I always hated those thunders. The blinding lights followed by terrifying sounds!! It always makes me feel so helpless as if it’s the final judgment day where I kneel down in complete surrender when big man in the sky roars at me with an ultimate display of his power!
But, there I was, with my little brother and cousin, holding each other’s hands really tight and praying that we would make it. I was probably ten and my cousin was a year older. Needless to say, he was our team leader.
It was dark, raining with thunders and lightning. We were walking back home from a hill. We had no flash lights and hardly could see the dirt trail. We knew it was a long two miles walk!
The only umbrella that we had was no match for the powerful wind – it would keep folding backwards for every thirty seconds! We would fix it and move forward. The whole thing will repeat within ten steps.
It was my cousin, who came up with the idea on that evening. He wanted to take us to the nearby hill where a wind mill was newly installed as part of some government initiative. We had never seen a wind mill before. We thought it would be a cool thing to do in the evening.
But the real agenda was different. My cousin wanted to smoke beedies stolen from his father’s shirt pockets! Taking us out was just a convenient excuse.
My uncle was not home. Aunt had her regular warnings for us – “Be back before it gets dark. Otherwise, I would ask your uncle to teach you a good lesson!! …..And, yes – don’t eat any junk food outside. If I ever come to know that you guys ate outside, I would tell your uncle to…”
When it got darker, we didn’t even realize because there was enough light at the top of the hill. Rains in that area can shock you faster than anything. So, there we were, stuck in the thunderstorm, totally drenched in heavy rain, and trying to find our way back home in complete darkness without any flashlights. We were afraid of everything starting from snakes to stray dogs to the local ‘Bhuta’ (ghost) that supposedly lived in a huge banyan tree by the dirt road!!! We had heard so many stories on how the ghost had deceived lone travelers into its trap. As per the local legend, once you saw the ghost you had less than a year before you got terminally ill and die!! So, we had decided not to acknowledge anyone who called us by our names in night!! ‘Bhuta’ was notoriously known for calling people by their names to trap them!! And, to top it all, there was the fear of getting spanked by uncle!! After all, he was a school teacher and knew how to ‘teach’ a proper lesson to kids, who didn’t listen to elders!
My cousin had to throw away his precious beedies and match box. Rain had spoiled everything, poor guy! When the dogs started barking, Aunt knew it was us!! Nobody said a word when we reached home! Thank God - Uncle was still not home – probably he too got stuck in the rain! We just wanted to change our clothes and get into bed before he could reach home!
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There is much more. I will have to complete, may be, some other time! In short, after this incident, I got into, what I call, curiosity smoking!! Later, I would get unlimited supply of beedies from a good friend of mine, whose father worked as a manager at the local beedy processing branch!! It would go on for ten more years before I finally managed to kick out that habit!!
