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Exciting world of adventure
In our own expanded family, we have one of these adventure magnets. She can look out of the window to talk to someone, like we all do, but she's also likely to find herself face down in a pile of sand, having tumbled right out because she's leaned too far!
- By Cheryl Rao, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:04 June 28, 2008
Have you a friend or member of the family who always seems to undergo experiences that you secretly wish would happen to you? Do they go for a morning walk around the block or an evening stroll to the library and come back with a story that sets the household a-flap, all of you ready to go out with sticks and stones to apprehend the chain snatcher or the sly follower or the huge animal leaping out from the shadows?
In our own expanded family, we have one of these adventure magnets. She can look out of the window to talk to someone, like we all do, but she's also likely to find herself face down in a pile of sand, having tumbled right out because she's leaned too far!
Or then, when she goes to the tailor, there follows the mystery of the disappearing tape or brocade plus an eye-opening encounter with another customer that keeps everyone in splits for hours after she returns.
All we ever have, on the other hand, is a stern look from the same tailor and an admonition to cut back on the fat and make sure that the same measuring tape (now mysteriously reappeared) goes around the growing girth!
For years, I tried to figure out this conundrum - even going so far as to follow the object of my adulation as she went about her chores - but I learnt of no magic potion or superpower that gave her this mystical magnetism. She ate what we ate, she did what normal people do, there were no hidden secrets. What it was I never found out and eventually age and ennui saw me give up trying to troubleshoot in the hope of acquiring first hand knowledge of her exciting world of reality.
Then, only recently, her children and mine - first cousins, good friends - were together in the same town, walking the same streets, seeing the same sights, shopping at the same malls. But what a vast difference, again, in their encounters! True to type, my offspring frequented food courts and bookshops, were approached by the odd child with palms outstretched - and by force of habit put in some spare change just to be left alone and forget that such aberrations of society exist.
Shoeshine boxes
Her children, too, met up with young pleaders for alms - but they were not the sad and silent ones. Instead, eager young hands polished their shoes, then treated them to a spiel in well-spoken English. Their hearts melted, their eyes filled and a tidy sum went into the bowl! But it didn't end there. "If you set us up in the shoeshine business, we'll never have to beg again and we'll bless you forever," little voices piped.
Their hearts now mere putty, they accompanied the young one to a seamier looking lane where a couple of roughnecks sold readymade shoeshine boxes. Somewhere between the top of that street and the actual purchase of the boxes that were to convert a life, they began to get suspicious, called their father for advice and ducked out of the deal.
They fled for home and would have made it back uneventfully if they hadn't stopped for one more buy. Another area, another street, but when they chanced to look down, they saw another sad set of eyes and heard another young voice repeating the same pleading pitch about the shoeshine boxes!
Our reaction to the story when they returned home was as different as we were.
Some of us deplored the plight of the poor, some ranted about a society where children are exploited by clever conmen, others marvelled at the audacity of the young and their recognition of the soft touch, but all I could do in my venality and envy was think - There they go with their real-life adventures, while all I can do is imagine mine!
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India
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