“Childhood musings”, pondering over this, I can relate to some memories. One of them goes so…
Our little gang, gang of cousins was gathered at our grand parent’s house for summer vacation. Of course summer vacation used to be so much fun. Now without diverting from my topic, let me come to the point. One day during the vacation some so and so show was scheduled to be telecasted at 11.pm. The program being a horror serial. Despite the warning from our parents, we defended our selves saying “We have grown up now. Please give us a break. We can handle it”. Elders deciding that there was no further use in arguing, left us on our own. All the elders slept in a separate room, leaving us alone for the rendezvous of so called grown up kids.
During the serial each one’s heart was pumping with fear, but no one showed it outside. Each one had a sheepish smile to hide the fear. After the program got over, we all slept with a night lamp on. Suddenly we saw some shadows on the ceiling. The shadows being as big as water melons. We were totally perplexed. We could not imagine what these were. I thought may be I am imagining these things and confirmed with others. No one seemed to know what they were. Suddenly the 3 shadows began to move and circle the ceiling fan. Now we were speechless. We were totally confused as well as feared to move and switch on the tube light to inspect what was wrong. One of them shouted “flying water melons”.
We thought of going to the elders and getting their help, but rejected the idea owing to the nice dosage of advice and scolding that would have been showered by them. Besides no one was ready to move from his/her position. I covered my face with the blanket murmuring prayers, hoping for the sunrise to come soon.
At last when sunrise came, we narrated what had happened to our parents. We said “mom, pa, we had seen flying water melons yesterday night L”. After inspection we found out some dead cockroaches. It had been some flying cockroaches which had given us such fright. All the elders mocked us. Even now when we gather together they make fun of us by asking “Do you still fear watermelons? we mean flying water melons”.
