A few days back, I had gone to a relative's place after a long time. They have two kids, quite adorable if you go by the face but more irritable if you go by their lifestyle. Yeah, 'lifestyle'. After some chit-chats with them, one of the kid asked me, whether I have an account in Facebook or not. I was astonished by their not-so-lame question. A 7 year old kid asking you about your Facebook account is quite astonishing. The kids were surrounded by numerous gadgets which I still don't have. At that time, I was feeling both jealous (every guy dreams of being surrounded by gadget) and pity on them. C'mon dude, get some life. And suddenly my mind raced back to my childhood where I had lived a real life. One of the moments, which I cherish the most and is still picturesque in my mind. The moment was something like this....
I was studying in standard 6 that time. I had gone to my native village during the vacations. Everyone used to say that I have inherited my father's qualities, silent and good-natured. Maybe they should have taken a better look at me after that incident. I was sitting on the terrace, enjoying the cool breeze which ruffled my hair. Some of my village mates came to the terrace to play with me. We decided to go to the nearby pond to catch some fishes. In the way, we saw a huge tree laden with juicy yellow mangoes. The tree was literally looking yellow rather than green, all credits to the mangoes. But unfortunately, that tree belonged to a man who would think twice before giving a penny to a beggar. Stealing from that tree was completely out of the league. But, we were kids, not grown-ups. The funnier side of it took the better side of us. After a lot of debate, we decided to steal the mangoes after the skies turned dark. The mission started after twilight, the leanest of us climbing the tree first. After that guy managed to do so, he gave a whistle which could wake up a sleeping Kumbhkaran. Fortunately no one came and one by one climbed the tree. I was hesitating at first as I came from a very respected family and the fear of getting caught was gripping me slowly. But true to my zodiac sign, I couldn't stop myself from the adventure. After climbing the tree, everyone of us took of our garments in which we would take our hard-stolen mangoes. One by one, we started plucking the juicy fruit and put them in our garment cum bag. After the bags became twice as heavy as us, we decided to leave the place as soon as possible. But getting down with heavy bags was not easy. The native children got down easily as they were master at climbing trees but unfortunately I was not. Slowly, I tried to come down but THUD! I fell down from a considerable height. The owner of the house came running before us like a mad dog and we started running like a gazelle from an approaching tiger. Leaping over vines, jumping over stones, we reached the boundaries. I had to deal with some of my mangoes in order to come out of it as going out with lot of fruits was not possible for a slowpoke like me. I dropped down some of my mangoes and ran out of a small hole. The next morning, the owner of the orchard, who was a good friend of my grand father had come to our house to discuss about the thieves. That feeling was epic, when he was narrating the whole story in front me while I was savoring the taste of the sweet mangoes which I had stolen. The sweeper threw the mango seeds and covering outside the house.
'The kids of this era, surely live lavishly
But I think, they possibly
Do not know the real fun
These gadgets and burgers
Are too shallow to measure the fun
we had in sharing stale buns and listening to an old transistor'
