Page 63 - Lavender-B-5

But it had left our family alone until, one day, the peepul tree had been cut down.

It was nobody’s fault except, of course, that

Grandfather had given the Public Works
Department permission to cut the tree which
had been standing on our land. They wanted
to widen the road, and the tree and a bit of

wall were in the way; so both had to go. In
any case, not even a ghost can prevail against
the PWD. But hardly a day had passed when
we discovered that the Pret, deprived of his

tree, had decided to take up residence in the
bungalow. And since a good Pret must be bad in
order to justify his existence, he was soon up to
all sorts of mischief in the house.

He began by hiding Grandmother’s spectacles

whenever she took them off.

‘I’m sure I put them down on the dressing-
table,’ she grumbled.

A little later they were found balanced

precariously on the snout of a wild boar,
whose stuffed and mounted head adorned
the veranda wall. Being the only boy in the
house, I was at first blamed for this prank; but

a day or two later, when the spectacles disappeared again Have your grand-
only to be discovered dangling from the wires of the parrot’s parents also faced the
cage, it was agreed that some other agency was at work. same troubles as the grand-
Let’s connect
mother and grandfather in
Grandfather was the next to be troubled. He went into this story?
the garden one morning to find all his prized sweet-peas

snipped off and lying on the ground.

Uncle Ken was the next to suffer. He was a prevail: when something or someone wins or
heavy sleeper, and once he’d gone to bed, he succeeds, like in a game
hated being woken up. So when he came to precariously: when something is in a dangerous or
unstable position
the breakfast table looking bleary-eyed and agency: (here) an unidentified power
miserable, we asked him if he wasn’t feeling bleary-eyed: when your eyes are tired and blurry,
usually after waking up
all right. sleep a wink: when you can't sleep at all, not even
a little bit

63