The rag picker

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