| aloo |
Posted
on 21-Feb-03 05:13 PM
My second try at writing a short story. Here goes:
“Ramesh dada,” the son of my neighbor used to call out to me from the lawn he was playing on, whenever I went out to tend my vegetable garden, which was adjacent to the wall that separated my plot of land with that of my neighbor’s. Guddu, the nickname his parents gave him, and the sobriquetI knew him with, was as cute as a button with his cute red cheeks, dark red birthmark on the part of the forehead that connected to the nose -- it somewhat looked like a tika--, dark brown hair and the colorful clothes that he wore, which also reflected his personality, but what really made him the center of attention was his carefree, jovial personality. He was about six years old, or perhaps a bit older or younger than that, and I hardly ever remember seeing him in a bad mood whenever I saw him, which usually would be when he was playing in the lawn. Even with his cheeky personality, it was safe to say that he hardly ever gave his parents any trouble –although for tykes, in my opinion, it is natural to be mischievous – and heeded their commands, however obstreperous they might be, without any complaints whatsoever. He was, however, in a way also pampered, since I saw him meandering about in various areas of the neighborhood all alone and even in locations that I considered to be unsafe for children his age.
His parents had bought him a bicycle, which, surprisingly, he learned to ride in only a couple of hours of self-training, obviously a very smart child, I reckoned. He used to ride it around the neighborhood, flaunting it to street children –in my neighborhood lived only extremely rich or hopelessly poor individuals, except for me – which was his way of gaining popularity. Inevitably because of him being the only kid with this toy, his house became a focal point for children to rendezvous, where they would also make plans to do fun things with the bicycle. One time I heard them planning a stunt competition in a nearby field, the purpose of which was to drive along the wall (the wall was short and much wider than a stereotypical Nepali wall, but still not safe) that surrounded the field. I strictly forbade them to do so, and lest they refused to listen to me, I even contacted Guddu’s parents. His parents laughed it out saying that they too had gone on adventures with neighborhood children when they were kids and that they wanted Guddu to be independent. I was indeed surprised by their nonchalance, but having been taken for a fool, I didn’t press the matter any further anymore.
It was just another one of those regular days, and I was tending my garden, and Guddu was busy climbing the wall on the farthest side of the lawn from me, which was connected to the wall of a different neighbor. His parents were also present. After climbing the wall, he would jump off it with ease. I had grown used to seeing him frisk and frolic around like that; so to me, it wasn’t anything preternatural at all. What I failed to realize was that along the foot of the wall in its entire length were planted roses, with each thorn as sharp as a needle. On one side of the wall, the part joining the gate, the bricks were arranged in a stair like fashion, because of which climbing it was child’s play. I was oblivious to things going on in my surroundings, blurring out background noise as always, and being engrossed with my own problems.
Guddu was calling out to his parents, a jovial shout, which I ignored. He was jumping off the wall as usual, and rinsing and repeating. After quite a while, however, I heard a thud, and when I looked to see what was going on, I saw Guddu lying on top of the roses. I quickly rushed to the site of the ill-fated incident, as did his parents, and one of the servants hurried into the house in order to call the ambulance. Guddu lay motionless, and it took me a while to notice blood flowing onto the ground. A thorn had penetrated into his chest, his skull had sunk in, and one of his legs was broken. We tried everything to cut loss of blood till the ambulance arrived, and once it did he was quickly rushed to the nearest hospital.
At the hospital, he was pronounced dead.
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