The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa Read Free Book Online

then?’ Ramchand asked suspiciously.
    ‘Yes, and a pretty one too.’ She had made this mouse with special care, and had given her a nice tail, eyes and mouth. ‘You see, she has no whiskers,’ she told Ramchand, ‘because her mother told her not to go near the kerosene stove and she was naughty and she did, and her whiskers got singed.’
    Ramchand was very impressed by this story. It was okay for Choo Hoo, because she was a girl mouse, but what if he went near the kerosene stove and never grew a moustache like his father’s when he grew up?
    Sometimes his mother made a face with the lump of dough, using a matchstick to make two dents for eyes, one for a nose and then a series of dents in a smile-shaped line to make a toothy, smiling mouth.
    When she gave him the dough and told him to make the most beautiful thing in the world, he rolled the lump round and round in his chubby fingers and thought and thought andthought. What
was
the most beautiful thing in the world? It was his mother, of course, or possibly his father. But he couldn’t make them out of dough. Besides, they were not really things. He rolled the damp piece of dough around in his hands, thinking hard.
    Then Ramchand’s father called out to his wife from the shop. ‘Please come here,’ he shouted to his wife as courteously as one could shout. Ramchand’s parents were old-fashioned – they never addressed each other by their names.
    She turned the stove off, put the kerosene can and the matchbox safely away on an upper shelf and threw a sharp, anxious glance at him. She was terrified about the stove; she had heard so many stories of children having accidents with them. But ever since she had told him about Choo Hoo, he seemed to be keeping his distance from the stove. She hadn’t even planned it, it had just come out when she had finished making a perfect little mouse and had realized it would be difficult to give it whiskers. She smiled, untucked the pallu of her sari from the waistband of her petticoat, spread out the pallu, adjusted it around her shoulders and looked at her son. He was still absorbed in the piece of dough. Feeling he was safe, she went out to the shop. Apparently, her husband needed her help to look for a new tin of black pepper that he had misplaced. They found it after about ten minutes and Ramchand’s mother went back in to continue with her cooking.
    She found Ramchand in the same corner where she had left him, with the piece of dough still firmly in his hand. But he was crying. And he wasn’t howling or throwing a tantrum or weeping like children do. He was really crying, with real heartbreaking sorrow, gulping and sobbing, his eyes full of grief.
    Pain tore through her heart. She rushed to him and scooped him up in her arms, hugging him, examining him to see if he had physically hurt himself. But he hadn’t, and she sensed itanyway. His eyes told her that. She murmured to him, she crooned to him gently, and when he calmed down slightly, the sorrow and incomprehension still in his eyes, she asked him very, very seriously, the way one asks an adult, ‘Tell me, why are you crying?’
    He didn’t answer at first. He just looked down at the piece of dough in his hand, the look on his face more confused than miserable. He looked at the beloved, familiar face of his mother. Her clear gaze met his with honesty. He trusted her. He could tell her. ‘Ma… ma, you said… you said… you told me to make the most… most –’ He gulped. She waited. ‘You said, make the most beautiful thing in the world.’
    ‘And?’ she asked, her face still serious and enquiring.
    ‘And,’ and here Ramchand burst into tears again and wailed out, ‘I don’t know… I don’t know what is the most beautiful thing in the world.’
    She didn’t laugh at him. And she never knew how grateful her son was to her for the rest of his life for not laughing, not even speaking or moving at that moment. She hugged him lightly and stroked his head