THE GONE INNOCENT CHILDHOOD

It was fun. The childhood was fun. No! It seems freaking hilarious only when I recollect those gone moments on hindsight. The hilarity of the childhood is now a treasured memory; it will remain the prized possession for the rest of my life. There are so many of those stupid moments that my words fail to weave them into sentences. Ah! – I can’t narrate them all.

15 years back, it was Sunday! No it was Monday! Maybe Monday? Ok – let it be Sunday…the day when my cousin and me went down to the forest nearby our village. The forest, at that time, was too scary to convince our heart to enter into it. Actually, I was very fascinated with plantation and my patio lacked the guava tree, the plant which I thought would complement the beauty of my little garden consisting of many other plants. We were blindly superstitious! The cousin whispered to me that the forest graciously had many plants, included the one, which drove both of us to venture into the jungle.


Both of us looked here and there to find a little guava plant but of no avail.

Yeah…we encountered some species from serpentine family, but they did not do us any harm, except the black bull (can’t forget him) whom we suddenly came across in the middle of the jungle (not sure whether we entered into the deep of the jungle). It immediately charged on us, as we intervened the animal mating with a wild cow. Well, we ran for life and the bull chased us for few miles, his strained cock oozing a trail of sperms along the way, possibly by the effect of half-reached orgasm.

We searched the guava plant, and finally my cousin uprooted a plant, which later proved to be just a case of mistaken identity, as the plant turned out to a sapling bearing the impression of a guava plant. Another hectic quest finally led us to a place in the jungle where we found many guava saplings thickly grown among other weeds across a 100 meter of the land within the jungle. This time, we selected a healthy looking guava sapling and my cousin uprooted it.

Here, we thought it prudent not to let the root of the plant visible to crow. Reason? Well, we believed (or the blindly followed superstitions had us believed this) that if a crow sees the root of any plant, the plant does not grow up and dies after few days of its plantation. Undoubtedly, for us, the crow (as it seemed then) was an omen for the baby plant. I took the plant in my hand and ensured that my fingers covered its root perfectly.

Outside the jungle, we stopped by a pound. Sensing my feeling, my cousin took out some slime from the shore of the pond, besmeared the root with the clay. It was very helpful for two reasons – first, the slime covered the root, and secondly, we provided the plant the needed soil and water to survive. Hence, by the time we reached home, the plant still looked afresh. Later, I planted it and took a good care of it while it was growing up.

The reason why I was so fascinated with plantation were the words told by my mother. She told me one day that my hands have magic that whatever saplings I plant will most definitely grow and bear fruits later. Inspired by her words, I, firstly, planted saplings of flowers like marigold and others (I don’t know their English name). I also planted birch. Later, I paid attention to vegetable plantation. For this, I brought vegetable saplings like tomatoes, cauliflowers, ladyfingers, cabbage, chili and onion from nearby market (known as HAAT in our Maithli language). The notability of this eccentric yet cute hobby was that my mom was so right. Whatever sapling I planted indeed grew up with a lot of harvest. I cannot tell how much pleased that I felt to see them grow up with the result for my labour.

NOW I AM JUST LEFT WITH THE SWEET MEMORY OF THOSE GONE CHILDHOOD MOMENTS!