This happened a long time ago in my ancestral village when I was about 10 years old... We had this gang of kids about my age and we were playing some game which required us to cook with "toy" utensils.. such as little kettles, ladles etc. Half way into the game we discovered that we were terminally short of certain utensils and there was no way the parents of any of us would give us the money needed to buy a new "kitchen-set"... So our game was in jeopardy...!
Gunjan, a very naughty local lad, decided to "offer his skills and resources" for the project and suggested we make our own from the mud we could easily dig from our orchard.. he even volunteered to get us the equipment needed to dig up the ground, mix the mud etc. as well as teach us how to make the utensils themselves, an art which he had learned from his minute observations of the village potter...
Sounded like a lot of adventure to us kids.., and in a couple of minutes all my minions(I was the gang leader - the naughtiest of all..) were busy digging furiously with me and Gunjan supervising the progress of the work... Finally, after a lot of dirt had been kicked-up(we had dug up more than half of the orchard..)... Gunjan decided that he had "enough mud" to build the utensils... So a couple of kids were sent off to fetch several pails of water from a nearby well... The gang got together and under Gunjan's supervision(my role in the act had not yet started..), we mixed enough mud and water to build the Wall of China... Effectively, we had turned the entire orchard into a little marsh.... Then we did a pretty good job at building life-sized utensils instead of those little toy ones... somewhere down the line we had decided to "actually cook" in those utensils....
The utensils were left out to dry and meanwhile we created more nuisance of ourselves by successfully launching a commando operation aimed at setting free our neighbor's herd of cows which then stormed through his courtyard out into the fields and with the poor guy chasing them around.... I was the leader of the operation with Gunjan playing second fiddle.. We had scrambled a ladder at the back of the cow shed, had entered the shed from an opening in the thatched roof, freed all the cows, tied a rope around the gate and yanked it open from the cowshed-roof lest we fell into the hands of the "enemy"... We then dispersed and ran into a huge bamboo grove that was supposed to be haunted... I'm sure the ghosts, if any, had fled when they saw our "battle group" advancing towards their hideout...
It was almost two hours and so we kids decided to go to our homes, quickly have lunch, or people would have been sent out on a search and destroy mission to hunt us down(we also had to provide alibis as an evidence of our innocence in operation holy-cows), and regroup in the orchard at the end of 60 minutes...
Sooo... we regrouped at the end of the hour and found that though the utensils had dried up well enough in the blistering June afternoon, we faced with another problem - a couple of girls in our gang attracted our attention to the fact that the "utensils" were unbaked and could not be used for cooking...!! Now it was my turn to take charge of the affairs... I told them that if baking is what is needed, we're going to bake them... But HOW??!! was the question... We thought of taking our stuff to the brick-kiln in the vicinity but there was a danger of the owner informing the families of one of us and that could land us into deep-$#!T... Also, it takes several days for a brick kiln to "open up" and we were in no mood to put off the adventure until then... So we decided to build our own.. right in the middle of the orchard where we had already dug up a gorge of sorts - we only needed to dig it a little deeper....
Gunjan helped me with a few "design optimizations" which enabled us to do away with the need of a chimney, to build which, we didn't have the necessary "technological advancement"... We got our minions to dig up the hole deeper and lo! our kiln was ready!!! Next was the issue of "fuel" to get the kiln going... So each of us stole some coal from his house, coupled with some firewood.. we were still short of firewood, so ventured into the nearby fields which were stacked with freshly harvested crop awaiting sifting... The entire area around the orchard(as well as the orchard itself..) was an arsonist's heaven.. and we were about to turn into really dangerous ones!!
The firewood and the coal was stacked tightly into our kiln and the utensils placed at strategic locations... Gunjan did the honors of "lighting the fire" with a matchbox he had thoughtfully acquired from his home...A strong Loo(a searing hot wind that blows in summers in North India..) was blowing from the direction of our kiln towards the closest field, which, well.. had not yet been harvested, was dry and was perfect "firewood".. We were smiling....
