What is normal ?

One of my childhood memory, that stamped in my mind, is of a girl named Parbati Karki, who was about thirteen then, hanging madal on her neck and playing it. while she was playing it she was also wearing ear-to-ear smile on her face. she had the most perfect smile and her eyes twinkling with excessive joy. Due to what she was also able to bring the interesting bit out of the madal.

But the sight in front of her was not a dance nor anybody was singing or any form of entertainment act.

Two girls both about her age were arguing. Nothing serious, as the children of that age do normally; just one word in threatening tone like HO( YES )and the other in response to not threatened by that tone and language Ho ( YES ). There was HO, Ho was doing back and forth from both the girls. What was not normal in this whole scenario was, one girl a bit younger than the other was speech impaired. However her other developments were kind of normal and she used to go in deaf school.

The other girls was mildly mental; compared to other normal child in the orphanage I grew. Children some times can be very cruel to each other, and so they used to call her crazy, her response to that used to be, “...if you treat me like one, I behave like one”.

When I saw the scene, for the first time it made me laugh hard uncontrollably, as a child i found this very funny, amusing and entertaining. Every child who ever passed thorough the passage they were laughing hard and some of the girls made a small circle, around three of them . Each had their favorite and found a reason to support one of them.

This threatening by one and other not affected by that threat was dragged longer, a little bit too long, just because one normal child found it amusing and was playing madal to prolong the process as if it was some kind of entertainment to indulge at the max.

After an hour or so later, when I happened to pass the same passage to enter our room, the three girls were still there, same place and position, but they were tired by now and fun was not three anymore nor the energy of children. Their mouth had dried up and the madal players hand started giving up. Yet,it still fetched smile on my face.

Looking back, now after couple of decades later, the incident that made me laugh hard, makes me think hard; because I am not that thirteen year old girl anymore.

What is normal and who on the scene was acting abnormal ? the two girls, who were not so normal, got stuck up in small harmless and absolutely childlike behavior was prolonged by one normal child’s act who found it so amusing to drag it just a little bit too long , just for her own personal definition of fun and entertainment !

~ end ~