1 Dollar

Part 1

This one was a ten forty slow local for Kasara.

Not that it mattered though.

After getting a lazy wake up foot-shove from mother, I had munched on some left-over pav and come with her to Kurla station, where our workday daily begins. The best part about our work: flexible timings.

I entered the men’s first class compartment. It was bang opposite the station entrance and the laziness hadn’t worn off yet. My mother had taught me well. We were never supposed to enter a ladies’ compartment. Take my word, they are the most miserly and crabby lot. From the irritating tch tch to the unmasked contemptuous shove, they can be a real pain. Men are a lot better. They take pity on your tattered clothes, little curled up fingers and the pathetically pitiful expression on your face. Worst case- they’ll ignore you completely. But till the worst case arrives, you have happily collected around 15 rupees in 5 minutes. Next stop, next bogie. Life wasn’t so bad- you do the math.

Sometimes mother and I adopted different tactics. Instead of going into different compartments each, we got into the same one. You know the long long general bogie, right? She started singing this holy song, call it beggar pop if you want as this writer does, with the two thin wooden blocks clinking loudly, almost irritating everyone into submission. She stood in the middle of the passage, and I was supposed to go up to everyone and beg. “Make as much body contact as possible,” I was taught. “Tap them. Done? Now do it again. Brush against their knees, and look straight up at the standees after getting as close as possible. Make them feel they’re big and it’s their duty to help us small people. The key to being a good beggar is being innocently pesky.”

I followed her instructions. I was rewarded.

Today I went into the first class while she chose the adjoining general one. I started to hear the faint clanging musical tribute to Sai Baba. I took a quick glance at the compartment while digging my nose. Two people hanging by the rod, a couple of them leaning against the partition, some 10-15 sitting, plugs in their ears, newspapers in their hands, some with sacks on their laps, a white couple in half pants, two students chatting animatedly…

A white couple in half pants.

Big dig.

I decided to lasso myself to the whiteys. I like these whiteys. For one, they look good. I never miss them out when I’m working near some temple. I stand and run up to them or if not in an active mood, stare at them till they’re out of sight. Those blue eyes, chiseled features, yellow-brown hair, and pink lips and cheeks, can a human possibly get more fascinating? And then, they tip you well. Like, real well. I remember my mother telling me they once ruled India and looted us while departing, which is why people like me and her roam on the streets today begging. So I guess it’s only fair that they be the most generous lot. And they are.

Retribution, y’know.

They were sitting at the end of the compartment, leaning against this lower half steel partition with the upper half having the horizontal bars. I went up to them and conjured up the best woeful expression possible, extending my hand.

“Gimme some rupees please, sahib,” I pleaded. I touched my tummy, then my mouth, gesturing starvation. “I’ve eaten nothing since the morning. Some rupees please.” Yes, obviously they didn’t get me and I didn’t get their subsequent conversation either- the language divide. But mother says you have to talk. The more you do, the better it is for you.

The words of wisdom worked this time too. The man turned and looked at me for a couple of seconds. Yes, us beggars are an eye magnet for these whiteys. The woman with him turned too. She seemed unmoved though, and went back to staring out of the window. But the moment the man dug into his pockets, she turned.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Just look at this poor soul, dear,” the man ventured on to explain. His hand now sported a hundred rupee note. I almost drooled.

“What is wrong with you?” Her tone wasn’t exactly a beggar’s delight type. “You know we can’t afford to do that. We’re stranded here since two weeks and thanks to you, all we have is these measly hundred bucks.”

“But we are going to the exchange now,” the man feebly protested.

“And where will the money to reach there come from?”

The man looked dejected at the truncated effort at helping humanity as he kept the hundred rupees back in his pocket. I kept poking though. He sadly turned away. I decided to pin the hopes of lunch on my own countrymen and moved ahead when I heard a “Hey”. I turned around and it was the whitey again. He removed a funny looking note from his pocket. The lady started to protest but was sharply snapped. I neared the man and he gave me the funny note. I looked at it for a second and bent to touch his feet. I keep these for special occasions. He immediately withdrew them with an embarrassing laugh.

