August 18, 2007

Crash! Bang! The best crockery dish that my mother used to have was now dust! Here I was hiding in the closet from my mischievous brother who was on the run, destroying every thing that came in his path. It had all started on a nice sunny morning.

“What could possibly go wrong?” I had asked myself and I soon came to know. My mother had gone to attend a funeral of a relative whom I did not know personally. I was left in charge of my naughty brother. He turned out to be my worst nightmare and because of his destructive behaviour I ended up hiding in the closet. Burning with fury, I decided to catch the little devil once and for all as he broke a couple of dishes. Jumping out of the closet, I tried to catch him, but he was too quick for me. He dodged me and ran away. I decided to clean up the mess first.

After cleaning up, I looked for the naughty boxer again. As I tiptoed to the lounge I found him jumping on the shoe cupboard.

“Get down from there!” I shouted, but instead of obeying me he threw a pair of slippers at me.

“Oww!” I screamed as the slippers came intact with my head. He found this really amusing, but on the other hand I was getting really angry. He really was a ‘baby bull in a china shop’. He was performing a little dance now and was making faces at me which got on my nerves. I dashed at the naughty little soul again but my agile brother dodged me fairly easily and scampered off to my little sister’s room. As soon as he reached her room he started tearing the pages of her favourite story book.

“Oh no!” I said as I imagined myself standing in front of my mother and sister who would be blaming me for this. He then tore off to the kitchen and tripped over a jar of chilly powder. A scarlet dust filled the room and I found myself coughing and covering my watering eyes. My head was about to blow off! When the dust cleared I found my brother trying to sneak off again. I threatened to tell my mom about his doings but instead of being appalled and scared he smiled, an impish smile and dashed off to my room.

Praying that he wouldn’t be up

to no good I went after him. I saw that he had two Rs500 notes in his hand and realised that they were mine and that he was about to tear them.

“Nooo!” I cried appalled. I had been saving that money for months now.

“Promise not to tell mom and I won’t tear your money.” I had no choice but to agree.

I quickly cleared the mess and set everything right when I heard the door bell ring. I went to get the door and found my mother and sister standing on the door step.

“Did Abdul give you any trouble?” my mom asked.

“Oh no! We had fun!” I replied through gritted teeth. Everything went back to normal after that. I had glued back the pages of my sister’s book (Lucky for me she didn’t notice anything strange).

But my mom often wondered where her best dish went.