A (Non) Rain Holiday

Note : This post's title has nothing to do with the content.  I just wanted the readers to know that we got a rain holiday and it hardly rained.

I'm back in front of my comp after an hour of being locked out of my house.  I watched the movie Ocean's Eleven for the tenth time, and yes, I loved it.

Anyway, I was attempting to clear my cluttered desktop, and...

                             


... came across an article I wrote a while ago.  Decided to put it up here.

               

Peek-a-boo

Yes, I admit it is not unnatural for a little kid to get attracted to a game such as hide and seek. I was hooked to it too, at one stage of my life. But doesn´t it get a bit... dry after a certain point – i.e., when the seeker knows exactly where you are and pretends to be searching for you? Well, obviously, not to my sister.

My seven-year-old sister makes it a point to hide herself and surprise my father when he gets back home from work or my mother when she´s back from school. I am forced to declare that I have absolutely no idea where my sister is. But the point I´m trying to make here is, almost every single one of these times my parents know the hiding place because a violent fit of giggling erupts from there. But they play along, looking everywhere in the room (and when they run out of ideas they resort to looking under the telephone directory) until they finally get fed up and act all surprised when she emerges from her hiding place.

This happens close to every single time. I mean, yes, my sister is quite small, and hide and seek is fun... but I thought everything has its limit! I wonder what goes through her mind when my parents pretend to search for her. I still haven´t managed to figure out if she´s aware of the fact that her parents are pretending or she really thinks she´s doing a good job of hiding. I have tried a few times to find out, but those attempts really didn´t work. Usually at the end of those psychological sessions I would end up listening to her describe at length her views on every character of an absurd animation programme known as Chota Bheem (Now, I don´t know how many of you have heard of this cartoon, much less seen it, because it´s not exceptionally wonderful. I´ve watched some of it only a few times myself, but there´s lots to say about it... It´s not just the animation that isn´t really great... Obviously, the director and the person in charge of dialogues can´t be all that bright, because their idea of a perfect comedy scene is this –

CharacterA (to CharacterB): Hi! You look very funnyyyy!

CharacterB : Hmph!

CharacterA, C, D, E : Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!

I think at this point, we are expected to laugh along.)

There have been a few times when my sister really did manage to conceal herself well. But that usually happens only on the worst possible days. For example, there was this occasion when my sister managed to shut herself up in a cupboard. I was sipping a glass of cool water. And my mother entered the house looking quite stressed out.

"I swear I haven´t the faintest idea where Kalyani (my sister) is, and I shall not help you find her," was the first thing I told my mother. I had learned by heart my lines pretty well.

My mother really wasn´t in the mood for a game of peekaboo; she had to take my sister for a dance class and was running late. She slapped her palm on her forehead in frustration and began looking for my sister in earnest. All her attempts were in vain, and she began calling out to my sister, capitulating, asking her to come out. My sister pushed the cupboard door open and jumped out with great vigour, screaming something that sounded like "wheeeeeeeeee!" at the top of her voice. My mother sighed in relief (though she was annoyed with me for letting my sister venture into a cupboard), but I was so stunned by the wheeee-like-noise that I choked over the water and spilled all the water in my glass. My sister, with her characteristic broad smile, decided to celebrate by running around the house doing a victory dance. But this glorious moment of hers was cut short most tragically. She slipped over the water I had spillled and hit her head against the floor, and... began to cry.

So what happened, finally?

What happened in this case was my sister went to her dance class late (not to mention sobbing). And she returned home quite happily, with a Kurkure packet in hand (the function of the Kurkure packet was to cheer her up). Well, I ate up most of the Kurkure, but that´s a different story...

So that´s how things are with my sister... Wait, where´s my sister again? Oh yeah, she must be under the bed, I hear some laughter come from there. She probably expects me to search for her.