The Phantom Thieves of My Imagination

When I was younger, Miss Pukaak(who is the chicken in me) used to be apprehensive about being home alone late in the evening. This happened on the rare occasions that my grandparents, whose house I would go to after school, went out and I had to wait for my parents to take me home.
 An overactive imagination didn’t help too much either- I always imagined that come late evening,  ruthless thieves materialized out of nowhere and hid under beds and behind curtains, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. By then I had figured out that Wee Willy Winky was just a clever hoax to get little children to bed early so I was considerably advanced in the time scale of Scary Things That Kids Believe. But thieves were still my bane. Fortunately, during such times, I had a well-rehearsed routine to bolster my confidence.

A Timeline of Scary Things Kids Believe

Petrified though I was of the band of thieves in the house, I would jump into every room, switch all the lights on and make a quick inspection of all the potential hidey holes in the room with a torch. I looked under beds, behind doors and curtains and in shadowy corners. It was the hardest to climb up stairs to a dark room, but it seemed a better idea to know there wasn’t much danger of the villainous plunderers than to leave it uninvestigated and stay in suspense. Once I was done inspecting rooms I would feel considerably braver but still not entirely convinced that a thief was not lurking in a corner. 

Looking for thieves in my imaginary cape

 I would then race to the living room and turn the TV on, cranking up the volume as high as it would go.

 And then began my charade.

Sitting on the sofa, I would bring to life an entire family of wrestlers who would make any thief flee. I would yell over the sound of the TV, taking the parts of father, mother, son daughter and several uncles. Each would boast of how they thrashed someone that day and how no one had better be planning to plunder the house. For some reason, it was a Singh family. 

“Hello beta!”  I would boom in the deepest of deep male voices. “Who did you beat up today?”

“My muscles seem to have doubled up in size!” an uncle would say casually.

This would go on for a while till I felt quite safe in the hands of my make-believe Singh family of wrestlers and the rest of my time alone would pass quite uneventfully.

One day it so happened that the Singh family came to life sometime after I finished talking on the phone to a friend and forgot to turn the cordless off. I had a lot of explaining to do the next day in school.


Mr. Jukebox Sings: Put Your Lights On by Santana

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Also Read: The first post Miss Pukaak features in: In The Sky With Diamonds.