since the incident,
Madhu was not quite sure!
But the very next day Madhu was peering
into the mangrove and walking home all by herself. Leena had a special class
and she needed to stay back at school that day.
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