Memorables Are Important

By Kshitij Kumar Yadav

Ch-1 

The Accident

Once upon a time, there was a family of a small boy in a small city in India, his name was Krishu, and he lived there with his mother and father. He was a 5-year-old cute boy who loved chocolates and hated veggies. He always made weird faces whenever his mother tried to feed him. Every night his mother told stories before going to bed. 

His father was an artist and taught in a school in another city, so he always came home on weekends with a box of chocolates. Every weekend Saturday Krishu’s father taught him math as it would always be good for our brain’s training and a science encyclopedia. That day, they all played hide and seek, when it was Krishu’s turn he always found her mother very easily. Every Sunday, they went for picnics, shopping, a zoo, and some iconic places. But most of the time they went for a picnic as it was cheaper and Krishu loved it. There was a big park and a small lake. Many other families also came there. 

They all spent their maximum time there playing the touch-and-go game and Krishu and his father drew sceneries together which improved Krishu’s drawing skills. His mother always helped Krishu in drawing. Whenever they went for a picnic, his mother always wore that one beautiful necklace which was a gift from his father on her birthday last year. In the end, they ate their meals which included some delicious snacks and after that, there would always be a chocolate cake with choco chips that contained different types of fruits every time. Every Sunday at 8 pm, father went back which made Krishu cry. Father softly scolds him not to cry after that mother scolds father for scolding Krishu for crying. 

It was a bright morning on July 27th, it was the first working day of the week. Krishu got late as he was sleepy in the morning, it was quite a struggle for her mother to make Krishu go to school. Van was honking the horn, and after 5 minutes he was ready to go. It was a tough day, he got a lot of homework that day. 

They both were eating fruits and solving science questions. So there was a question 

whose answer he didn’t know, so he asked the mother, the question was, “Name the natural satellite of the earth.” “It's the moon,” mom replied. After finishing the fruits her mother went to take an apple. One question struck in his mind he asked his mother, “can we go and touch the moon?” While going towards the kitchen mom said “yes,” and immediately she remembered that she forgot the knife on the plate, so she immediately turned around and moved to take it from the plate, simultaneously ordering Krishu to give her the knife. Because she turned around quickly, she slipped. 

Krishu took the knife towards his mother while pointing it toward her. She slipped and fell onto it. The knife penetrated through her larynx and came out from the back side of the neck, she died on the spot. The necklace around her neck also broke. Seeing all this  Krishu started breathing heavily and crying loudly while calling ‘mummy.’ 

Listening to him crying, all the neighbors came out and people on the street stopped. All gathered there, trying to figure out and ringing the bell. But he was not opening the door. One of them called his father. And meanwhile, they broke the door. They saw Krishu crying beside her mother and she was lying dead, the knife was stabbed into her neck. The crowd went crazy, so they called the police. Till then Krishu became stunned and not saying a word. Some said that maybe some thief came in and killed her, some said that the child stabbed her, and some said maybe she did suicide because of her bad relationship with her husband. 

Police came, and everybody became silent. They tried their best to ask Krishu what happened there but he didn’t reply a word as he was stunned because of it and now he also stopped crying totally. After 1 hour his father arrived, he was shocked and was stunned for a while and then burst into tears. Nobody knows what happened there. After this incident, Krishu’s father left him with his younger brother who was married and runs a grocery shop. Police investigated this incident for almost a year but were unsuccessful in solving the case. All they knew was that the kid who was there was now in trauma and had seen something and he now had a phobia of blood called hemophobia. So, whenever he saw a red color he started trembling with heavy breathing. He took hours to become quite normal again. After that incident, he was always alone and preferred not to talk to anybody. Mostly he nodded his head to say yes or no or murmured slowly in low speech volume. 

Krishu stopped playing, stopped going for a picnic, he always sat idly like lost somewhere, and didn’t say a word, didn’t resist anything, and ate whatever food he got. His guardian helped him with his homework and gave him whatever item he required. They were very nice to him but still, he didn’t change a little bit. His father took him to the psychologist for his treatment every Saturday, there he didn’t do much. The psychologist said Krishu was in great pain which he was unable to express and had to continue his treatment for long.

Ch-2

Abandoned home

Now it’s been seven years since that incident happened, Krishu’s treatment was still going on and nobody knew when it would successfully end. But now there was some progress made by him, he started talking but with a low voice, he started helping his uncle at the shop for 1 hour daily, maybe this also helped him in improving himself. Now everything is quite normal for everyone except Krishu. He always had the same hazy dream every single day but he didn’t dream when he was tired. Now he started ignoring that dream and didn't tell anyone. 

