It was yet another average dull and boring day, I had come home from school, my mother had not yet returned and my father was away at work. As a routine I would change my clothes, have lunch and sit on sofa with the remote in my hand and flip the channels on the TV, watching it until my mother would come home and thenI would quickly turn it off and go scurrying into another room.
Anyway let’s get back to the present. I was soon interrupted by the usual thud-thud on the door by the part time maid who comes in the afternoon. She swished and “swooshed” around and seemed to come with the broom and mop wherever I sat so I finally decided to stand. Soon we were joined by our full time maid who also joined her in this fiasco and started dusting around with full vigour rather blowing dust all about and making me sneeze.
I was sitting and waiting for them to finish so I could go back to what I was doing before my mother reached home. Suddenly I spotted a tiny little mouse scampering about. Amused I looked at its little antics when at the same time the maid seemed to have spotted it too and gave a completely reverse reaction compared to mine. She screamed… and very loudly too. The other maid screamed too and climbed onto the stool she had been using to dust the cobwebs off clutching the duster tightl staring at the mouse with a frightened look on her face. The sweeping lady continued screaming until the poor little mouse ran off.
After the mouse had disappeared the sweeping lady declared that she would have no more of this nonsense and that she would be going home to have a glass of water. Our maid, still very frightened mumbled some excuse and scuttled off to relax in her quarters at the back of the house.
While all this had been going on I had been laughing heartily, and now that it had become a bit quiet, I closed the kitchen door and the store door and kept all the things that could be nibbled on top of the bed and opened the door wide so that the poor mouse could escape if it wanted to.
Sitting on my bed, I waited patiently to see what the mouse would do, and after darting about for a while, it finally found the entrance and escaped. Even after a few days whenever I think of the incident, it is the plight of the poor mousethat comes to mind!
Bhavita Varma, VIII, St. Xavier’s School, Jaipur
