Feature

Climbing the stairs

Saushan Rahman

My friends and I are always upto some kind of mischief. We believe all these harmless impish acts add more fun to the otherwise dull duties of our lives. When was the last time you did something strange (or I should say totally crazy) and felt good about it? Others may keep thinking and never come up with an answer. That is not the case with us. Regarding this matter we can come up with loads of examples. And the best part is that we always managed to get away with what we did.

Few weeks ago me and two of my friends walked into a shopping mall for a little window-shopping. The mall had several escalators. Looking at the escalator Sanam said, "I wonder what it's like to climb up the wrong escalator." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Simple. Let's go up the escalator that comes down." Sanam replied. "And how do you do that? Don't you think it is dangerous?" Asked Shayera. "Not really. If you run fast enough then you can climb up easily. It is you against the machine." And so we thought for a while.

There was a big possibility that we might have an accident and not to mention make fools of ourselves in front of so many people. But it was worth a try. Sanam went first and Shayera followed her. I stood there for a while, slightly awestruck with the bizarre idea but then thought what the heck and decided to follow my friends. Sanam reached at the top and was waiting for us. We reached the floor at the same time and stumbled, landing on our painful behinds! There were people all around us, staring, laughing, murmuring to each other while others appeared a little dumbfounded at how seriously unbearable the young generation can be! We could not let them know that we were embarrassed. I whispered to Shayera, "Let's just get up and pretend nothing happened." So we got up and walked into a store, pretending that such short activism was just part of our mere daily lives. Pretending that we have done this like a billion times while really deep inside we wanted to laugh our heart out. Climbing the stairs was not that difficult, but not laughing was difficult. But the three of us had to admit that we were fortunate that there was no accident. Something bad could have happened, but like always we got away with the mischief once again. And I believe that it is better not to try this.