Raty incident

It so happened that during of summer 1999, we had just moved to the city of Ahmedabad. So in a very obvious assumption, that we were new to all the people in neighbourhood. Though we looked a bit alien in eyes of neighbours, we were well versed with the area. The only reason it point downs to is my mothers eldest sister had been living in that locality for more than 30 years and it was one of the vacation destination before we moved to the city.
The house we moved in was our own house. Till that date we had just lived in company bungalows, which were big and great and with gardens, but own house feeling is way above all. Moving in from a big bungalow to a flat which had just one small bed room, one drawing room and a kitchen and no garden in near vicinity. It had obvious logistic problems - Furniture. We had massive furniture, 2 show case, 2 cupboards, 2 simple single beds, 2 single beds with storage area below them, 2 study tables, 1 double bed with storage area below it, swing with iron stand, dinning table (thank god no chairs at that time), just to name a few and the size was so big that each furniture is nick named as "haathi". To our rescue was the house owned by my aunt and which happened to share a wall with our house. As my aunt lived in another house near by, this flat of her provided an easy solution; which was to create a door in a manner that both the flats are linked and provide with enough space to move around with all the furniture around.

After settling with this problem, the initial process to know the neighbours in detail was on its way. On one side used to live a family in the flats across a door with a small wall between the flats. One fine afternoon, they encountered a rat in their house. there was a quite a noise at their end in order to catch it or kill it. You know, rats and females does not go hand in hand most times. Sounded that they managed to kill it. Though it was a hot afternoon, myself and my younger brother were just playing in our house and were witness to the things going with doors closed. Just after few minutes end of the chase rat capture, there was a thug of our door followed by whisper and giggling sound. It was the females giggling, and by females, i mean all grown up and house wife types. To my ears it sounded something not right. After the sound of closing of the door was heard, i just opened the internal door to check the situation and found as expected. The dead rat was thrown at our door step. There was no turning back from this point. A plan was under way to tackle this out. Ordered few stuff to be prepared to my brother and we closed the door.

It was 4 pm now , with more than 2-3 hours of the earlier incident to happen and the mouse still at out door step. We were ready with our weapon- a simple thread with a loop at one of the end. Loop in a manner it would hold something when tighten. Mom had just got up from her afternoon sleep and asked me to get few things from shop near by for evening snack. This was the moment. I obediently took the cloth bag and money to go to the shop. On my way picked up the thread i had prepared. Stepped out of the house , went to shop, and came back as a good boy.

It was just nearing 5 pm, with we were enjoying our evening snacks and eagerly waiting for some response from the neighbourhood to come through. I was nearly last bites of my snack and heard the most awaited words. They had just opened their doors after their after noon nap and just heard the neighbours discussing " How did a rat end up hanging by its tail on a tree in their compound?" I wonder what happened to that dead rat, but i am sure they knew the answer how it happened, but just could not express anything.