Thursday, October 21, 2010

Curse of Langda Baba

Not so long time ago when I was about nine or ten, our house was on a dead end street in small town Rourkela. At the back of our house was a road that branched off to several smaller lanes and at the end of one of these lanes was a mud house with thatched roof where an old crippled tribal man lived. As you can imagine everyone in the neighborhood called him Langda Baba (lame guy). I don’t think that anyone knew his real name, it didn’t matter from where I come your disability becomes your identity.

Every morning Langda Baba would set one long table in front of his shack with jars of candy and pencils and pickles and things like that to sell. His primary customers were poor kids studying in the government aided school. If you had a rupee you can buy 10 candies or 5 candies with 2 pencils, maybe get some change back as well. After school let out and all the kids were gone home Langda Baba would take his goods and table in and close his doors for the night.

We loved to mess with Langda Baba in the evening. We would go down the lane and either tap on his back door or throw rocks at his back door until we heard him throwing off the locks to come out and bark at us. The adventure was in seeing the old guy rushing to grab you in few quick hopping steps and you still outrunning him and the fun was the abuses you hear about your mother, sister and everything in between. Best one was ‘Bitya Lund Ruk’ which roughly translates to Daughter’s dick Stop!

One day coming home from school I saw a gathering outside his shack, unlikely attention which cannot be gained unless he was dead. I stood across the street and watched as men carried a big black bag out of Langda Baba’s shack one of them said, he is real ripe and it stinks in there. Before too long our small town municipality woke up and razed it to the ground.

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Following winter vacation couple of my friends ganged up together for someones birthday treat at his place. It was not before nine in the night we got over with the celebration. For a small town like Rourkela in winter nine is almost like a midnight especially when you are still 1-2 year shy of teen age. Not to stretch too much on the given independence I decided to leave it before everyone and took a short cut through the hollow sort of a running depression behind the government school. It had a three foot climb down then cross a little stream and up the opposite side.

Crossing the hollow would save me about five block almost 1 n half kilometer of walk on the trip home. Getting home quickly was worth taking the shortcut which we had all been warned not to do alone.

I had taken about five steps into the tree and bush lined entrance to the hollow when I heard a soft wind like voice whisper … Bitya Lund Ruk
I stopped momentarily then started to proceed on thinking it was just my imagination and why the hell I was thinking about Langda Baba now when a booming thunderous voice that actually knocked me down shouted at me Bitya Lund Ruk

I turned and ran back out to the street and took the long way home and if you know me you will know I can run at a champions speed in such situations. I never ever told anyone about that, they wouldn’t have believed me anyway. But I often wonder was that Langda Baba’s ghost trying to save me from something or was he just a creature of habit.

Years after I was grown I was told that when the city drained the hollow to fill it in they found human skeletons buried there – saved by daughter’s dick.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Welcome back to your blogs bro... was a long long break this time... worth the wait though... very nicely written and daughter's dick was nice... hahaha...

Unknown said...

Nicely written bhai.... been missing your blogs for long long time now.... welcome back.

Anonymous said...

Ok CHAMPION, very good story!