The rag picker
A story of a child whom I observed while having tea on the roadside at a stall. Added a hypothetical ending to the story.
Friday September 01, 2017 , 2 min Read
Managing to put the sack over his back he toddled few steps with that bleeding ankle
He didn’t stop he couldn’t instead. With a stick in the other hand he kept looking haphazardly
Barefoot on the pile of garbage he heard a loud shout from his friend Karim
He ran relentlessly, looked at the ten rupee note in his left hand and an overwhelming smile of contention
He bowed down and lifted the stick which seemed heavier now
Continuing his search he lifted the small pieces of rag and the rotten food wiping his running nose
He took a look back at his ankle and moved his tiny leg forward
This time he lifted a bottle of beer and put it into the sack
The stick was his treasured companion, he never let it break
The stick got stuck; he pulled it off, bent down the tiny little came in for the rescue
He picked it up, “Karim come here” he said
I found this, and Karim gave away a hard laugh
He ignored, opened the cap quickly scribbled it roughly on his hand
Its working he screamed with enormous joy and cleaned it carefully with his shirt
“You got a rubbish pen, what are you going to do with it idiot” Karim added on top of his voice
He smiled and clipped it carefully on to his shirt, the pen was shining allover
He walked past Karim quietly picking his sack and the stick
Mother, look what I got. He showed her the pen
What are you going to do with this crap; it’s of no use to us
I loved it, he kept the sack and presented the items he had picked and the mother kept counting
He went in the gloomy room bent down crawled in and took out a notebook, a used one
He meticulously held the pen and rubbed it on one corner of an already filled page
He turned the page, this time he found a larger space
“Rohit!” he wrote his first words with his magical pen and his soul smiled with the mystic curves by the ink.
-©Abhishek
