Social Short Story – That boy at the signal
Photo credit: kconnors from morguefile.com
The small, grimy child with big eyes reminded Reva of him. He too was just like this boy, trying to sell knick-knacks to disinterested commuters during. Everyone kept looking away. Why would anyone take interest? The only interesting thing at a signal in the evening is the digital clock that decides how soon the busy people of Mumbai will get back to their pigeon holes.
“Ae aunty, take these packet, na” the grimy kid tried to thrust a zip lock packet into her hand.
“No! Go away!” Reva hissed. His dirty hands left marks on the rexine of white of her purse. The rickshaw wallah was eying the scene from his rear view mirror. Reva’s trembling ‘No!’ had caught his attention.
She didn’t want to think about it, but she couldn’t get the image of that boy who stood here just a couple of weeks ago. He too had tried to thrust something in her hands.
‘Uh! What was it?,’ Reva reminisced, ‘Oh yes, a bunch of flowers.’
That kid was very small, barely four years of age. He kept leaning on to the floor of Reva’s rickshaw. The tyre of a truck standing beside was barely a few inches away from his dirty, naked butt. The boy was probably half the height of the tyre. Yes, he was that small.
The digital clock had crossed the 10 seconds mark and the drivers were getting ready to zoom past. Reva was about to shoo him for the last time when her rickshaw had inched ahead in anticipation.
The boy must’ve realised that his flowers will again wither away tonight, so he stepped back. He looked at Reva for a moment, like one looks at his last customer of the day. And then he had turned around to cross the road.
He was a small boy. As he passed the headlight of the truck, his dirty, brown hair shone dully. And then it all happened in less than a second. The red, blinking digital signal turned green when he was right in front of the truck. So close that he was almost walking under the bumper. The driver who seemed to be in a great hurry couldn’t see the small boy and…
The driver didn’t see what happened; Reva did, her rickshaw wallah who braked his rickshaw at the gruesome sight did, all the others did. No one had paid attention to the signal then. Seconds turned into minutes, but the traffic stood still in a solemn shock.
It was this very signal where now the small, grimy boy with big eyes was trying to thrust a ziplock packet into Reva’s hands. And it was just two weeks ago.
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