“Go, kiddo,” he said. “I hope you can find some use of this.”

I don’t know what it meant. I went away anyway. My job here was done.

“Next station, Mulund.”

I always liked the electronic announcement system inside the new trains. It has made India come of age, I feel. First Marathi, then Hindi and then English: assisting everyone with a possible vernacular handicap. Ain’t that sweet? Me and my mother would’ve had finished scrounging the most of the train by now. Mulund is our meeting point, when I bring all the money I’d collected neatly tied in a handkerchief I keep in the left pocket of my frock. And depending on the earnings, we decide if to settle for a measly vada pav or a luxurious meal hand-cooked by mother herself.

But today I felt a tad bit discomfited. I was pretty lax today- damn them foreigners. The thing they gave me, the note, was the culprit. Like, huge. I had never seen anything as beautiful before. Though slightly crumpled, the yellow fantasy was far too attractive to not be infatuated about. The corners clearly said it was a '1'. But unlike the genial looking Bapu there was this smug faced old man on the front, with shock of a white untidy hair combed back, a scarf tied around his neck before the abnormally large collared suit. Yes, all this was me ignoring my job, observing the note while sitting on the compartment floor among several other pairs of knees. The back of the note had this building made of so many pillars; it almost looked like a cage, a cage with a flag waving on the top.

Ah, the grandiosity.

So I never realized when the train pulled into the station. It was only when three of the shuffling feet brushed me, one of them almost deliberately hard, that I looked up and hurriedly got down. My left showed my mother’s impatient eyes coming closer. I started walking towards her slowly and we met near the exit. Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Mother was busy counting her earnings while we were walking towards Dinanath Chauhan flyover.

“Only forty three,” she finally cursed. She looked at me. I blankly looked back. “Do I now have to beg you to give me the money?” she said.

I handed over the handkerchief. She wasn’t pleased at the size. “What the hell were you doing?” she demanded. “Is this even a twenty?” She started counting. I almost prayed it to be lesser. A wounded ego and a lax daughter would be a difficult combination to face.

Turned out, it was “Twenty three,” she spat. “Only twenty three. When the kerosene prices are almost burning me alive, this bitch goes and gets only twenty three rupees. What are we going to do with only sixty six rupees and a gambler father to support?”

We had almost reached under the flyover by now. Bute’s wife was looking at the tamasha, and so was her imp of a boy, still curled up in that pink and grey mattress, watching gleefully with his chin cuddled up in his palms. That good-for-nothing whoreson.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” mother grabbed hold of my chin and crudely turned it to face her. Her left arm grabbed mine and started pinching me. “What were you doing? You earn a sixty single handedly. Today you give me a twenty three. And I’m supposed to take it just like that?”

I struggled against her iron grip. We beggars might be starving beings but when it comes to a hot-head, brute strength emerges out of nowhere. My flailing didn’t work. It only agitated her further. Her arm swung and whacked me square.

“Shut up now,” she said tartly. “Quietly come after me.” She went on mumbling obscenities in an undertone. Bute’s wife, that ugly obnoxious thing with a witch’s nose and tobacco stained teeth, came up to us as we entered the part between the parking space under the bridge and its end. She was one of the most repelling women. Not only was she uncouth, she the most irritating laughs ever which she incidentally was very generous with. But the worst part, she didn’t speak, she cackled. And for her, the whole ghetto was a family and she the counselor.

“What happened, sister,” she asked mother, touching her arm.

“Life happened,” mother dismissed her, brushing off her touch. “Don’t come near me. I have to talk to Parshu. He might just hit you.” Introducing Parshu, my alcoholic father. Nickname- Ungrateful bastard.

