The croutons reminded me of tiny rafts floating in a pond. I sprinkled a dash of pepper very precisely on a crouton, pretending it was a bunch of people on the precarious raft. Finally, my grumbling stomach got the better of me, and I wolfed down the soup, croutons, and everything else in the bowl.
I’ve always had an overactive imagination that refuses to succumb to the mundane motions of life. It’s this imagination that makes the croutons in the soup resemble little rafts in stormy waters, or conjure up images of antibodies in combat gear battling the evil virus in my body when I’m sick. It makes life appear a little less dull and keeps the child in me alive.
Speaking of soup and overactive imaginations, I remember the time when I tried making stone soup. That’s right, it was stone soup.
With both parents away at work and my grandparents overcome by a heavy lunch-induced slumber most afternoons, I had little to do during my summer holidays. I was done giving my doll a haircut, expecting her soft blonde tufts to grow back. Watching television was out of the question, for back in those days, post the afternoon news, the TV screen only showed static until Doordarshan aired its evening programmes later in the day.
The ten-year-old me was bored out of my mind, and as the saying goes, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. As my palms itched to do something, I suddenly remember the story of the clever traveller who charmed the stingy village folk into sharing the ingredients from their larders for some soup. In the story, the weary traveller pretends to make soup by dropping a stone into a boiling pot of water. The inhospitable villagers, overcome by curiosity, eventually share potatoes, carrots and other ingredients needed to make a soup. The story ends with everyone enjoying bowls of hot, delicious soup, their inhospitable and suspicious nature replaced by warmth and cheer.
I may not have had a dozen villagers to share soup with, but I did have a friend who lived on the next street and I hoped she would be gullible enough to be the subject for my experiment.
I tiptoed into the kitchen, the reassuring snores emanating from my grandparents’ bedroom emboldening me further to carry on with my shenanigans. Placing a pot of water on the electric stove that had seen better days, I waited until it came to a boil before dropping a couple of unwashed stones that I’d picked up from the street.
So far so good. My grandparents were oblivious to the mischief unfolding in their kitchen. I was on a roll. In went the diced and misshapen potatoes, tomatoes, some leftover onions, a couple of carrots and peas, followed by salt and pepper. The stone soup was ready.
I waited for it to cool down before daring to taste a teaspoon of the horrid concoction. I nearly gagged with the first spoonful and convinced myself a couple of spoonfuls later that it wasn’t so bad.
“Perhaps it’s an acquired taste,” I thought, for I had heard my mother use this term when she was unsure if she liked or disliked something.
It was time to execute the second part of my plan. I carefully strained the liquid into an empty ketchup bottle and hopped on to my bicycle, pedalling away to my friend’s house before my grandparents awoke to the storm in the kitchen.
Relieved that her grandparents were fast asleep and her parents away at work, I urged her to try some. She looked sceptical at first, sniffing it suspiciously. “What is it?” she asked me, making a face.
I looked hurt. “Soup. It’s not poison,” I said, conveniently leaving the ‘stone’ part out of it. “Try some. I made it especially for you,” I added, sweetening the deal with a smile.
My persuasive powers finally worked, and my friend glugged a couple of mouthfuls of it to prove her loyalty to me.
What followed a couple of hours later was a sound dressing down from my parents, ensured by violent bouts of diarrhoea, which did not afflict me as much as it did my poor friend who refused to talk to me for two whole days.
We eventually buried the hatchet, for the summer holidays stretched ahead of us — long, inviting, and with endless possibilities and working parents. Surely, there wasn’t time to hold grudges over silly mishaps? After all, I needed someone as a lookout while I proceeded to shove a large cucumber into the exhaust pipe of my neighbour’s new Fiat in order to satiate my curiosity as to whether or not it would launch itself out like a rocket, or burst into bits when the driver turned on the ignition.
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