In a couple of minutes the coals attained a reddish glow.., and despite being "tough" kids, we were beginning to "feel the heat"... The fire had turned from the size of a kitchen fire to that of a Holi-Bonfire touching the lower leaves of the mango tree above it... to make matters worse, The #@^&* Loo was carrying burning splinters straight towards the unharvested wheat field... Thick, black smoke was billowing from the top of the fire - which was grazing the lowest leaves of the mango tree above it and fast turning into the funeral pyre of our cherished utensils...
Me and Gunjan were staring aghast at each other and the rest of our gang was looking at us with doubtful eyes, questioning our worthiness as their "able" leaders....
Then I shouted, "Quick! Run!! Every man for his Life... Hide just anywhere and don't-dare-tell-anyone-we-did-it...". It was the best commons-sense crisis management I've ever done!! "Help" was pouring in fast from corners of the village - the word was out - "The orchard is on fire... Save the crops at all costs!"
We all ran and disappeared into weird places... I clambered up high on a very tall mango tree till no one could have seen me from below... Gunjan went and hid himself in the attic of the cowshed we had stormed earlier in the morning.. it backfired very badly as his folks knew very well that he hides there quite often... was nabbed... And you can easily imagine what followed... his grandfather was a cane-brandishing school headmaster, and his father a similar maths teacher....
But even to this date, I am proud of my fidayeens who participated in our misadventure: "Revolutionaries if unsuccessful, are declared traitors!!!" - nobody revealed(all) the names of their other "accomplices" so everybody in the village had a different story to tell... even ghosts of the nearby bamboo shrub were held responsible - with one person claiming to have seen a lady-wearing-a-black-Saree near the bush an hour before the disaster...
I was perched precariously atop the top-branches of my mango tree... I was feeling like an Avian... The fire below was finally put out by the people of the nearby houses - I was glad that I-did-no-crime-ultimately... I stayed there until it began to get dark near the top shoots of the tree enjoying the cool shade, eating raw mangoes, hitting any birds who came to munch on the mangoes around... By then, another trouble had come up(at least for my family..)... "I" was untraceable... Rumors were I had "burned" in the fire, abducted by the witch-in-the-black-Saree and so on... My maternal uncle was a man of logic - he was about to inform the police... Just then I walked in, with a hanging face... Everybody gathered around me, taking turns at hugging and petting me.... I was ready with another cooked up story... "I had followed that lady-in-black to a far off Shiva temple where she suddenly vanished and I had been lost until I found my way back....."
Gunjan, a very naughty local lad, decided to "offer his skills and resources" for the project and suggested we make our own from the mud we could easily dig from our orchard.. he even volunteered to get us the equipment needed to dig up the ground, mix the mud etc. as well as teach us how to make the utensils themselves, an art which he had learned from his minute observations of the village potter...
Sounded like a lot of adventure to us kids.., and in a couple of minutes all my minions(I was the gang leader - the naughtiest of all..) were busy digging furiously with me and Gunjan supervising the progress of the work... Finally, after a lot of dirt had been kicked-up(we had dug up more than half of the orchard..)... Gunjan decided that he had "enough mud" to build the utensils... So a couple of kids were sent off to fetch several pails of water from a nearby well... The gang got together and under Gunjan's supervision(my role in the act had not yet started..), we mixed enough mud and water to build the Wall of China... Effectively, we had turned the entire orchard into a little marsh.... Then we did a pretty good job at building life-sized utensils instead of those little toy ones... somewhere down the line we had decided to "actually cook" in those utensils....
The utensils were left out to dry and meanwhile we created more nuisance of ourselves by successfully launching a commando operation aimed at setting free our neighbor's herd of cows which then stormed through his courtyard out into the fields and with the poor guy chasing them around.... I was the leader of the operation with Gunjan playing second fiddle.. We had scrambled a ladder at the back of the cow shed, had entered the shed from an opening in the thatched roof, freed all the cows, tied a rope around the gate and yanked it open from the cowshed-roof lest we fell into the hands of the "enemy"... We then dispersed and ran into a huge bamboo grove that was supposed to be haunted... I'm sure the ghosts, if any, had fled when they saw our "battle group" advancing towards their hideout...
It was almost two hours and so we kids decided to go to our homes, quickly have lunch, or people would have been sent out on a search and destroy mission to hunt us down(we also had to provide alibis as an evidence of our innocence in operation holy-cows), and regroup in the orchard at the end of 60 minutes...
