Cutouts from childhood

Disclaimer: Not completely a work of fiction

He was moving out. He opened the old cupboard, he had to empty it today so that the movers could pack it up. Dusty books were piled up on the topmost rack. Clouds of dust emerged as he picked them up one at a time.

He found a small wooden box. As he wiped the top, he saw letters - letters that were etched on it with the pointed tip of a geometric compass. It said ' GHOST INSIDE . DO NOT OPEN'. His lips broke into a smile as he opened the box - he had written that message on the top twenty years ago.

As he opened the box, his eyes shone in a glow. There were tens of small cutouts with a small strip of cloth attached to the back of each like a hook. The cutouts had faces and shapes - an egg man, a happy face and a sad one, a brinjal-shaped lady, a moustached man with buck-tooth. The haphazard strokes of pencil, the uneven layers of crayons - he heard giggles in his ears..

He remembered cutting out those shapes from drawing paper, then colouring them for hours together, attaching hooks at the back and using these cutouts as finger puppets. 

He remembered how he and his sister tied a bed-sheet across the room while they presented the puppet show to the completely imaginary audience. He remembered how they would have the brinjal lady dancing, the egg man pompously throwing his weight around... He remembered the name they had coined for the duo - 'Talented Duo Productions'.

The cutouts in the box had brought back cutouts of memories from the childhood - that he had forgotten and that had piled up in the dusty corners of his mind...