And We Could Not Die
As the train moves out of the Pathankot Railway Station leaving behind the hundreds of memories flooding my mind which were getting mixed and crowding over each other, a scene of an evening came in front of my eyes as if I was seeing it as a movie flashback.
It was neither summer, nor winter, and as children, we were allowed to be at the rooftop in the evenings for some time. The best times were between myself and my younger sister. Those were the times when on holidays our grandmother used to read Mahabharat and Ramayan alternatively to us, making us listen to the stories. She will recite the poetic verse first and then explain to us, in short, the meaning. Both the epics were in Bengali and we used to enjoy them, at least because we were able to tell our friends that we know this story and that story.
One of the major attractions was looking at the photographs in the books and discussing them.
The incident coming to my mind:
We had heard the story of the defeat of Ram and Lakshman and their armies at the hand of Luv and Kush, the twin sons of Ram at the Ashram of Sage Valmiki. The brothers were so expert that they could kill Ram and Lakshman. Sage Valmiki gave them life again. We had seen somewhere in some book a photo of Ram and Lakshman lying down with one hand stretched up and the other hand stretched down. We did not know what was the death and the only idea was that the breathing stops on death.
I and my sister were not playing any game but were just talking and talking, and the subject of Ramayana came. We had heard of death and started talking about how it will be if both of us fake our death and elders will weep around us; then we can see how they do weep. As we two were the youngest, most of the weeping was normally reserved for two of us in normal life as boxing bags of elder siblings.
As the idea came to our mind, we planned meticulously that we should lie down in the same manner as Ram and Lakshman were in the photograph and remain awake. When elders would call us, we will not reply. Then they would come to fetch us, scold us, still, we will not reply. Then they would get worried, they would test our breathing by touching our nose. At that time, we should hold our breaths, and then everyone will think that we were dead.
So, both of us were lying on the floor as we spoke about how we would enjoy the weeping of all and give them a shock and waited for elders to call us. But, alas! nobody was calling us. We did not know when we slept off.
And then there was the shock, both of us slept waiting for the call, and woke up with a jerk as the elder brother was shouting at full voice standing near us, mouthing all sorts of consequences of sleeping in the evening instead of studying. We got up, probably got a couple of slaps also.
And we could not die.
๐
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