Sooo... we regrouped at the end of the hour and found that though the utensils had dried up well enough in the blistering June afternoon, we faced with another problem - a couple of girls in our gang attracted our attention to the fact that the "utensils" were unbaked and could not be used for cooking...!! Now it was my turn to take charge of the affairs... I told them that if baking is what is needed, we're going to bake them... But HOW??!! was the question... We thought of taking our stuff to the brick-kiln in the vicinity but there was a danger of the owner informing the families of one of us and that could land us into deep-$#!T... Also, it takes several days for a brick kiln to "open up" and we were in no mood to put off the adventure until then... So we decided to build our own.. right in the middle of the orchard where we had already dug up a gorge of sorts - we only needed to dig it a little deeper....
Gunjan helped me with a few "design optimizations" which enabled us to do away with the need of a chimney, to build which, we didn't have the necessary "technological advancement"... We got our minions to dig up the hole deeper and lo! our kiln was ready!!! Next was the issue of "fuel" to get the kiln going... So each of us stole some coal from his house, coupled with some firewood.. we were still short of firewood, so ventured into the nearby fields which were stacked with freshly harvested crop awaiting sifting... The entire area around the orchard(as well as the orchard itself..) was an arsonist's heaven.. and we were about to turn into really dangerous ones!!
The firewood and the coal was stacked tightly into our kiln and the utensils placed at strategic locations... Gunjan did the honors of "lighting the fire" with a matchbox he had thoughtfully acquired from his home...A strong Loo(a searing hot wind that blows in summers in North India..) was blowing from the direction of our kiln towards the closest field, which, well.. had not yet been harvested, was dry and was perfect "firewood".. We were smiling....
In a couple of minutes the coals attained a reddish glow.., and despite being "tough" kids, we were beginning to "feel the heat"... The fire had turned from the size of a kitchen fire to that of a Holi-Bonfire touching the lower leaves of the mango tree above it... to make matters worse, The #@^&* Loo was carrying burning splinters straight towards the unharvested wheat field... Thick, black smoke was billowing from the top of the fire - which was grazing the lowest leaves of the mango tree above it and fast turning into the funeral pyre of our cherished utensils...
Me and Gunjan were staring aghast at each other and the rest of our gang was looking at us with doubtful eyes, questioning our worthiness as their "able" leaders....
Then I shouted, "Quick! Run!! Every man for his Life... Hide just anywhere and don't-dare-tell-anyone-we-did-it...". It was the best commons-sense crisis management I've ever done!! "Help" was pouring in fast from corners of the village - the word was out - "The orchard is on fire... Save the crops at all costs!"
We all ran and disappeared into weird places... I clambered up high on a very tall mango tree till no one could have seen me from below... Gunjan went and hid himself in the attic of the cowshed we had stormed earlier in the morning.. it backfired very badly as his folks knew very well that he hides there quite often... was nabbed... And you can easily imagine what followed... his grandfather was a cane-brandishing school headmaster, and his father a similar maths teacher....
But even to this date, I am proud of my fidayeens who participated in our misadventure: "Revolutionaries if unsuccessful, are declared traitors!!!" - nobody revealed(all) the names of their other "accomplices" so everybody in the village had a different story to tell... even ghosts of the nearby bamboo shrub were held responsible - with one person claiming to have seen a lady-wearing-a-black-Saree near the bush an hour before the disaster...
I was perched precariously atop the top-branches of my mango tree... I was feeling like an Avian... The fire below was finally put out by the people of the nearby houses - I was glad that I-did-no-crime-ultimately... I stayed there until it began to get dark near the top shoots of the tree enjoying the cool shade, eating raw mangoes, hitting any birds who came to munch on the mangoes around... By then, another trouble had come up(at least for my family..)... "I" was untraceable... Rumors were I had "burned" in the fire, abducted by the witch-in-the-black-Saree and so on... My maternal uncle was a man of logic - he was about to inform the police... Just then I walked in, with a hanging face... Everybody gathered around me, taking turns at hugging and petting me.... I was ready with another cooked up story... "I had followed that lady-in-black to a far off Shiva temple where she suddenly vanished and I had been lost until I found my way back....."
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