My Confessions - Part I

I must have been in the loo when God said: 
“Thou shalt not steal”. 

If I tell you that this episode of going against Him, committing a theft, occurred around the time when I was 4 years old, you might think that I was (am) a kleptomaniac or a juvenile delinquent. You may make your decisions as you read ahead.

This was when I was in the lower kindergarten in a school located about 1 km away from our house. My mother had entrusted a maid in the school, whom we used to call ‘ayah’ to take me to and from the school every day.  Besides me, there were a few more kids this ayah was herding back and forth every morning and evening.

I remember that I used to be the last one to be dropped at home after school. Oh!! How much I hated school!!! When ayah went to leave the penultimate kid, she would make me wait near a vegetable shop beside the street so that I wouldn’t have to cross that busy road. And here while leaning on the sidewalls of that shop was when I performed my first act of plunder.

What could be there in a veggie-shop that prompted a 4-year old girl to embark on the road of crime??? It was not as if I came from a famished family struggling to keep body and soul together. Thanks to God, ours was a well-fed family and I especially was more generously endorsed.

What interested me in the shop was a bunch of tender, delicate greenies, sticking out of the edge of the rack, just next to the wall, mere inches away from my tiny hands. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see what it was except that it was green. Normally, I was (am) never attracted by greens in the veggie-shop: I am more into the reds and oranges and yellows and browns and creams and whites in the restaurants and bakeries.

I suppose it must have been the curiosity that drove me into it the first time. One day, I pinched off an inch of the green wonder in an exceptionally inconspicuous manner. It looked like a piece of a leaf, and from hand to mouth the leaf found its path quickly. I bit and chewed half of my loot, clutching the other half secure (can’t recall why). It tasted okay. Not bitter, not sour, not sweet, salty or pungent, but had some distinct flavour which I liked. Could as well have been the flavour of success over my most adventurous feat.

At home my mom saw me smelling and inspecting the remaining half inch of the leaf and asked what it was.

“I don’t know”, I said.

Now that was an honest answer as I did NOT know what it was and she hadn’t anyway asked me how or where I got it. She smelled it and commented offhandedly that it was betel leaf.

“Oh! So, that was what it was!” I got thrilled. I knew what betel leaf is. I had seen my grandmother chew it and her lips and tongue become red. I had wanted to try that too, but at my first thought of it itself my dad had rolled his eyes at me saying it was dirty habit and no more was said on that ( though much was DONE on that….much later…..without his knowledge).

Excited, I immediately put the remaining piece into my mouth and ran to check in front of the mirror to see my lips and tongue go red. Nothing happened. “Maybe I must try harder”. And harder I tried. But alas, it was too small a piece of leaf to survive the torturous assault of my teeth. Soon, there was not even any green left, forget the red.

 I analysed the situation and deduced the reasons for the failure. The specimen sample was too small to give the desired result. 
“I must get a bigger one tomorrow”
 Plans were made for the next day and the Modus Operandi was well-chalked out in my master brain. For the first time I was waiting eagerly to go to school!!
 

If curiosity did it the first time, experience, confidence, passion and determination geared my repeated attempts after that.  But the tongue never turned red. I had almost become a pro and the pinch-offs grew larger by day in portions and number until one day, some other greeny had taken the place of the betel leaves. But I realised it only after it was too late, only after I felt my tongue burn. I turned to look at the stack where I took this stuff from and saw to my horror that in place of betel leaves was sitting a mass of fresh green chillies!!

                                                                 

Thus, finally on that day, though I did not see my tongue become red, I could very well  feel it become RED HOT!!! 

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