GIFT OF APPLES, a love story

GIFT OF APPLES, a love story 

(Jio tou har din aise Jio, jaise k aakhri ho)  

Sometimes we earn things, sometimes we borrow them, sometimes we beg for them, sometimes we lend them and SOMETIMES WE GIFT THEM.  Today I received a box of apples as a gift from a worthy person.  I fear to mention his name here for various reasons.  May Allah bless him with as many beautiful kids as there are apples in the box!  

I have lived my life beautifully without caring much about the woes and throes of tomorrow.   I have been through hell and heaven ; played with devils and Saints and broken bread with thieves and priests.  In my early childhood,  I used to join the street boys on their occasional missions of fruit stealing.  Sometimes we would succeed in our missions and sometimes we would be caught and punished.  Any punishment was welcomed by me except the one that would involve my parents.  Some owners of fruit orchards would thrash us and let us go but some would bring us to our respective homes to humiliate us in front of our kith and kin.  Whenever  I would be brought to my home for humiliation,  I would be caned by my young dad,  rebuked by my old grandparents,  laughed at by my stupid siblings and finally my inside-loving-but-outside-witchlike mother would announce the punishment in her pet words as follows : Tamaam gawahu aur sabootu ko madd-e-nazar Rakh Kar,  ye Adaalat iss nateejay pe puhanchi hai ke mujrim SAHIL sharifudin waldih, STUPID betay ka baap,  yaani GULAM Mohi-ud-din ab se ghar se bahar kabhi kadam nehi rakhe ga. Hahaha... I was a bird, to be precise, an Eagle and it was impossible to encage me for long.  I have followed my heart always down the journey of my life.  I have explored every damn place around my home.  I have been to forests, hills, riveside and what not,  in my early childhood.  I just had a sort of passion for new places and things without caring about the consequences.  I remember,  once I went to a village across the river Jehlum for bringing apples in the company of a friend who is married now.  Actually,  a classmate put that damn idea into my mind.  I was a student of 4th  standard then.  We walked and walked for a couple of hours carrying huge sacks  with the intention of bringing apples in them. After walking a few miles,  we grew too tired to carry the sacks and we threw them away and moved on asking passersby for the location of apple orchards.  Finally,  we  reached at an Orchard and entered it as if it was of our ancestors.  We began to pluck down the apples and a lady came shouting to shoo us away.  We were used to such encounters. When she came very near us, she became cool,  perhaps we were but kids of ten or elven years.  She investigated us and was perhaps impressed with our adventure.  After all, we had walked around five to seven kmrs away from our homes and Hitler moms.  She took us into her own Apple Orchard where her family was doing apple harvesting.  She asked us to help her family in carrying apple boxes,  apple baskets etc and promised to give us many  apples later.  In other words,  she hired us as labourers and would pay us,  not in cash but in kind, later. Whatever!  We had got what we had come for all the way from our homes.  At noon on that day,  She brought lunch for her family and for us too.  We had lunch,  helped them more, then we were given apples in small bags and we started our journey back home.  It was a sweeeeeeet day with the sad evening.  Once,  we reached homes at evening with the promised apples,  we were thrashed like hell,  for,  our parents had been looking for us all day long. Oh!  We really hadn't cared about that.  Alas! Our apples, which we had earned after toiling and sweating,  were thrown into a dirty drain.  I hated my family very much on that day .  I even planned to go back to the family which had given  me lunch and countless apples but I gave up the idea as I had to go to  school next day.  Hahaha Hahaha....how I love my childhood!