The jet lag is over, including the grace period I allowed myself, a la the snooze after the wake-up alarm. It is time to move on and integrate with the local culture. What can be more opportune than Halloween? And, what is Halloween? To quote, “Halloween is dedicated to remembering the dead. This involved people going house to house (or, in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. It may have originally been a tradition whereby people impersonated the souls of the dead and received offerings on their behalf. Wearing a disguise was also believed to protect oneself from them.”
Ashwin, our elder grandson, bought for himself the costume of Darth Vader, a character in Star Wars. Unfortunately, with its mask on, no one will know who the perpetrator of scare is. So each time after scaring someone he has to remove the mask to reveal his identity. Rohan, the younger one, was adamant this time. “No more of Ashwin’s leftover costume, year after year.” After persuasion and reassurance, he donned Ashwin’s last year’s costume - Power Ranger, whatever that meant.
The neighbourhood is bedecked with scary items that go with Halloween. A dry skeleton lies on someone’s front yard with stuffed birds around it, hoping against hope to peck some flesh out of it. A cobweb surrounds the giant cactus plant, set to catch its prey. A stuffed owl, no less than a real one, still stares at you - even after you have moved 500 yards away from it. Three ghosts in jet black costume, with spot lights for special effects, stand either guard to the owner’s property, or ready to pounce on you as you walk by. Yet in another compound, a ghost fully attired in white prefers to hang on the tree swinging with the pace of the breeze. The two white-on-black king-size ghost-heads stay atop the palm trees as though to warn you, in the erstwhile Soviet Union style, that you are being watched. And the fully grown spider waits on the rock to snatch any unsuspecting passerby. In short, if only the hoo-ha of children spread across the street were replaced by utter silence of a graveyard, it would have been re-living Ramsay Brothers’ Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche movie.
Against this backdrop Sunita assigned us Halloween duty after sunset, to sit in front of the house. Shankar was away on duty travel. Sunita and the kids didn’t want to miss the fun themselves. With other moms and children they went around the neighbourhood for trick or treat. And our job? To distribute the bagful of Snickers to kids walking into our house howling trick or treat. Their attires ranged from an angel, fairy, rabbit to ghost and some fiery creatures. While on duty I got the shock of my life when suddenly something tickled my leg. Only that afternoon I had watched a local TV programme where experts explored Arizona mountains for fossils of not dinosaur, but of python. They stumbled upon the fossils of the longest python that humanity had ever known. Then through computer graphics they showed what it would have been like actually, and how it swallowed its prey - with the swiftness of a Baskin-Robbins super-softy ice cream that goes down one’s throat. I worried this one that tickled must have been that python’s great-, great-, great-grandson having made his way to our front yard for a meal. Fortunately it was a dry leaf hissing its way to my leg.
Initially we thought we would be liberal in distribution, with a king-size packet in hand. Somehow better sense prevailed; we didn’t. For, soon children literally flooded our home, and a time came when we had a rethink - of rationing the quota - to last the final visitor. Fortunately we didn’t have to resort to that either.
Hardly had we finished our assignment when Sunita and children came back with their treasure-hunt - both the kids’ kitties full. Soon they got down to stock-taking and comparing notes. Then came the most unkindest cut of all from Sunita: “Pick just three each, any three. The rest goes for donation.” You have to see to believe their hitherto beaming face transform in split seconds into a gloom. Only the late fine actor, Sanjeev Kumar, could have done it with equal felicity.
Halloween over, the relics on display had disappeared at the next morning walk - probably found their way to the residents’ attic, to resurrect themselves next year. Hopefully the children won’t persist with their parents: “Papa, we have been displaying this same stuff over and over again. Even my friends have begun to associate our house with some of these stock items,” and make a fervent plea to discard those and buy fresh ones next year. Good luck, Wal-Mart - and others.
V V Sundaram
Maple 3195
04 Nov 2016
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