The serpent enters 10
The serpent enters in the form of a family. The ground floor of our house is vacant on and off. We are hardly aware of the residents there as it is usually a small family with a baby or toddler.
Now here is a family of six children ,one boy ,five girls and their parents. The girls do not go to school with us . This should have alerted us. We are so naive. Our friendly overtures are snubbed. They would all huddle together in the front garden and sit with their mother.
Their games were not ours , the idiom of their language not ours. Always ready to pull us down, our school, our eating habits our intelligence level. Now for the first time we learn of the C word which is the bane of our society.
More than all this ,what differentiates them most is their utter dread of their father. We ourselves would fear his returning home from office when his shoutings would start. Who forgot to close/ open the front gate,who left the light on in the garden, who forgot to put off the fountain. They would instantly make us the scapegoat.This is when we would miss Patole , who had already left us for a different posting.
The father thought nothing of it but would come charging to accuse us. We now started taking preventive measures by seeing to it that everything was just so when he returned home. And he ,not our father.
Already territorial right wars were going on ,over Amma's kitchen garden ,the badminton court at the back ,when things came to a head. Provoked beyond endurance my elder brother once just threw a toy of theirs down. In retaliation they BROKE one of his. In a fit of anger he threw a toy of theirs into the well. All hell broke loose when the father returned home.
That was the last straw on the camel's back for a woman living alone with four children. Amma decided enough was enough and we shift house .
Please don't judge me harshly friends when I tell you this .Years later I met one of the girls at the military hospital. She was recuperating from was it appendicitis (?) and I had gone to see Appa who was suffering from malaria. I felt a cruel sense of satisfaction when I learnt that none of the girls had done so well academically.
The serpent enters in the form of a family. The ground floor of our house is vacant on and off. We are hardly aware of the residents there as it is usually a small family with a baby or toddler.
Now here is a family of six children ,one boy ,five girls and their parents. The girls do not go to school with us . This should have alerted us. We are so naive. Our friendly overtures are snubbed. They would all huddle together in the front garden and sit with their mother.
Their games were not ours , the idiom of their language not ours. Always ready to pull us down, our school, our eating habits our intelligence level. Now for the first time we learn of the C word which is the bane of our society.
More than all this ,what differentiates them most is their utter dread of their father. We ourselves would fear his returning home from office when his shoutings would start. Who forgot to close/ open the front gate,who left the light on in the garden, who forgot to put off the fountain. They would instantly make us the scapegoat.This is when we would miss Patole , who had already left us for a different posting.
The father thought nothing of it but would come charging to accuse us. We now started taking preventive measures by seeing to it that everything was just so when he returned home. And he ,not our father.
Already territorial right wars were going on ,over Amma's kitchen garden ,the badminton court at the back ,when things came to a head. Provoked beyond endurance my elder brother once just threw a toy of theirs down. In retaliation they BROKE one of his. In a fit of anger he threw a toy of theirs into the well. All hell broke loose when the father returned home.
That was the last straw on the camel's back for a woman living alone with four children. Amma decided enough was enough and we shift house .
Please don't judge me harshly friends when I tell you this .Years later I met one of the girls at the military hospital. She was recuperating from was it appendicitis (?) and I had gone to see Appa who was suffering from malaria. I felt a cruel sense of satisfaction when I learnt that none of the girls had done so well academically.
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