The Imprudent Child

 

“For me it was the best of times as well as the worst of it. My mother had died a few days back, for a twelve year old child like me, it was no less than fire dripping over me form every edge of the sky. Not long ago, our country had attained freedom. The Muslim community had decided to form a separate nation. Trains filled with dead bodies of the migrants had become a common sight. There was a continuous fight for survival between both the dominant communities. I being an imprudent child, used to spend my evenings wandering around the Muslim dominant areas of my village. One fine evening while i was journeying through that area, a woman wearing black coloured clothes and a black coloured veil that hardly managed to cover her face, called me. She insisted me to come inside her house, I couldn’t reject her. I started to pray in my head while i followed her from one courtyard to another. Before we reached the destination, i had taken an oath that if I managed to survive that seemingly inevitable death, I was not going to visit that section of the village again. After walking several miles inside her house, we reached a place where lay a pile of expensive household items. She introduced me to all the items and at the end of her speech said that she wanted me to find a person who would buy all that by the next day for she had to vacate the country. I assured her that all her items will be sold before the next morning. I assume that she smiled. I silently wriggled from the scene. Keeping to the words of my oath, i never returned back. “, said the eighty four year old man when his inquisitive grandson had exclaimed that life was boring seventy years back.