Her old bones lie on bed till sun shines down the entrance of her shanty hut. She lazes as the sun warms her barely covered cold skeleton. As the sun packs punch into his rays, she reluctantly gets up. She has to obey the call of her duty. She has to do her bit to fill up her belly to keep hunger away for as long as possible. She has also to care for another soul. She breastfed him when she had the stuff. Now though her son is forty years old, he is but an infant mentally.
She waited for that opportunist rickshaw-wallah who charged her sixty rupees to take her to her spot and to bring her back at night. She crawls into the rickshaw in the morning and crawls out of it, to sit on her bricks at her fixed spot. She can't stand. She barely moves. She stretches her hands and she can talk. Talk indeed she can! She calls out the passers by in endearing terms. Her large, gluttonous, meat-consuming, circus-animal-handler-cum-rope-walker late husband, used to love her for her talk. Now she employs that charm on the passers by, mostly pilgrims. They give her coins, fruits, chocolates, odds and pieces. She gathers them into the folds of her sari.
On most of the days she shows profits. When dark sets in she leaves for the cold comforts of her home. Her son springs like a child that he is mentally, to clamour for any food she might have brought.
She fights, presses hard to get the last drops from her stony fruit of life.
Swami Sampurnananda, 18 Nov. 2003. Genre 273, No. 26
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