Innocence Crushed

A soft mist descended on Pune city and its suburbs, dimming the already dim yellow street lights, wrapping the outdoor activities of mice and men in a shimmering cocoon. But it did little to allay Vinod’s fear of the dark. All he had to do was retrieve his sketch book from the bedroom and take it to the living room, where he could sit on the settee under the bright white light of the fluorescent tube light and draw and paint to his heart’s content, secure in the company of his father as he sat at the writing table, noting the day’s expenses in his big blue diary.

            Mist or no mist, moon or no moon, the bedroom was an unquestionably scary place to venture into at night. Its windows were always open and the curtains half-drawn, except on wintry nights when they were sealed shut to keep the cold at bay. And although the bedroom afforded a majestic view of the surroundings from its third-floor perch on the gentle slopes of Chatush Hill during the day, it was a different matter altogether at night.

Who knew what ogres would spring out of the inky blackness of the sky, squeeze through the spaces between the window grills and enter the bedroom to pounce upon an unsuspecting little Vinod, terrifying him, hurting him, and maybe even spiriting him into the inky blackness with them? The dozens of city lights, thousands of twinkling stars, the sole moon and the infinite mist would be powerless to stop the villains in their tracks.

            “Don’t be scared, Vinnie,” Smita assured her son, patting him on the head when he tugged the loose end of her sari, an expectant look in his eyes. “The night light’s turned on in the bedroom. I’d have accompanied you, but I’m in the middle of cooking vegetables. Go, you’re a big boy now.”

            Plucking all his courage, Vinod gingerly made his way from the kitchen to the bedroom. Once he spotted his sketch book lying on the window sill, he made a mad dash for it. He felt relieved when he grabbed it. No demons had pounced upon him. He was home free. As he turned around, he spotted from the corner of his eye pretty little green stems and leaves perched atop one of the metallic ends of his cot, well camouflaged amidst the green curtains, the green bedroom walls and the olive metallic ends. But who could’ve placed them there?

            Vinod took a closer look. The stems and leaves were attached to a large green, oval bulb – a bulb that resembled a head. And on that bulb were two beady black eyes, starting straight at him.

            Vinod shrieked with terror. Clutching his sketch book, he bolted from the bedroom and made his way to the kitchen. Smita couldn’t imagine what her son was scared of, but she decided to investigate. She turned off the stove and went to the bedroom, with Vinod following close behind. “It’s a grasshopper,” she told him tousling his hair and holding him close to her. “Don’t worry, it won’t harm us.”

            Vinod wasn’t so sure. If the creature hadn’t budged even after he had shrieked at it, it must’ve surely had an evil intent. How else could it have the gall to masquerade as an innocent plant?

            Hemant entered the bedroom soon thereafter, his attention drawn by the commotion. With a flick of his newspaper, he hit the offending creature, causing it to fall to the floor. He lost no time in stepping on it with the slippers he was wearing. Gone was the grasshopper, reduced to a mangy pulp in the blink of an eye.

            Hemant took the slipper off his right foot and looked at its underside. “I’ll have to wash it in the bathroom,” he declared with a triumphant grin. “Might as well wash both slippers while I’m at it.”

            “I wouldn’t have been able to kill it,” Smita confessed, looking admiringly at her husband. “I wouldn’t have been able to drive it away either.”

            “It’s a man’s job,” Hemant assured her.

            Vinod was palpably relieved, filled with awe at his father’s prowess. The critter that had filled him with terror was no more. The grief and the sadness would come later, several years down the road. But never again would Vinod trust the leaves and the stems of any plant, any tree, so blindly. What if there was a grasshopper hiding amidst them, casting not one evil eye at him but two? Nor could Vinod trust his mother. Hadn’t she told him time and time again that scary creatures stayed only in forests, never visited people’s homes?

            Vinod sat on the living room settee, furiously drawing houses and trees and birds and people and clouds in his sketch book with his crayons. The mist finished its descent, blanketing city and suburb, farm and country, in a nebulous white sheath while the moon rose to reveal its handiwork in all its resplendent glory. If the fog of innocence had begun to lift on the one hand, a different kind of innocence had also been crushed by the other foot.