A Naughty Story

My daughter has caught up with the business of peek-a-boo into my laptop, especially when I am typing at such a speed. She knows I mention her often, and craves to locate her name somewhere on the screen. On days she does, rarely does she wait to scream, and the indelible words that follow are, "Yeah, yeaaaa, yeaaa, Momie writes me! Yeaaa!" Yes, the disturbance is bold, but palpable. To teach her a lesson that it is a bad thing she does, stealthily stealing into another's space, I will now change the font to grab her attention:

In a little town-land called HahaHeehee, lived Chimti and Khaamchi. No, no, they were neither friends nor adversaries. They were two sweet sisters with a pair of talent to their names. While Chimti had an appetite for anything round, Khaamchi adored lines. And the pair functioned like a swarm of bees, each ornamenting the other’s moves further. It was a happy time in most families of HahaHeehee, whenever Chimti and Khaamchi put up a performance, sometimes under the polka-dotted umbrella, and sometimes over the striped table, mild leftovers which would annoy the aesthetics of the place.

Are you thinking why did they have such names if they were so sweet? (For the uninitiated, in Bengal, the two words/names refer to pinching and scratching respectively.) The story is rather dark. The words found the meanings from a not-so-sweet act by the sweet sisters. It so happened that one ancient day, when there was neither cable TV nor computer games, the two sisters, of their own accord, went out to collect the fallen leaves from their house to the Palace of KhikKhik. While on other rainy days the game was not possible, this sunny afternoon, the sun surely went the wrong side of their heads for them to fight it. 

“The winner will make the loser a garland of the leaves!” said Chimti.

“No-no, the loser will make for the winner a garland!” retaliated Khaamchi.

“No, Khaamchi” with sheer control over her voice, Chimti continued, “the leaves are fallen!”

Khaamchi, the more birdbrain of the two, meekly nodded, fully unconvinced that her sister wasn’t fooling her.

Once the two were back, their hands armed with umbrella-cloth and table-bits and some leaves, the two sisters exchanged their wares to begin the count. The sunlight had eaten the mild intelligence out of them, for they both took the game more seriously than any sportsman. Chimti had counted 2-17-37-68-82-53, when Khaamchi asked her to recount. “How can you have 53 after 82?”

“I never uttered 82! I said 53! Run and buy me some onion pickle. I have already won.”

Khaamchi could not take her sister’s wrongdoings anymore and pounced on her bowl of chopped pineapples and drained the juice on her head. At this, Chimti, now furious and fuming with anger, went inside their room, collected Khaamchi’s jar of two butterflies and having opened it, covered it immediately with one of her umbrella bits. The butterflies were suffering and flapping unbearably. Khaamchi removed the cloth and saw her butterflies fly away, in relief and sadness and then turned her attention to Chimti. She could not think of anything to do that would match her sorrow to be given to Chimti, so she punched her and bit her and pulled her hair. Chimti screamed aloud in pain but Khaamchi wouldn’t stop! At this point Chimti somehow managed to pinch hard at Khaamchi’s elbow which took she a while to realize. Once she understood, she screamed back, “Whatever you do, I will do more!” and attacked Chimti with all her fingernails.

By evening, their house was a mess with shattered jars and battered pillows and violence writ all over the sisters’ faces. They lost the game, the butterflies, their appetite for dots and stripes, but most of all they lost love for each other. And since that day, to warn everyone of the Grand Battle at HahaHeehee one just had to slightly pinch another. Needless to say, it would be countered by a very severe scratch.

Thus the people of the little land decided to do away with the sisters. They also created invisible boundaries among the rest of the children, so that from a very tender age, they would know better not to peep into that line. But the people were dumb and could not respect the invisibility, and thus today, HahaHeehee stands as a testimony of all the scars left behind from Chimti and Khaamchi.

Who would remember them as the two sweet sisters in their pink frocks and frilly rubber-bands? We do think of them in pink marks and band-aids. 

Do not be naughty dearest to Tucks or me, and learn to count your numbers well! Hopefully, having got/seen the message she decodes the keywords as things we must not do. But who am I fooling? Even as I ended, I knew I brought upon myself a sleepless night of  “Momie where did Chimti and Khaamchi go? Momie, what happen to them then?” 

Momie retires, baby. To kissies -- Chummiiis. On your softy, plumpy cheeks.