Written & Drawn by Ahaha Bhattacharjee
On a hot summer day
My school, like all other schools,
Like in the previous years
Asked the kids to go away, politely.
I planned my escape to the
Land of infinite goodies and tin-cars
In there, I would be
Accompanied by my friends
M, R, I, F and some unnamed ones
I cannot recollect.
We planned to prank the crankiest of the neighbours,
The older, the better.
But I often thought,
“Will their dentures fall off,
If they scream too loud?”
Too sympathetic to such a situation
I played the prank on my mother,
She, being a frail,
Curly haired and of frame lighter than others
Falls for the prank.
Probably too deep into an abyss of excitement
That she did not wake up.
After sleeping through a fortnight
Blood gushed down her forehead
Like thick syrup from ripe mangoes
My spirit of joy turned into horror
As I watched my mother die.
Crime or Prank?
It cannot be decided,
Probably both,
It seemed
Only Time could tell.
Like all summer holidays,
The horror ended.
My escape turned into my school;
My friends, into judges.
In my early childhood, I did not have many friends and to begin with, I was fond of staying on my own. I had a few acquaintances in school with whom I hung out with but that did not really interest me. But I had a bunch of friends, imaginary friends, who did not, like the real people, lash out every time I did something. So, I enjoyed their company more than anything else.
I was a regular child who liked pranks and every time when my school shut down for summer holidays, the intensity of my pranks would hike.
In a certain period of my childhood, I had played a prank on my mother. My mother was a really quiet and composed woman who did not intervene in my life much, only to shower me with love and necessities.
The prank turned fatal, which made her lose blood and eventually succumbed to her injury.
This incident had branded me as a ‘psychotic kid’ where people around me would just make faces and bad mouth me.
In this period of my life, I was left alone, with no one to take care of me, I started to lose my sanity. I stopped going to places which beamed with people. It was not until a few years that I have started to get out of my house and tried to lead what people refer to as a ‘normal’ life.
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Ahana Bhattacharjee : Born in 1997, in Kolkata, India. Faced long years of mental isolation. There have been times that she has been suicidal and thought of quitting everything. Writing is the only form of escape for self.
Currently a literature student at Jadavpur University.
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