G randpa looked angrily at the three of them. He seemed mighty unhappy with what they had done. Neeru, Kavya and Ketan hung their heads. Ketan had told his other two cousins that his teacher had told him that if you were being shouted at, the polite thing to do was to look down. So, whether they were feeling remorseful or not, all three hung their heads ‘in shame’.
But let’s start this story, as all stories must, at the very beginning.
Neeru, Kavya and Ketan, whose moms were sisters, came every summer to spend their holidays with their nana-nani (maternal grandparents). Their nana-nani’s house was in Deolali in Nasik. Neeru came over from nearby Pune, Kavya from Goa and Ketan from Delhi. Every year, for the last four years, the children and their parents would come along to Deolali. They would stay there for a week with the entire family before returning to their city life. The three kids, however, would spend the rest of their holidays in Deolali chasing hens, climbing trees, and even extracting sugar cane juice themselves with the help of some strong cows..
Mischief
This year, their vacation had begun on a sour note. On the first day, Neeru, who at seven and the youngest of the three, wanted a mango. “From Jayantbhai Jain’s (or JJ’s) house only. His mangoes are the best,” Neeru had declared.
“Can’t we just go to the market and buy some?” suggested Ketan, the most practical one in this trio, and also the oldest at 10 years. Kavya, nine, had cut him off immediately, saying, “What? Buy it? And spoil the whole adventure?”
To cut a long story short, it had turned out to be an extremely adventurous adventure. Think of a whistling watchman, a few broken pots, stolen mangoes and a very, very angry Jayantibhai Jain.
When news reached nana about his grandchildren’s mischief and how they were caught, he looked angrily at them.
“Why? Why? I have told you I don’t want to have anything to do with Jayantibhai Jain. Go buy mangoes from the market…” he said, getting angrier by the minute.
“I told them, nanu ….,” interrupted Ketan, the righteous one.
But instead of any patting him on the back, Ketan got shouted at for not having been able to control his cousins. So he kept quiet.
“As punishment for your bad behaviour, you have to march up to the room upstairs and stay there. You may take a book to read there and a bottle of water but nothing else,” he thundered.
Time-out
Neeru, Kavya and Ketan knew there was no chance to argue. Ketan looked angrily at Neeru for her greediness and with Kavya for, well, just supporting Neeru. The three of them sulked in different corners of the room before Neeru spoke up. “I don’t want to spend the entire day in this room,” she declared. For a change, not just Kavya but even Ketan agreed with her.
“But how do we escape?” Kavya asked.
“Escape?” Ketan frowned. That word did not fit into his plan. “What do you mean escape?”
Neeru and Kavya looked at each other. This elder cousin of theirs was seriously quite dumb. Didn’t he know the meaning of the word ‘escape’?
“We mean to run away? To get out of this situation?” Kavya volunteered.
“Why would we do that?” Ketan replied, aghast. “We can simply ask nana-nani to let us out! Why do you girls always have such silly solutions to simple problems? I am going to call nanu right now…”
Eeee-onw-eeee-onw- eeee-onw….
The braying of a donkey interrupted their chat.
It was Bindiya, their neighbourhood donkey with her owner, Nandu. The kids waved out to her from the first floor balcony. “Bindiya!” they said in chorus, with a sparkle in their eyes, as an idea struck all three of them together.
They called out to Nandu and told her that they were locked in the room. After she had finished laughing at their predicament, Nandu asked, “So if you’re stuck up there, what can I do to help you? You should be better behaved next time!”
“I will tell you what to do. Bring Bindiya closer and we will jump onto her back one by one,” said Neeru, excitedly. Bindiya looked up at Neeru as if she was completely bonkers. “I will give you the juiciest grass my sweetie, please take us out from here,” Kavya said in a loud whisper to the donkey.
And it was almost as though she understood. One by one the three kids jumped from the first floor balcony of their house on to the patient donkey’s back. Bindiya got a generous amount of grass to chew and Nandu got a bar of chocolate that nani had given Ketan last week. The kids made the most of their time outside.
But soon it was time to return home.
Caught red-handed
And while they had jumped onto Bindiya’s back to escape, they couldn’t spring back to the same room the same way! Left with no choice, they walked through the front door and, of course, nana and nani were waiting there not looking pleased at all.
“Would you care to explain how the three of you are arriving at the front door and not descending from the room above?” demanded nani .
Neeru told her about their great escape and about Bindiya’s role in it.
Nana-nani’s eyes glowered with anger.
Neeru, Kavya and Ketan awaited their punishment. What could be worse than being locked up in one room, they thought. On cue, they hung their heads ‘in shame’. Just then they heard loud laughter. It was nana-nani . They were laughing like crazy.
“Remember the time, when we were kids squeezed between the barbed wires and stole raw mangoes?” asked nana , while laughing out loud.
“And the day when we sat on a donkey to avoid being caught by the school peon?” nani reminded nana . “These are our genes!” they laughed.
The kids blinked. Were these their grandparents?
