Instilling fear…!

Among the species that inhabit my neighborhood is a little girl, the young one of a homo sapiens with qualities inherited from an ape ancestor. Having been 1 year since it landed on this side of the solar system it now has began what I had been dreading most…walking first into my house and then into my room! Having now been blessed with the independence to choose her visit to my place, she perpetually lives here. By the way I am no hater of children…so much that I love kids a lot. But the problem here is the clash of objectives of 2 kids-one within and the one outside. Objectives here literally means ensuring my helmet is not transformed into a bucket (worse a water closet),my keyboard not being made a surfboard and the burden of my bookshelf not being shifted to the dustbin. She leaves her trails everywhere…my torn record, the colour splashed walls, opened up every Pandora’s box like my cupboard where all the skeletons have been hiding. It was at one such clash that I discovered the powerful weapon to control her, and as I came to realize probably control anyone else! The weapon of “the fear for the unknown”.In her case the “patcha”(might rhyme similar to badshah but has nothing to do with him)!The “patcha”,the Malayalam word for cockroach. She was awe-struck to see this omnipresent and similar species(J).Being surprised initially by its flight when she tried to catch it, I made up this story about how it grows in size everyday if kids didn’t listen to elders(read: me).With a little exercise of her imagination, to this little girl it began to mean something close to giant sized two tusked creature that walks through my home invisible until little kids stopped behaving themselves. It goes beyond my memory how I convinced her of such an existence but this little one who once walked the planet unmoved by fear had for the first time sowed within her my strange card of control. Though she didn’t change overnight, it gave me a sadistic pleasure to watch her look at me every time she climbed on my laptop and then say…”patcha?”.If I nodded, she would hesitate for a second, then climb down and run into my arms and open her hands to mean…BIG patcha. My mom resented me scaring up a poor little kid with wild stories and my dad insisted I tell her that they are no such things .It set me thinking….like when I was made to fear the darkness with wild stories of demons. Initially there were the white dress clad, long haired, Colgate teethed, funny creatures from Chandralekha,then they invaded all life on earth-snakes, lizards, none were freed. Even when you realize at some point that those ghost stories and the ghost movies that caused some certification of their existence were but animated deceit, doesn’t it still scare you when you walk alone at midnight through a deserted road. Consider watching a movie at 12 midnight unaware of the storyline when someone tells you it’s a horror movie…every scene from then on would set our heartbeat setting new records. All of us fear something…darkness, semester, commitment, crowds, and every often ourselves. In agent smiths terms-“deceit of perception”. Though most fear comes from within, a lot of it is instilled into our mindset externally. Hasn’t someone or the other at some point of time been sadistic enough to make of stories about paranormal “real” happenings. Then they made us fear fear..blame “darna mana hai”.Fear is the genesis of all evil, a depressant, a handicap to take on life’s endeavors. I am wondering if should break it on her, she’s been asking me to misbehave so that she can catch a glimpse of the “patcha” eating people. Phew! wish I asked that as a kid, wouldn’t have grown up to be this scared. Even as I am typing this I receive an mail, one of those spooky messages with a video of a ghost in motion. She’s asking me what it is. My dad was right I needa tell her about the non-existence of the giant patcha…atleast so until spielberg rediscovers it. As I desperately forward the mail to foes and friends alike,I’m thinking if patcha has found its successor, wouldn’t hurt much would it? Atleast I wouldn’t feel like I made it all up myself!!!!