To Err Is Human, To Confess Divine?

I was about seven or eight years old when I did something that still awakens a guilty conscience. We lived in a house which had big windows with draping rods at two levels, which was common in Shillong. The higher rod was for the heavier curtain which was drawn at night and opened during daytime. The lower rod was placed in the middle, and used to drape net curtains which remained drawn during the day. They allowed visibility from inside while averting curious strangers from playing peek-a-boo with the dwellers. From basic white nets in the tin houses (houses that were very modest and had flattened mustard-oil tin containers nailed to the exterior for protection against the vagaries of weather) to ones with intricate patterns and vivid hues in the bungalows, every house had these. In the local lingo they were called half-curtains or half-purdah and the local Marwari businessmen made fortunes out of selling them.


My story revolves around the draping rod of one of these half-curtains. It was a warm sunny day and my brothers were playing cricket outside. I was watching them from a window. At some inopportune moment, I happened to hang on the draping rod with both hands. I was at just the right height to do that and be slightly above the floor. It appeared that I wasn't at the right weight though. It snapped, right in the middle. These rods were carved out of solid wood and came with the house. They were there since pre-independence British India, making them more than forty years old at that time. They couldn’t be easily replaced from the market. I was terrified. I knew my mother would be very angry. So I somehow managed to keep the jagged edges of the two broken pieces together and left it like that unaware of the impending storm it was going to cause. When my mother found out, I chimed in with my brothers saying I didn't know how it happened. The immediate reaction to this was that my parents pointed fingers at a neighbor with whom we were having a strife at that time. This was far beyond what I had expected as a consequence of my fearful act. The doors being left open during the day, my parents assumed that this neighbor came in and broke it on purpose to annoy us, when no one was around. Within seconds the matter blew totally out-of-control. The neighbor kept reiterating that it was a false accusation, my parents continued with it and I withdrew more and more into my frightened self  letting the former suffer the consequences of my trepidation. Had it been today, I would have said “Yes, I broke it. So what? It's breakable”. At that time it felt like I had toppled the Statue of Liberty over. Damaged relations with our neighbor got worse for some time. However, such neighborly discord was commonplace in small towns in the pre-internet days when people actually had time for such things. In a few months all dissent was forgotten and we were on  friendly terms again.

I learnt my lesson. If you make a mistake it is best to own it up and face the consequences yourself. As an adolescent and adult, I have always put my hand up and said 'Mea Culpa' - my mistake - proactively, whenever I have made any blunder. I was fortunate. I am sure there are countless instances where a child in my situation must have thought that it was an easy way to get clean and gone on to do much bigger harm. As is said 'All's well that ends well', I am content that this incident reinforced a positive trait in me.This confession is a means of forgiving myself, and hopefully my old neighbor will forgive me too on reading or hearing about this post.