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to be proved."
He said, "So you were behind it?"
I said, "I was not behind it, I was just watching what the snake was doing to you."
He said, "You were there?"
I said, "I know the whole story; you cannot hide it. I even know about your scream which woke up the whole neighborhood; everybody knows."
"But," he said, "you are saying it so definitely -- because they must have heard a scream; but when they all came in, the snake had gone. We saw that one tile was removed, so the snake must have got away."
I said, "You are right: that was the place from where it came and through where it got out. And if you really want the proof...." I pulled out the snake from my bag and I showed him that this is the snake. "You are such a fearless man, and this is only a rubber snake. And it just touched your face -- two, three times, not much -- and such a scream came out of you. I was not expecting that it would create so much fear in you."
He was so ashamed that that very evening he resigned and escaped from town, because everybody was asking him, "What happened with the snake? Was it real? -- because somebody said that it was just a rubber snake and that some boy in your class had accepted your challenge." The whole town was talking, and it became so difficult for him that he escaped.
He met me ten years later on a railway station. He tried not to recognize me. I said, "Don't try not to recognize me because I still have the snake in my bag. I have been in search of you for ten years. I have been keeping it with me. Where have you been for ten years?"
He said, "Talk silently. Don't speak so loudly, because in this small place I have become a teacher and I don't want the same story to be spread here. And why have you come here?"
I said, "I have not come here, I'm just passing through by train, and the train is waiting for some other train to pass by. Seeing you, I got out. But what about your fearlessness?"
He said, "I have dropped the idea. One good thing you did was to make me free of a false idea that I am fearless. You made it clear to me that it is my fear that I am repressing with the idea of fearlessness.
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