Of Chickens and Prabin, a short story

November 29, 2009
A short story with no particular meaning except to make you laugh as I did. Well, maybe not quite as hard as I did, but hopefully you’ll laugh as well... Once upon tonight, we were ready to start devotionals, and all the children were there except Prabin. As Prabin’s well known for his fondness of his bed, I ran upstairs to see if he was asleep in bed. I looked in every boys bed, covers scattered here and there, but no Prabin. So, I ran back downstairs, and found Shiva returning from outside. “Did you find Prabin?” he asked me. “No, and I have no idea where he is, so let’s start without him.” So we went through the whole devotional without any sign from Prabin.

Now backtrack 2 hours. Prabin was being such a good child that he went up into the nice, warm shed next to the chicken coop to study for his history exam tomorrow. In his intense fascination with the history and government of Nepal, he fell asleep in the shed, absorbing the material through the trail of spittle running from his mouth to his book (ok, the last line was added for dramatic effect only; I don’t actually know if he drools while he naps!).

Fast forward an hour. Di, the older brother who lives in the gate house, brought the chickens their feast of rice and vegetable peelings. Noticing that the shed door was unlatched, he did what any good gate guard would do and latched the door shut and then headed back downstairs. Now, it’s not like a doorknob on the door. It’s like those rounded rods on public toilet bathroom stalls that hold the door closed when you slide them in place, meaning you can’t open the door except from the one side. Except in this case, it only opens from the outside (why would you ever need to open the door from the inside?!).

Fast forward 45 minutes. Prabin awakens, finding himself chilled in the cool air of night. Gathering his books, he assumes it’s almost devotional time, not knowing that devotionals started 15 minutes earlier without him. The great thing about devotionals is that all the children are in the devotional meeting. So, when Prabin discovers that the door he left open is now locked, he bangs as hard as he can, but as the shed’s on the roof above the 3rd floor, and we’re in the kids dining room on the first floor, there’s just no chance that anyone will hear him!

Fast forward 15 minutes. After devotional, one of the kids decides to go check to see if he’s in the shed, rescuing him from a night of chickens and cold! As the girls get dinner on the table, Prabin proceeds to inform us of his trials in the shed, while we’re laughing so hard we’re crying! So the next time one of your kids is missing from devotionals, check the shed off the chicken coop- you never know if someone’s locked in there!