Most parents are
known to hide some of their secrets from their children.
My mother, a
widow, guarded her secret with a large enough lock that would make entry into
our “special” storage room at home a challenge for Houdini.
For several years my
inquisitive brothers and I wondered what lay beyond this locked door. Curiosity became more intense with the
passage of time, and entry into the mysterious Storage Room (without mother’s
approval) became an obsession.
The storage room
surrounded with mystery contained a large black cupboard. It housed various items that an engineer
would use in his job (obviously artefacts left by my deceased father) and two
very large books vividly displaying explicit pictures of heaven and hell by
Dante. We were particularly drawn to this
book on hell. The subjects were all in the nude and this invited stifled
chuckles from us. Our sexuality was still in its formative stages so nudity
appeared more hilarious than sensuous. Hell wasn’t what our catechism teacher made it
out to be, we thought.
Then came the
object of our attention. There were two
guns in the deep recesses of the cupboard.
With eyes like saucers we reverently reached out for them and admired
the polished barrels and the shining butt of the guns. We promptly placed the guns where they
belonged and then noticed, on the lower shelf a half-
opened box of
bullets. The bullets were about eight
inches long. The top end had a pointed
lead head about three inches long. The
housing was made of brass. They could
probably kill five elephants placed side by side.
We distinctly
remember that our family friends who we referred to as the “Kiponda DeSilvas”
had very large brass bomb shells which when polished with “brasso” enriched
their living rooms My brother Eustace
took the initiative by trying to undo the lead head using his teeth. Little thought was given to the real
possibility that he could have had his head blown off. The truth of the matter is that he succeeded
in dislodging the lead and then he proceeded to empty the contents of the
bullet.
One fine day,
Eustace absconded with another one of these bullets and took it to show his
friends. The first stop for his “show
and tell” was made at Mathew’s house. Mathew,
who was one of our many Goan friends, was so impressed that he took it to his
father in the hope of arousing his admiration.
It had just the opposite effect.
He was stunned to see the bullet and amidst mumbled comments (which I am
sure were not pleasant) about “children of today”, he promptly took the bullet
and very carefully threw it into the toilet pit. (The flush system was a thing of the future.)
The problem with
that spontaneous act was that nobody in the household wanted to use the toilet
for fear that the bullet might suddenly and mysteriously come to life and find
its naked target.
It was no surprise
that the family moved to another house within a couple of weeks.!! And Mathew
was given strict instructions by his parents not to be friendly with the BAD
BOYS who walked around with bullets.
Mathew, however, still remained our friend particularly
when we promised that we would show him two guns and that his father never needed
to know about it.
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