The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa Read Free Book Online Page A

gently.
    Ramchand’s father came in then, saw Ramchand’s tear-stained face and, to his surprise, also saw tears glistening in his wife’s eyes.
    ‘What happened?’ he asked.
    And she didn’t say, ‘Nothing. He just fell down.’
    With complete, perfect composure, she told him.
    Ramchand looked at his father apprehensively, his own face tense, the tears dried, the lump of dough now dusty, its surface drying and forming little cracks.
    His father looked straight into his son’s eyes and said, ‘But I don’t know that either.’
    The silence of his mother. The simple truth in his father’s voice. These were things Ramchand never forgot. There was perfect peace in the room after that moment. Ramchand didn’tknow where that lump of dough went. It was forgotten by everyone. His mother washed his face and hands, dried them gently with a soft cotton cloth and gave him some warm milk to drink. His father brought him a sugar-coated biscuit from the shop. Ramchand knew it was one of the most expensive ones in the shop.
    After that, nobody mentioned the incident again and, after the shop closed, dinner and bedtime were just the same. But from that day onwards, Ramchand loved his parents much more.
    *
    Ramchand’s favourite pastime as a small child was to explore the maze of sacks and tins in the shop, open them to see what was inside and lose himself in the exciting, ever-changing, yet never-changing smells of the shop. This was allowed only when there were no customers around. When there was a customer in the shop, his father expected him to behave, and leave when he was told to. On such occasions, Ramchand always obeyed.
    When the shop was empty, Ramchand’s father would be at his most genial, and his mother would also come and sit by the counter. While his parents talked, Ramchand would open this, touch that, run his fingers through rice, sit on top of sacks and declare that he was the king and plead with his mother to join him inside big cardboard boxes in which a local brand of washing soap was supplied to the shop. She would refuse, his father would laugh and Ramchand would emerge smelling of soap. Then he would go and tickle his own chin with the tips of the brooms and gurgle with laughter. His mother would laugh too and the air would turn very happy, full of shop smells and the laughter. His father would also laugh sometimes, but most of the time he just smiled benignly at his little son.
    It was only rarely that Ramchand’s father was in a bad mood. It usually happened on days when he had been dealing with too many customers, or when mice had found their way into one of the sacks. On such days, he would growl impatiently at his son.
    ‘Go away, go away. Go and study. Try to become something in life, unless you want to continue to measure out besan, pack up sugar and haggle with housewives for the rest of your life. And deal with suspicious customers who think you cheat them while weighing things out, who want to check your weighing scales for themselves.’
    Ramchand didn’t understand much of this. He would just smile adoringly at his father, whom he considered to be the best man in the world, and sooner or later his father would take him in his lap and feed him salted nuts, saying, ‘I am going to send you to an English-medium school, okay? You will work hard there, won’t you?’ The five-year-old Ramchand would nod obligingly, with no idea at all of what an English-medium school was.
    Ramchand also loved to accompany his mother to the Shivalaya temple every Monday morning, carrying sweet-smelling marigold flowers in his upturned palms to offer at the temple. Before she got married, Ramchand’s mother had fasted rigidly on Mondays to appease Shiva, so that she would get a good husband. Now she had a husband who was a good, honest man, who made her happy, who never even raised his voice while speaking to her, let alone hit her like many husbands did. Having found such a husband, or having been granted such