The Mahishasura...

Buying colorful balloons of different sizes and shapes makes the Durga Puja celebrations exciting for small children. It is true today as it was true for us during our childhood days. It offers business opportunities to some small time businessmen to make some money by selling balloons and toys during Durga Puja.

It happened long ago, in Barpeta Road, my maternal uncle's place. We had come from Titabar to visit them during our puja holidays. All of us, brothers were small children and two our maternal uncles were also of similar age. Our youngest uncle came up with an idea to make some money by selling balloons. It was an exciting idea. We all agreed and contributing whatever little money we had, purchased few packets of balloon. 

We all started inflating the balloons. One of us made a cross-like structure and we started hanging the inflated balloons to that frame. In no time the frame was full with colorful inflated balloons. There were about twenty of them. If we sell them five paise a piece we would get one rupee, big money during those days.

With lot of enthusiasm we started moving towards the railway station which was only about five hundred meters away.

After reaching the station we found out a place where people could easily locate our small balloon shop. After digging a small hole in the ground, we fixed the cross like stand on it. All of us sat down on the ground and started waiting for our first customer. One or two boys and girls came nearer, looked at the balloons and went away. 

No one came forward to buy any of them. We started feeling depressed. 

Two big boys, about twelve/thirteen years of age, had been watching us from a distance. After sometime, they started moving towards us. We looked at them in anticipation thinking them to be our potential customers. They came closer and stood near to the balloon stand. 

"Are you selling balloons?", one of them asked.

"Yes', one of us replied hesitantly.

"How much for this red one?" the other boy started touching a red balloon and lo and behold, it burst immediately when he touched it.

"Oh, it burst. What about the yellow one?" the boy moved his hand towards a balloon of yellow color and to our horror it also burst as soon as he touched it.

"What is happening? Why do the balloons burst as soon as I try to buy?" the boy said with a mischievous smile on his face. 

The other boy also started giggling. 

We were getting restless. Suddenly some one us noticed a small piece of glass in the boy's hand who had been touching our balloons. We got alarmed and we tried to resist the big boys, but could not. The boys started laughing loudly and burst all our balloons just in front of our eyes. We could do nothing and just watched helplessly. 

After finishing their job, the two boys went away laughing as if they had just conquered the world. 

 We sat on the ground for sometime, totally stunned as if a big tornado had just hit us. 

To me, the two bullies appeared worse than the Mahishasura. 

Sadly enough, we did not have a Durga amidst us.