Story-An Interesting neighbor I have had-Debrupa Chakraborty

 

An Interesting neighbor I have had

Debrupa Chakraborty 

(Class IX-DPS, Haridwar)

My story starts on a very lazy afternoon. When my family and I were stretched out in the verandah enjoying sweet -warm sunshine of a wintry afternoon in the beautiful city of Nainital. Our cottage was perched on a hill in such a way that despite being connected to the city it was connected to the paradise. From our entrance one could see the hustle and bustle of the main city; tourist, street hawkers, officers, school going children thronged the road. But I never cared for the main city because my life was in the verandah which overlooked the mountains. One could see an endless stream of mountains from there, some green with pines and deodars while the ones further whose only tops can be seen were white like a blank canvas .It felt that someone has spilled orange and yellow color on during the rising and setting sun . I am sure that it was not the case, but this is what I felt at that time. I was 6 an age when even the smallest possible happening seemed to be magical. We never stayed at a place for long. Because my father who worked at a private firm then, got transferred regularly. We came to Nainital after a long and dusty stay in Gurgaon, because of being transferred so regularly we always stayed on rent. This time too we were on rent and our landlady owned not only one we were occupying but one more  small cottage. One which she occupied herself. Our landlady was an interesting character bent with age and energetic by character. She had fluffy white hair like a white sugar candy. Wrinkled like a crumbled paper. Always wearing a white sweater. The overall appearance made her look like a snow ball walking here and there but I never told her that or never actually got the chance to tell her that, because we had to leave that place in a very short notice indeed. In the afternoon when we were enjoying sunshine. Our landlady came to give us a visit. She often did that and we never found it wrong. She was very friendly with a knowledge of thousands of house remedies which she was eager to share  with us. Even if we found her remedies a bit… well to much to bear, we never told her that. Like the one she  told me when I had caught conjunctivitis, “listen dear, do this remedy and you will never have conjunctivitis again, boil a glass of water with red chilies ,black pepper and green chilies and when it is boiling hot spill the whole content on your eyes and your conjunctivitis will get washed away in a second”. I was at a point to tell her that with conjunctivitis washing away my eyeballs will also be rolling on the ground if I tried washing my eyeballs with that solution, but I stopped myself because she had brought Burfies for me, which were my favorites. This time too she had brought the finest Gulab jamuns and Burfies. But I was too lazy to go and have one. So when mom asked whether I would have one I said “no, I will have in the dinner.” Mom kept the plate on the dinner table and came out to chat with our landlady. She seemed very restless that day and asked us to have sweets saying that they are the finest in Nainital, ants might eat them, some other insects might harm them, and we kept consoling her that our cat Goose will protect the sweets. I told her that my cat was very obedient as I have trained her she protects my things especially my sweets with utmost sincerity. But she kept mumbling that we should have them; at last she got up to go back said that she was sure that we would have them in dinner. And we consoled that we would help ourselves on them. When at evening we came inside our dining room to my parents surprise and my horror Goose had eaten every sweet and was ravishly licking the plate. I shoed her giving her a nice scolding. She sulked in one corner and I in the other corner. My parents consoled both us and asking me not to tell our landlady that after all we were not able to have the sweets. She would feel sad. I thought at that precise moment I was the saddest person but said nothing and nodded in consent. After dinner we went to sleep but woke up at the stroke of midnight bell when heard a tremendous metal clank from our landlady’s house. At first we tried to ignore because it was every day that we heard these types of sounds from our landlady’s house at night. We thought that the old lady might be trying to shift something .But today is was different. The sounds were accompanied by fiery sparks which we saw from our window .So we ran outside to witness something that I am sure I would never witness again. We saw her with a big ‘Degchi’. In which she was making some kind of concoction emitting red and green fiery sparks. She was not bent at all but quite the opposite and with great vigor she was moving a great spoon with tremendous speed in the light of full moon. She suddenly scooped a glass out of nowhere and scooped an amount of that solution and drank the boiling fiery concoction. I was at point of yelling at her not drink that from behind the screen of curtains from where we were watching. But my mother stopped me; at that precise moment to both our amazement and horror she grabbed a broom and laughing like a maniac she climbed it, up she went against the black background of the wintry night. Accompanied by non-other than our cat Goose who was sitting at the rear handle of the broom!!

  I never found out whether our landlady wanted us to accompany her like our cat did. Because if she did we would never have had enough space on the broom, or did she made some other arrangements. Well my father got us out of there on the first priority.

 I sometimes wonder is our landlady still flying or making those special sweets of her to get her tenants fly around with her.

 

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