Play by ear?

Anirudh spent most of his summer vacations in Coimbatore where he made merry with his numerous uncles, aunts and cousins. One day, during one such summer, his mum and aunties decided to do what women on holiday (or just generally too) like to do, and left one of his uncle’s in-charge of the kids. His uncle concluded that the best way to avoid bringing the ancestral house down was to keep the brats busy with some show of magic! So he did the disappearing thumb routine, fished out a coin from one of their hair and even put up a card act.

Towards the end, he showed them how when he slipped a pearl through one of his ears it came out the other! He also explained to them on a serious note that, the pearl, when pushed up the nose deftly, would come straight out the mouth. Now this uncle had Anirudh and his cousin sister’s full attention.

So after the assembly had dispersed to various parts of the house, and the mothers had returned to head straight for an afternoon nap, the two little ones got cracking. Anirudh convinced his cousin that she let him try the pearl trick, on her. Happy to be a muse, she obliged.

In went the pearl from one ear—but showed no sign of coming out the other. After some serious shoving, both of them got quite impatient and irritable, genuinely wondering which part of the magic wasn’t working. When the pearl didn’t come out even when pushed with the aid of a cotton bud, Anirudh decided it was best to accept defeat with the ears, and move to nose.

So he picked another pearl and asked his ever-so obliging cousin to tilt her head back so they could get on with some serious business. But as fate would have it, her mother woke up and decided to quiz them about what was going on. A little mumbling and few odd explanations later, they scurried to the courtyard leaving the confused woman behind.

But Anirudh could not wrap his head around what had gone wrong, and why the magic hadn’t worked—while his cousin sat under a tree pondering over the meaning of life, with the pearl safely ensconced in her ear. And he could only think of one person in the world who had the acumen to answer his questions—his Mommy.

On he marched to her room, and gently shook her out of her slumber. Then he narrated to his sleepy mom, step-by-step, what had happened that day—concluding with his harsh disappointment that the pearl continued to defy the simple laws of magic.

Needless to say, the mother was wide awake in seconds, and a lot of yelling and panic ensued. In short, the pearl was sucked out of the little one's ear after a less than three-hour 'operation'. I'm not allowed to use the cousin's name because this event is still a mystery to most of Anirudh's family. 

PS: No eardrums were damaged in the making of this event, except Anirudh's uncle's—who was compelled to forget all about his magic tricks.