Читать книгу Once Upon a Coin - Aditi JD Bhardwaj - Страница 7

Exchanged for marbles, my business in human life kept expanding. I was used as a bet decider among friends, became the thirst quencher for my bearer by getting 2 cold glasses of water in my exchange. I was busy in my life and then this one day the ‘Joy of giving’ struck me in a way it had never before!

This was the most disgusting thing I had undergone so far, I was stuck inside the awful smelling under pants of an auto rickshaw driver. He smelled of tobacco and spirit. I have been roaming throughout the summer scorched streets, along with different co-passengers in the auto rickshaw.

After a hard day of bearing that groin smell and tobacco infected spirit sting, I saw myself being pulled out of his secret pocket. What a relief!

His face was so much in contrast to the monster I had been imagining him to be. He had a soft face that was black from pollution and wet from sweat. He touched me with his forehead, and placed me near both his eyes, and after chanting something, piously placed me inside a steel vessel. A small girl, with jute hair, yellow skin and brown eyes, was holding this vessel full of mustard oil; a tiny iron figure dwindled merged halfway in oil and half way peeping out of the vessel. As I settled in the oil tank, I saw many of them from my community already enjoying that oil massage.

I felt heavy, slippery and so very nauseated. The girl continued to roam around asking for alms and quite often a fellow community member bearing same/different denomination would be slipped inside.

“45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 50…… that’s all!” shouted a middle aged woman, adorning a huge red round vermilion mark on her head. She looked frightening and ruthless.

She washed us under a hand pump, and then placed us inside a plastic bag after rubbing us dry with a stinky piece of cloth. She hit the girl with yellow skin on her back and cursed her with everything bad that she would want to happen to her.

The girl cried silently, she was too weak to even have the energy to whimper, it seemed.

She slid herself inside a rag on the side of a small room made of plastic sheets and cardboard pieces.

A while later the woman threw a paper bag on the girl’s face, which smelled of rotten bread and stale oil. The girl hungrily opened the bag and started to munch the bread. She stopped only after she had licked the last of bread crumbles.

She went out to find a tiny plastic cup of tea, which she drank with equal haste, and then slipped back into her rag, and slept coiled up like a snake in that small room.

I kept seeing this from the plastic bag, imagining the human ways and diversity of human life.

In the morning, as the yellow skinned girl was shook from her deep sleep by the vermilion smeared woman. She handed her 5 coins and asked her to get a packet of tobacco and bidi from the shop.

The 5^th coin being me.

The girl, staggered sweepingly in the tiny twisted lane, making her way through heaps of garbage, avoiding slipping inside open drain holes and animal shit.

She asked for the items she had been instructed to buy, from the shopkeeper.

As she gave the coins held tightly in her tiny palm, the shopkeeper returned her the last coin that was me, saying that the price of the bidi packet had gone a rupee down. The girl took me back and clinched me tight in her tiny weak fist.

On her way back she opened her palm and had a look at me with her eyes shining. Instead of taking the same route back she took some other way; this place smelled of dyes and spirit.

Colourful sheets of clothes were spread over a huge distance, basking in the sun light.

The little girl hurriedly ran towards a small garden. The garden was more of a garbage dump, a few naked kids played around with cycle tyres.

Her hurried steps began turning into strides. She almost slipped in the dingy drain pit adjacent to the muddy wheel of a wooden trolley. It looked dirty and smelled of different flavours infused in moist wood. There were painted images of ice candies on the body of the trolley and a big metal bell hung on the top shaft with a tattered rope.

The tiny yellow girl opened her palm wide open.

I was smeared with her sweat. I could clearly see her face. A pale face with shining eyes and dry purple lips which adorned one of the most beautiful smiles I had seen and probably would ever see again.

Between you and me I was exchanged for an ice candy- between me and the yellow skinned girl I was exchanged for happiness. I felt so elated sliding inside the iron box kept over the ice cream trolley.

It was cold in there but my heart felt very warm and I experienced the emotion called the joy of giving.

I never knew of the pale tiny girl anymore, my life was up for another turn. May be the wicked woman found out of her stolen happiness and gave her enough tears to repent her childhood innocence, maybe she never did. May be the tiny girl keeps this as her best kept secret and cherishes this as her sweetest childhood memory. I wish her love.

Chapter’s take away –

Joy of giving: Happiness is inexpensive

Happiness is such an inexpensive thing. Just simple actions and gestures can bring about so much happiness in someone’s life. Joy of giving need not come packed in fancy wrappers and expensive brands. A glass of cold water offered to the courier man who delivered you a letter this summer afternoon, a smile to your neighbour, a word of appreciation for your co worker are all tiny things but they bring about bigger joys.