CHILDHOOD STORY, 1957

It was sometime in 1957 winter. Three of us were to take the Matriculation examination in February. My father was then posted at Sambalpur and I was left with his younger brother (my uncle) at Bhubaneswar. He was then living in a comparatively smaller house where it had not been possible to set apart an exclusive room for all three of us to study. Besides my uncle's daughter, the son of my father's sister too was preparing for the February final examination. Our neighbour, a bachelor, was living with his widowed mother and he readily set apart a room for all three of us to study. Like most students then, we too followed a simple study schedule, more or less in harmony with natural law. Our eating hours too were likewise. Dinner would be at nine and by then books must have been placed in the shelf. We would close the room and walk to  the dining place of our house that had a common wall with the neighbour's. First to leave the study table would be my cousin sister. She would be with her mother at ten to nine and I would join five minutes later. Our cousin brother, the oldest among us, would be the last to emerge from the study and would return home with the key. He enjoyed the solitude of the study after two of us had left and kept himself busy; arranging and rearranging his Books and Note Books. He checked up if some books needed new covers and if necessary, discarded a soiled cover and gave his Book a new one. Waiting for him at the dining table was a tantalising experience everyday. I had planned to teach him a lesson.

It was a new moon night. We did not have then the high mast LED lamps on the city streets. The kindly neighbour and our host led a frugal life and preferred a dark veranda. That was to my advantage. I slipped out of the study, hid behind a door, in total darkness and waited for the prey. He arrived, perhaps a bit sooner, and I barked, only once, as an alarmed German shepherd would. He swirled and squeaked in panic. But he looked different. He was the neighbour and I fled in fright. The person wronged was perhaps more frightened to yell at me. I could not enjoy my dinner as my stomach had little space beyond guilt and remorse.

The next morning our neighbour's mother reported about her son having fever after he was frightened the previous night. I made a detailed confession. The kindly neighbour listened to me with interest and had a smile. He soon got well. Soon thereafter, my uncle shifted to a bigger house just across the Rajpath, exactly opposite to the house where I had had the misadventure.

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