“You ungrateful bastard (See?), wake up,” mother said. He lay at the end of the flyover, with the roof just a few feet above his head. Of course, he was rolled and put there by others. A typical night goes with him showing up around 4 am and demanding to see “My fucking wife.” Why? “Dammit, coz she’s one slut who gives me for free. Give me her.”

After tolerating him for a few months, we had decided to move in with my uncle who lived in Kurla in a kachcha house, a much better option to living under a bridge. The other men however were not as patient with him. More often than not, they knocked him out, which wasn’t so hard when you faced a frail man living off tharra since last couple of years, and rolling him towards the end of the bridge so that when he woke up and groggily rose, the thud on the forehead will bring him to his senses. Each morning we came to him and fed him, coaxing him to go join some construction work where he used to go before me and mother moved from Varanasi. But then, it always ended with a spate of hot arguments ending with them clawing at each other before the others separated them.

“He won’t wake up before two,” Bute shouted from his morning ablutions from an across the street, on an open gutter. “Yesterday was easy. He just came and collapsed.”

Mother clicked her tongue and started rolling him back to a more comfortable spot, ignoring his semi conscious grumbles. I started helping her, using my right hand to push.

“He’s your father, not some dalit. Use both hands,” mother snapped. “What are you hiding in them anyway?”

And snap. I had been too obvious. Since getting down, the beauty lay crumpled in my left fist. I didn’t want to share it with anyone, especially not with my mother who I knew would’ve grab it and I wouldn’t have gotten to see it ever. But this was my treasure, and I didn’t intend to let go of it that easy.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Show me that,” mother swiftly moved towards me but I’d already anticipated that and instantly hopped back.

“You ungrateful wench, you dare to hide money from me?” She made another quick unsuccessful grab at me. I was alarmed. She was the kind of person inflammable in vacuum. I decided to take off to a safer location but mother wasn’t in a mood to concede defeat. “Catch her,” she shouted to others. There are usually around 20 of others snoring at night but only five around this time of the day. But then, how many does it take to catch a ten year old?

A minute later, I was sitting quietly amongst the din of the traffic and the fellows who held me by arms as mother forcibly uncurled my fist and snatched the note. My note.

“Whoa,” she exclaimed. “Do you know what this is?” She passed her glittering eyes over others’ awed faces.

“Looks like foreign money,” one offered. “A note of ten. That has to be a lot.”

“How much do you think?” mother asked softly.

“Wait for my man to come,” Bute’s wife cackled. “He knows all about it.”

“I’m sure,” Mother dismissed.

“It is because he can read. He’s a fourth pass, remember?” Bute’s wife said proudly.

“It must be around a thousand, I’m sure,” said Savitri, a wizened old woman with inhuman wrinkles all over her body as her USP.

“I say two thousand,” someone else chipped in.

“Whatever it is, it will be enough to last you for a week,” said Chunni bhai, walking in the gathering unnoticed. “You got an angel of a daughter.”

“Yeah, an angel ready to fly off before even blessing us,” my mother looked at me. I looked back defiantly. My blood was boiling. It was my note.

“Look at her,” she chuckled. “What happened baby? How come the angel’s black eyes are not gleaming beads but burning coals?”

“Give it back to me,” I hissed.

“What?” my mother mocked, only instigating me further.

“Give it back to me,” I said louder.

“This?” she pointed at the note. “Okay.” She extended her hand. “Take it.”

I rose cautiously and moved closer.

The whack sent me reeling back. “Did you see that?” mother said almost gleefully. “This girl won’t give me the money at first, and now she wants it back. I raised you only for you to become this thankless?”

What happened next is still a blur to visualize. All I know is some superhuman strength conjured up inside me and I made a dash at her. Before she could even realize it, I had bitten her hand, wriggled out of the five people circling us and kicked the face of Sonu, Bute’s imp of a son. And of course, gotten my note back.

Freedom feels nice and windy when you are running.