She sat
on the floor, wailing incessantly with tears coursing their way through her mud
caked cheeks. Her mother lay on the floor a feet away from her, oblivious and
insensitive to her cries. After wailing for nearly half an hour, her lungs were
gasping for breath. Hungry, wet, dirty and desperate for comfort, she ambled
off to sit near her mother waiting for the latter to wake up.
Choti, was a street’s child. Born on the
street, slept on the street, ate on the street and played on the street. The
street was her home and her whole world, a place who owned her with more right
than her own mother. Her mother begged near the entrance of a metro station. When
hungry, Choti would wail out aloud to
catch her mother’s attention, who would then either let Choti suckle at her lifelessly sagging breast or fill her stomach
with water from the nearby tap. On better days, her mother would push into her
toothless mouth tidbits of the leftovers that the passersby gave her. At night
they would sleep in a small house of used tarpaulin behind the metro station.
Curled up against the warm comfort of her mother’s body, Choti slept unmindful to the hunger gnawing at her belly.
As usual
when the morning dawned on the darkness of their night, Choti’s mother picked her up and made her way to station dragging
her feet behind her. She did not coddle Choti
as usual before the melee of travelers thronged the gates and begging for money
and food would start. Today her mother set her down near the gate and lay down
on the floor besides her. She lay with her eyes wide open but a strange emptiness
dominated her vision. The brightness of the morning light stung her eyes, the
silent morning broken by the humdrum of life thumped against her ears and the
breeze pricked her skin cruelly.
Choti,
unaware of her mother’s unnamed predicament, sat surrounded by the upswept
garbage on the floor and played happily in her street’s dirt and dust. Yet
after awhile, she craved for her mother’s touch. She crawled over to her
mother, grabbing the loose ends of her filthy sari, pulling it free.
Her
mother did not react.
She
jabbed at her mother fingers, jerking them with urgency.
Her
mother did not react.
She poked
her mother in the eye, which was staring away earnestly, unblinking, at a sight
far beyond.
Her
mother did not react.
Choti’s desperation finally gave way to a
heart throttled cry for attention. She walked about the gate crying her unsung
tale of helplessness and deprivation.
The
passersby sidestepped Choti, staying
out of her reach as they made their way to mundane destinations. She sat there
flailing about her arms trying to catch hold of the flurry of colors that was hurrying
past her. Having lost interest in her unreceptive mother, she went back to her
precious toys and games. Soon a crowd gathered around the wide eyed woman,
lying on the floor bereft of life. The thronging crowd obstructed Choti’s view of her mother, throwing her
into another fit of grief which fell on deaf ears. A while later, her mother
was picked up from the floor and bundled off to a van which disappeared into
oblivion. Choti sat unnoticed in her
tears and wails.
The man
at the bus stop had been engrossed in the morning news paper when his reverie
was broken by the hungama at the
station. A woman’s dead body had been found and over endless discussions on the
cause of her death, she was whisked away to the mortuary. The ordinary people,
whose lives had been disrupted by this extraordinary morning, soon settled back
into their routines. The man was also about to go back to his wait at the bus stop
when he noticed the sobbing child. Seeing the lone child at the station gates,
he enquired with a street hawker,
“Whose child is this?”
“The dead
woman’s sahib” replied the hawker.
“Where is
the child’s father?”
“I don’t
know sahib. The woman lived here only with this child”
The man
walked towards Choti and crouched
near her. He offered her his fingers, onto which she grabbed happily. He picked
her up and rested her on his shoulder and thumped her back gently; Choti was finally getting the coddling
she was crying for since morning. The man retraced his steps back home. It was
indeed an extraordinary morning!
Beautiful.. Very heart warming! Love it :)
ReplyDelete:) :) :* thank you!
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