After the Rain

As I stepped hearing the sound of the splash of water, the yoghurt in my bowel flew in the air and fell back on my head.

It had been raining since last night, and just before noon, my mother asked me to fetch some yoghurt. I was about seven years old. She was preparing lunch for my father. The shop was away about twenty minutes walk from the city of Sahiwal railways station— it was named Montgomery before the partitioning of Pakistan and India.

The sky was almost clear and there were some flakes of clouds here and there in the sky. The blue sky with a pattern of white clouds was so attractive and stunning. I couldn’t help watching them again and again. The whole sight was so captivating and I couldn’t realize the slippery of elegy under the water on the cemented place. I walked enjoying the splash of water under my feet, wearing a slipper of plastic material. As I stepped hearing the sharp splash of water, I stumbled and the yoghurt in my bowel flew in the air and it fell back on my head and back on the path. “Oh! My God! How I would face my mother!”

Moaning about what had happened, I arrived at my home and paused at the entrance, too afraid to go inside. While I hesitated, my younger brother emerged from the house, spotted me, and went back inside. I was filled with dread as I contemplated what might happen next to me. However, nothing occurred during his second and third visits outside, when he spoke to me before returning indoors. But on his third departure, I heard him crying, and the realization of what might happen to me next left me utterly awestruck.

Actually, when my Mom came to know about my presence outside the gate, she started beating him for not telling her about me. Afterwards, she called me and staggered inside and tried to narrate about the incident, but she had her own reasoning and I also got my deserving punishment. She got late as she could not prepare the dish before my Father came home.

Later, when I told her that I ate some of the cream of yoghurt that fell on my face during the incident, everybody laughed heartily. The movements whenever I passed by the clump of trees, I used to stop and watch the squirrels’ chasing one after the other over the crackling and rustling of the leaves and ran to the trees.

Gone are the days, it was Friday and the day when this incident happened. It’s Friday today.

Stay blessed!