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THE RAG PICKERS

PART I


Munna aka Rafiq Ahmed woke up with a jolt. Even after three years the dream tormented him. The frequent nocturnal collage of images which flashed in his sleep brought immense pain and hatred. It was one of those mornings when he woke up perspiring and shaken unlike other mornings when the cacophony of traffic and blaring noise of car horns yanked him out of slumber.

Munna looked around. The settings depressed him. His gaze shifted on his younger sister, Chutki, who was sleeping at the other end. He smiled when he saw her blabbering and laughing, a tattered soft toy neatly tucked under her head.

The green curtain, torn at the edges, rose in the air, disappearing for few seconds. For that brief period Munna’s vista opened up. He could see vehicles zooming across the road. The curtain fell back blocking the outside view.

Munna and Chutki lived in an abandoned concrete pipe.

The curtain flew once again as a speeding vehicle whipped up the air, turning it into a momentary wind. The view from the big hole was all too familiar. Munna watched the road, which morphed into a network of silvery streets and sparkling new multi level flyovers. The pipe remained in its place even after the roads and drainage system were completed. The construction company did not bother to remove the pipe. It lay in one corner of an intersection, facing the road. The strategic location of the pipe gave Munna infinite hours of entertainment. Palmists, astrologers, parrots who predicted futures of gullible folks and of course the omnipresent newspaper-wallah hung around the corner every evening. The sight amused him. He thought people were naive.

But it was the huge residential colony behind his house which gave him the strength to fight, work hard and come up in life. He looked up to the huge glass and concrete edifice and its owners with respect.

Munna had two goals in his life.

One, to gift Chutki a beautiful life. Two, he wanted to become a cricketer. Every Sunday morning when the boys in adjoining complex played cricket, he would stand near the compound wall and look at them in awe. He remembered his earlier days when he himself spent many hours playing the game with his friends. But today his priorities had changed. He vowed to play for his country one day.

The big question that worried him was, how.

A car screeched to a noisy halt outside his house, terminating his thoughts abruptly. He looked out. The driver of the car was abusing Mithun, his colleague, for running blindly on the road after a kite. He smiled. Mithun was kite crazy.

Munna’s thoughts went back to the time when he , his sister and mother had taken shelter in this pipe three years ago.

…. to be continued.


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