Two Travellers

When I was young, occasionally, housemothers and nannies used to encourage us to do something, as we wish during the Saturday evening, before our sleep. People used to take part in it voluntarily. Some liked to do group dance, some body used to sing, some liked citing poems and some telling story and some took part in small drama. But most of the people liked it watching from and then commenting. I do remember loud claps, after each performance.

There were, no shortage of audience for such shows in Bal Mandir. For this, one of the biggest room was used and bed served as seats and front of the remaining space served as stage, as well as seating huge crowed. Mostly those shows used to be, more than houseful, it was overcrowded and some really had to let their head only in the room, where the show was going on.

What I remember now is, this small drama, my brother had performed with the help of his friend, Basanta. He could have been around twelve years then.

Both of the boys appeared on the scene, both of them were carrying some package. carrying package would be very wrong words to use here. In fact they were carrying something, which was packed on the cloth and its top was tied with the help of some rope, so it looked almost round shape - its called potali. Besides it was also tied on, one side of a long stick, which rested on their shoulder while they walked, it seemed that, it made the carrying process easy. It must have been the copy scene of Hindi movie, however; I doubt, that we had exposed to Hindi movie then.

These two young boys, were acting as travelers, who were traveling from one place to other, who happened to encounter at the night stay point, both were spending. Before they went for a sleep, they had their meal together from their respective potali and also had a small chat.

Sukdev asked, “do you make noise while you are sleeping ?”
Basanta asked, “what kind of noise ?”
Sukdev responded, “ I mean snort or some thing like that.
Basanta replied, “no, I am the kind of very noiseless person when I sleep.”
Sukdev, “Oh, but when I sleep they say, I make noise, its something like munching you know, so when you hear that in your sleep; just ignore it. And one more thing, I have to leave tomorrow much early, perhaps earlier than you also, so lets go to bed. So they went to sleep.

While Basanta, was deep in his sleep, Sukdev was eating the food from Basanta’s potali. Basant, mumbled from his sleep, in a groggy voice, “what is this noise ?” Sukdev, replied, “Oh, that my sleep sound.” He was munching food -beaten rice - with over exaggerated facial expressions, so we would understand what he was doing, which made us laugh.

The next day, when Basanta woke up, he found out that his food was missing which his wife had made him for the trip. He pretended a bewildered look, in most possible way, which made us laugh even more on his stupidity.