Grand Father's Warning

Tap.....tap...pitter....patter....it started to pour down in heavy rain. I came out of the classroom, listening to the screams of the boys playing in the football ground. To my surprise, I saw the students playing football in the heavy rain, all of them were wet, and the ground was stranded in foot-deep water. The rest of the students were sitting in the shed on chairs and cheering the players. That pleasure-giving incident took me back twenty years, to a fun-filled childhood, where all my cousins and I played in the channel leading to the water canal which supplies water to all the nearby fields.

One day, it was raining and we were all playing in the water channel with the ball in the rain. My grandfather happened to pass by the mango grove adjacent to the verge of the water channel. Seeing our grandfather, all of us ran from there towards the house to escape from him, leaving the ball in the water. In the evening when Grandfather returned home from the field along with Subbarao, the ball was in his hand. All of us, including me, were silent, seeing him. Geetha and Babu were playing chess, and the others were playing snake and ladder quietly, as we all were afraid that Grandfather might scold us for playing in the water. But to our surprise, he came into the room slowly and questioned us, saying, 'Who played in the water at the fields in the channel'? All of the kids, along with me, were nervous. After thinking for a second, I stood up saying 'I' .... Taatayya....next Babu stood up, and slowly one by one, all of them admitted that they played in the water. Then, Grandfather warned us, saying "Don't go to the other side of the channel, it's deep there," and gave the ball back to me. We all were relieved and happy.