A Man In The Dark

Once there lived a girl named Durgeshnandita. Her name was too long to be remembered so her friends called her Rani. She lived in a village named Suratgarh. The people there were afraid of ghosts.

One day while cooking food her mother said, “Oh Rani! There is no salt to cook food.” Rani wanted to go to Venjan market to get some salt. She asked her mother, “ Mom can I go and get salt from the market. It is just 10 km away from here.” First her mother refused but when Rani insisted, she agreed.

On the way to the market, Rani heard a murmuring and scary voice. She looked around but found no one there. She got afraid and ran as fast as she could and reached Venjan Bazaar.

She went inside the shop and asked the shopkeeper for salt, candle and matchstick. While she was returning home, a man with burnt face suddenly came in front of her. She lit the candle and noticed that it was a mask. Behind the mask was a man. Rani narrated the incident to the villagers. She said, “This is the man who bullied everyone at night.”

Rani asked him, “Why did you do all this?” The man replied, “I was born in this village in 1989 but the villagers did not allow me to study as I was a farmer’s son. They thought that a farmer’s son should be a farmer only.” He added, “I tried doing that but failed and finally gave up. That day my father told me to take revenge this way. But now I have realised that it was a crooked way.”

The villagers felt sorry and tried to educate every child of the village.

Moral- A child should not be forced to choose the profession in which his family is.