Dreaming of books

K. K. RAJESH

The young boy stared at the crowded children's bookshop on the other side of the road.

During the day he begged but as soon as the stars appeared in the sky, the boy forgot all about his life as a beggar... forgot all about the slum he lived in... forgot all about tomorrow...

He shivered as the evening cold seeped through his thin clothing. It was barely seven in the evening and the shop would not close till nine. He knew that it would get considerably colder as the evening progressed, but he was determined to stay there - at that very spot - until it closed.

His father, an auto-rickshaw driver, had died the year before. While he was alive, the boy had been able to go to school. He enjoyed reading and learning new things.

However, his dreams had crumbled the day his father had died of a ruptured liver. Suddenly, there was no more money for school or food or clothes. Overnight, he had found himself on the streets - streets that had since become his home - begging for money to feed himself and his mother.

His mother had earlier been working as a maid, but the last winter had left her with a permanent lung congestion and could no longer go out to work. She could just about manage to cook and keep their single room house clean. And when the rains came the thatched roof leaked and their home was flooded.

Though he had been forced to leave school, he had never forgotten his dream of making a life with words. But over the past year he realised that this would remain a dream . Yet, he kept the fantasy alive in his heart, for it gave him the warmth which his clothes could not.

This store that he had begun haunting every evening - irrespective of the weather - was the only pleasure he now allowed himself. Every day, he watched children like him buy books from this shop. School books, dealing with geography, history, mathematics and story books that took you far away into unknown lands.

Watching the store gave him joy. And he thought to himself that his life would be like that if his father had still been alive. Then he could have gone to school and then on to college.

Standing here at the street-corner in the bitter cold, watching children leave the store with happy, joyous faces, he was able to transcend his miserable life and rise above... far above.

At nine sharp, the shop downed its shutters with a crash... and the boy's fragile dreams came crashing.

Once again he was Rahul, the beggar and his future stared bleakly in his face.

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