Some Fear

Mr and Mrs Shukla became a bit concerned when after a week they found their fifteen years old son Dahak still in fear of the unknown.



Dahak was a fine boy, well fine by his parents’ definition was doing good in studies. He loved playing badminton and practising the synthesizer that his uncles got for him. He briefly took up reading books, but that didn’t stay for too long.



Dahak wasn’t allowed full access to the television initially, only restricted viewing of some selected documentaries that his parents saw fit. But then he requested seeing movies now and then, ones that were discussed among friends and his parents allowed.



A few movies turned out to be more as time went, planned for the time when the parents were not at home and sometimes in their ignorance.



Then one day it happened, Dahak saw a movie, talked among his friends for its many horrors, dared for being watched and Dahak saw it one evening alone when his parents were out to see a hospitalised friend.



When his parents returned, they found Dahak a little shaken and thought of it to be stress for the upcoming exams. Dahak even insisted on sleeping with them and not in his room that night and a few others.



It wasn’t a few days before Dahak told his mother about it, when he found himself not enough to handle the fears in his mind.



Television was out of the realm of allowance for a while and Dahak’s parents sat explaining how the sounds and movements of the dark were not real and that there was no one out to harm him in any manner. They thought they had done a good job and Dahak nodded like he understood.



Things did change for better but the fear never completely vanished even after a week of the explanation. Mr and Mrs Shukla guessed it from Dahak’s expression when he saw a haunted mansion attraction at a shopping mall. But then again many of us live our lives with a little bit of fear, although it becomes more ignorable with time, and Dahak would be able to do it too as he grows older.

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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