There was also good news, Krishu made a new friend named Sohem, he loved his company, and he helped him in every possible thing, they shared lunch together, and talked to each other. But he froze for some moments whenever somebody asked him about his mother. On the day of the parent-teacher meeting on Saturday Krishu’s father saw him talking openly to Sohem. So, he tried and managed to talk with him. He asked Sohem if he had ever asked about his mother to Krishu before. He replied, “yes, he did.” After that he said “but he was blank and didn't say a word to me for hours,” so now he did not ask about his family anymore. 

At night Krishu often had the same kind of weird dreams every night, a shadow fell onto him at the end of the dream, and didn't know whose shadow it was. This had become frequent since this month, previously it was less frequent and fuzzy. So now he told about this to his father, and they went to the psychologist so now he sent them to the psychiatrist for medications. Medicines were quite effective as they helped him in deep sleep in which he wasn't able to dream. 

One day at the grocery shop, he was giving groceries to the customers. That day one lady came into the shop, she wore a full red saree, when Krishu saw her, he became very stiff in that same place and he left everything he was holding in his hand, started trembling badly, and started producing some kind of voice. His uncle took him inside the house and covered him with a blanket. These all were very hard for Krishu to bear, he was upset because of all these things. But he couldn’t help it.

On Krishu’s birthday which was on the 6th of February, his friend Sohem gave him a remote controlled car which was amazing, some neighborhood children gave him food items, and in the end, his father gifted him a remote control helicopter that was more amazing than the car. He was super happy on this birthday. At night, his father came to his room before Krishu went to sleep and said “don’t be afraid so much nobody will harm you” and gave him his mother’s personal diary in which she only wrote about special occasions and her favorite things. After taking that gift Krishu became quiet for the whole week. He opened the diary after a week as it was the first time that he encountered one of her belongings, so he was a little afraid of it. Though he opened it, in it there was her favorite songs list, favorite places she regularly visits, her favorite food list, some recipes on how to make egg curry, how to make delicious shahi paneer, etc., from all of these there was one thing that melts Krishu’s heart and that was how to make a special chocolate cake for the picnic, and one more thing was there on one of the pages in which she wrote about an incident when Krishu was 4 years old and caught her in hide and seek through the sound of her anklet which she desperately made, he did that after second time. And Krishu thought it was very easy to find her. He started feeling some kind of pain in his heart. 

He read further, his mother also described the necklace which was given by his father. She wrote that it was a very beautiful gift, it was like a water droplet in which there was a small firefly whose back was lit in the darkness. And had a silver chain. She loved the necklace a lot as it was very special. He also started feeling uneasy as he remembered that necklace as he also loved it but still, his thoughts were hazy, so he called Sohem to accompany him to his home to find that necklace. Krishu’s home was quite far away from there but at walking distance. 

They both went to Krishu’s home which was abandoned for years now. They searched all the spots of the house and found some of his sketchbooks rather than the necklace, there was nothing helpful in it, so they left it there. Both didn’t know they were standing near the accident spot. They sat down on the sofa. Krishu saw something like a snake lying on the floor, when he looked closely it was the necklace fully covered in dried blood. Krishu started trembling again but not severely this time because blood was dried and became dark after so many years. Sohem took it for Krishu and washed it properly. But still, the memories related to that necklace were still blurry. He went back to where his sketchbook was in the hope that maybe they found something important there. They saw a sketchbook and found 2 picnic photos in which he and his mother were posing. There was a drawing of that necklace too but it didn’t match the necklace they found as  it was of a butterfly not the firefly. They searched again and finally, they found a drawer in his mother’s room, Krishu opened it, and there was a glowing yellowish light and they finally found that necklace. Krishu cried a lot because after all they finally found that necklace and also took a photo album of the picnic spot and his storybook too.  

When father found this he also burst into tears and tightly hugged Krishu. That night Krishu made that chocolate fruit cake with the help of the diary, it was quite delicious but not the same. His father read a story for him from the storybook. And whenever he feels lonely he holds that necklace and cries for some moment. After that, he didn’t dream that weird dream anymore. But still, he had to live with hemophobia for the rest of his life. 

By Kshitij Kumar Yadav