Skip to main content

The pastry

"Didi, woh cake dena..."
"Usey pastry kehte hain"
"Kya ?"
"Pastry !"
"Achha...wohi...dena...woh chocolate wala"
"Mehenga hai. Paise hain kya ?"

Suddenly Chhotu felt completely out of place in the pastry shop. He, with his old, oversized, dirty clothes, face streaked with soot and rough dirty hands, didn't belong here. The lady at the counter was so clean. She was wearing new clothes and she smelled so nice. The whole shop smelled so nice in fact, that Chhotu felt that a balloon seller like him who lived on the footpath was somehow polluting the air of that shop.

Suddenly his confident tone vanished. He put his grubby hands in his pocket, removed the crimpled notes and counted them under his breath "10...20...30...40...50"

Then in a shaky voice, he told the pretty lady, "Pachaas hain"

The lady paused, looked at him from head to toe, breathed in audibly and said, "Yeh pastry pachpan ki hai"

Chhotu's face fell. He clutched harder at the crumpled notes and put them back in his pocket. Dejected, he turned around to leave the shop.

"Lekin..." he suddenly heard the lady say and he turned to face her "Agar tum yahan jhadoo lagaoge, toh main tumhe yeh pastry pachaas mein doongi"

Chhotu took one whole minute to grasp what the lady said. And when he did, he flashed his brightest smile at her. The lady gave him a mischievous smile.

When Chhotu walked out of the shop he momentarily wondered why he saw tears glistening in the pretty lady's eyes. But instantly his attention was diverted towards the luscious, rich, chocolate pastry in his hand and his eyes twinkled...so brightly that they could well have been diamonds.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘Geographically challenged’

I laughed my guts out while reading this . Then I had another bout of laughter thinking of all the incidents that happen with me. For a long time now I have known that I am, what I like to call, ‘geographically challenged’ :) Situation 1 - If I go inside a building (happens mostly with residential buildings), then after I exit the lift (elevator) or come down the stairs, I cannot quickly locate the gate ! Situation 2 - If I am inside a building, I will routinely point in wrong directions to indicate places outside the building. Situation 3 - I am presently at office. I have come here from home. Now I have to go to some place where I have always gone from home and never from office. What do I do ? I go home first and from there I go to that place. It doesn’t matter if it is a longer distance or takes more time. I have to do this, because simply have no mechanism to re-align my mental map to my present location ! Situation 4 - Another thing is that if I have come to your place in ...
11 comments
Read more

The balance of nature

The Japan earthquake and tsunami managed to bring tears to my eyes. It is terrible to see the amount of damage …to humans, to property, to the landscape…to lives…and it will take ages to restore some sense of normalcy. Life as they knew it before this disaster is lost forever for all the affected people…those who are still alive. :( Call me weird or naïve or stupid or un-informed or anything, but I really believe that we humans have managed to bring things to such a level where Nature has to act to restore the balance. How else does one explain the rise in the frequency of natural disasters and the increased intensity of the damage they cause each time they occur ? The uncontrolled population increase over the centuries itself has been responsible in robbing the Earth of its natural resources. Add to it the greed of humans…we can’t take just as much as we need…we have to take more and hoard. We don’t think of preservation, of regeneration or of repaying what was taken. We cross the ...
8 comments
Read more

Love in the rains :)

Heart shaped ditch on a construction site next to our office building ! Closer view of the 'heart' ! You can find love in the most unusual places ! :)
7 comments
Read more