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The Hidden Treasure them. Manjul shouted back informing her that they were coming.

When they reached back, all dusty and muddy, clothes all tainted with mud,
Mummy ran and shouted as to what they had been up to. Mridul had a small
Manjul sat concentrated on his newly-acquired tool – a magnifying glass, cut on his hand, bleeding profusely. So, his hand was washed with Dettol and
which his father had gifted him recently. He was studying the black ants, how bandaged by his Papa, who had just arrived from his College. Both were given
they moved in a line so systematically. Some of them went astray and he was a quick bath. They wore clean dresses before sitting down for lunch. Their
trying to guide them with a leaf to their proper destination, while viewing Grandfather and Grand Mom were also quite concerned as to what had
their antics through the glass. Suddenly, his younger brother, Mridul, happened but all kept quiet to maintain a calm atmosphere.
appeared from out of the blue, yelling “Bhai....yaa......aaaa! Looking up
Everyone had their lunch first as all were hungry. Then both of them told the
sardonically, Manjul commented, “Oh! What the hell! See, you disturbed my
story to the entire family…of how Mridul had landed on discovering the
entire observation.”
buried treasure. His grandfather and father walked to the site and consulted
Mridul was breathless, having run for quite some distance. He puckered up his each other, finally deciding to inform the police regarding this.
nose and bringing his mouth near Manjul's ears whispered, “Listen. I've found
The police came in an hour and inspected the site, digging it up for any further
a treasure, a real treasure! Come with me, quickly!”
hidden treasures and for sure, found some more gold jewellery in a muddy
The urgency in his tone made Manjul jump up and follow him. Together they state. Photographs were taken and the site was ear-marked for further
scampered across the garden, to the back gate of their house in one breath. investigations. A week later, it was found that a certain gang of robbers had
Mridul stopped and pointed excitedly towards a small tree stump. “Is that the buried these things cleverly, probably in the night, a few months ago.
treasure?” Manjul thundered. Mridul went over and exposed a large hollow However, one of the gang members, who used to deposit the spoils at this site,
towards the bottom end, not visible from one side. He scraped further inside had met with an accident. Hence, the others had no clue to this booty.
with a shovel and fished out what looked like a gold chain. It was Manjul's turn
The jewellery owners too could be identified and given their lost items. The
to be surprised now.
police gave the children a surprise gift for their unstinted efforts and all the
“How did you discover this?” questioned he. Mridul told him that he had been people who got back their lost jewellery blessed them a lot. Both, Manjul and
playing tennis on the yonder side with himself only and the ball he tossed, flew Mridul were happy for having been of some help to the society. Their parents
over and got stuck here. When he tried to catch the ball, it went inside the and grandparents too blessed them a lot for this good work.
hollow. Then he brought the garden shovel to scrape through it a little to get
his ball. And it was just then, that he discovered the gold chain.
Together, both of them scraped through, panting and puffing, for almost an
hour. Some more jewellery in an old purse was found – a maang teeka, a ~ Poonam Nigam Sahay ~
bejewelled watch, two more gold chains along with six pairs of earrings and
three rings. It looked as if these things had been buried for quite some time
now. The eyes of the children shone with wonder and delight, with each
discovery. It was almost lunch time and they could hear Mummy looking for

64 | Dr. K.C. Sethi & Sunita Sethi Never Cease to Amaze | 65