Life in a box- a short story

Hello friends,
I am back again.........I hope you are all well. Belated happy poila baisakh to you all, I hope a wonderful year awaits everyone. And here I am with a fresh new short story exclusively for my readers. I hope it delights you. And do give me your much awaited comments...........and then I will be back with more.Till then........bye.

Life in a  box

Everyday Shikha saw the lady with her petty wares on the road. She laid them out with utmost care and diligence, her wares mostly cheap, outdated and dirty to some extent being exposed on the roadside for long. Gently after laying those down, the plastic soap cases, safety pins, tapes, boxes, spools of coloured threads, scrub pads etc, she would dust them and then burn incense sticks in front of a picture of a deity, asking for divine blessings. Her stall was by a very busy, dusty main road with buses, taxis and autos honking loudly all day. But it was the child that caught her eye........... a merry kid about a couple of years old or maybe even less sitting inside a big cardboard box. His mother kept her wares in it every night. The child was not as boisterous as any other children of his age; he was rather a patient, soft and sensitive kid. Sometimes he seemed shy sitting huddled in one corner of the brown hard box, sometimes he laughed out loudly pointing at something and showing it to his mother. At times he even slept inside the box, cosy and unaware of anything around him. His mother looked tired in her threadbare, cotton saree, or frayed salwar kamizes, her sunken eyes filled with a silent grief. Yet the same eyes sometimes lighted up at some antics of her child and she smiled. Sometimes Shikha stopped to buy a packet of cheap ear buds or safety pins for her mother, on her way back from college. It was at these times that she watched Dev, the child, more closely. Shikha was fascinated by Dev, she had never seen a child like him before, small that he was he was so uncomplaining and sensible that she became very respectful of his mother Fulari didi. Even in the hot humid days of summer in Calcutta the duo would be out. Shikha sometimes brought him a sweet, or a lozenge, or an old toy and watched in joy when his soft little fingers clutched them meekly yet with confidence, as if he knew he deserved those.

It happened in the time of Shikha’s final exams. Some of the local goons had threatened Fulari to leave that small space for a friend of theirs who intended to open a cheap dvd stall, selling mostly pirated dvd’s. But Fulari did not go away; it was her only means of livelihood for her fatherless child and herself. So they burned her tiny place down, in the dead of the night, she barely escaping with Dev on her shoulders. There was not even much smoke. As Shikha walked home from college on the last day of her finals, she noticed Dev sitting in front of a shoe store by her mother. The old cardboard box was nowhere to be seen. Fulari lay on the ground, her tear stained face caked with dirt. An aluminium bowl was by Dev’s side, some of the passerby’s threw coins noisily in it without even glancing at the duo. A gaunt man standing in Fulari’s place shouted out loudly with a dvd in his right hand, le jao le jao sabka tis, sabka tis..... A horde of people had gathered around him, of all ages.......busily toying with the much valued items. Shikha bought a chocolate and handed Dev. He took it silently, never meeting her in the eye. His angelic smile was no more on his face, instead, there was a fire in his innocent eyes, they burned with such intensity that Shikha felt afraid, afraid for the civilized world she knew. She touched Dev’s cheek lovingly, he pushed her hand away.