Fodder for fertile imagination

The problem with having a fertile imagination is that it tends to run away with you. When we were young it was largely controllable. We somehow sailed through the terrors of the dark by casting everything we'd heard into the realm of fiction.

None of those monsters, human or alien, lived in our part of the world, we believed, and we flirted with the dangers of a lonely road in a city where young girls were easy prey, somehow getting by on the strength of a wish and a prayer.

It was our mother who acquired the first furrows on her forehead as she waited for us to return home. She had read more, lived longer, heard hair raising tales she shared with us to warn of how attacks sometimes came without provocation, but we ignored her tales, believing in the manner of youth that we were invulnerable.

We'd get onto our motorbikes and scooters and go anywhere we felt like going, convinced that we'd outrun and outmanoeuvre anyone who was inclined to follow — and we got away with it!

Years later, when we read of young adults being attacked and killed or carried away, never to be found again, we had our first twinges of unease.

We'd hitched rides from strangers, we'd been out in lonely places after dark, we'd done all those same things — look what could have happened! When the older ones in the group ask that all important question, "What were they doing there?" we know it was probably something completely innocent, like missing a bus after a late night movie, or getting a flat tyre and having to look to good Samaritans for help.

The change was imperceptible but suddenly one day we found that we were the older ones in the group. Instead of being understanding of the same factors that we'd experienced, the recklessness of our earlier years made us over-careful with our loved ones.

Taking no chances

So, girl or boy, our teenagers were not going to find their way home on their own. We dogged their footsteps until they had grown old enough, large enough and competent enough to help us cross the road instead of the other way around!

And then, when there was no choice but to let go, we sat back and let our imaginations take over — not just for them, but for our parents and older relatives, friends and their children and whoever claimed a little bit of our affection.

And so it is that now, a phone call unanswered by a perfectly healthy middle-aged friend is not shrugged off with a casual, "Oh, she must be busy." Instead, we keep calling, convinced that she's fallen in the bathroom, she's had a stroke, she's broken her leg, she can't reach the phone ... Will someone please go there and check if she's safe?

Mobile phones have not given rest to the pictures in the mind. No reply from a man on the move and it's not because he's driving and doesn't want to pick up and risk being distracted and wind up paying a fine or bumping into the vehicle ahead of him.

No, he's fallen off his bike and into a manhole, you know how the heavy rain can flood the streets, and if he's in a car, why, he could be locked in as the water rises ...

Sparse in the news are tales of miraculous escapes and helping hands from strangers. Instead there are too many accidents, too many stories of drowning and looting and attacking. Too much fodder for already fertile imaginations!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.