sure if little Chintu, did understand my importance, but I was clear headed now, I was floating in my elements - Wow! Wow! Wow! So glad I am not big a currency note, not even smaller or bigger a coin, I am damn! So lucky at first I exist when I am not supposed to and then I am THE ONE RUPEE – ultimate honour yeah!
The night was spent in a warm room, inside a wooden drawer – Granny checked thrice for me inside the drawer, before she went to sleep. I was tired, but could not sleep for long imagining my importance and value to the humans – I am a lucky coin!!
My sleep got abruptly disturbed, by a trembling touch of fingers, fishing for me in the drawer, probably, the person outside was searching for me, without looking into the drawer. It was Granny; she hurriedly placed me on a plate decorated with flowers, incense, a lamp, some rice and vermilion. She then sprinkled scented water over me, and kept two flowers by my side.
By the time Granny finished with her rituals she was joined by her son and daughter-in-law. She pleasingly blessed them while placing the envelope bearing me and her blessings in between both of their hands.
The family then dispersed for lunch and their routine affairs.
It started raining heavily in the evening, dusty winds started filling the house with sand and dirt. Granny hurriedly closed all the doors and windows of the house and started to call out for Chintu.
I fell off the reading table, where I had been kept by Chintu’s mother. Down under it was dark, smelly and dangerous. An army of ants started to walk over me, I guess some sugar had got stuck on me with the scented water and here I was being feasted upon.
I felt the tickling all over me, and kept praying for someone to come and pick me. I had to spend the whole night lying in that dark corner.
A broom swept me out in the morning. Chintu’s mother took the money out of the envelope and neatly folded it to be kept inside the table drawer.
It was a long wait inside that drawer, months passed by and I kept scuffling inside, many hands opened the drawer but none picked me, no one took me out.
One day Chintu’s cushioned palm frisked for me inside the drawer. He was actually looking for something else but noticed me instead. He flipped open the envelope and found it empty; he looked around, and then snatched me away from the envelope. I came out with a cello tape wrapped around; he carefully peeled the tape and slid me inside his warm and dark pocket.
He went outside the house running and headed straight for his friend’s home. It was locked; he started returning back with slow steps.
He bought 10 marbles for me, and returned home. Happy kid! Happy coin!
Chapter’s take away –
Value: Place Vs face
“Learn to value yourself. Your value is not about your physique, bank balance or reputation in the society. It is about your wisdom, your ability to make every minute of your life count. For the same coin its face value always remains one, but at one instance it becomes the ultimate blessing and token of prosperity and at the other the value to buy some marbles.
Our value to others is imperative - it doesn’t matter how much we spend on our face value – it is our place value that counts!
CHAPTER - 3
Coin of Happiness
Money brings satiety – happiness counts!
Exchanged for marbles, my business in human life kept expanding. I was used as a bet decider among friends, became the thirst quencher for my bearer by getting 2 cold glasses of water in my exchange. I was busy in my life and then this one day the ‘Joy of giving’ struck me in a way it had never before!
This was the most disgusting thing I had undergone so far, I was stuck inside the awful smelling under pants of an auto rickshaw driver. He smelled of tobacco and spirit. I have been roaming throughout the summer scorched streets, along with different co-passengers in the auto rickshaw.
After a hard day of bearing that groin smell and tobacco infected spirit sting, I saw myself being pulled out of his secret pocket. What a relief!
His face was so much in contrast to the monster I had been imagining him to be. He had a soft face that was black from pollution and wet from sweat. He touched me with his forehead, and placed me near both his eyes, and after chanting something, piously placed me inside a steel vessel. A small girl, with jute hair, yellow skin and brown eyes, was holding this vessel full of mustard oil; a tiny iron figure dwindled merged halfway in oil and half way peeping out of the vessel. As I settled in the oil tank, I saw many of them from my community already enjoying that oil massage.
I felt heavy, slippery and so very nauseated. The girl continued to roam around asking for alms and quite often a fellow community member bearing same/different denomination would be slipped inside.
“45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 50…… that’s all!” shouted a middle aged woman, adorning a huge red round vermilion mark on her head. She looked frightening and ruthless.
She washed us under a hand pump, and then placed us inside a plastic bag after rubbing us dry with a stinky piece of cloth. She hit the girl with yellow skin on her back and cursed her with everything bad that she would want to happen to her.
The girl cried silently, she was too weak to even have the energy to whimper, it seemed.
She slid herself inside a rag on the side of a small room made of plastic sheets and cardboard pieces.
A while later the woman threw a paper bag on the girl’s face, which smelled of rotten bread and stale oil. The girl hungrily opened the bag and started to munch the bread. She stopped only after she had licked the last of bread crumbles.
She went out to find a tiny plastic cup of tea, which she drank with equal haste, and then slipped back into her rag, and slept coiled up like a snake in that small room.
I kept seeing this from the plastic bag, imagining the human ways and diversity of human life.
In the morning, as the yellow skinned girl was shook from her deep sleep by the vermilion smeared woman. She handed her 5 coins and asked her to get a packet of tobacco and bidi from the shop.
The 5th coin being me.
The girl, staggered sweepingly in the tiny twisted lane, making her way through heaps of garbage, avoiding slipping inside open drain holes and animal shit.
She asked for the items she had been instructed to buy, from the shopkeeper.
As she gave the coins held tightly in her tiny palm, the shopkeeper returned her the last coin that was me, saying that the price of the bidi packet had gone a rupee down. The girl took me back and clinched me tight in her tiny weak fist.
On her way back she opened her palm and had a look at me with her eyes shining. Instead of taking the same route back she took some other way; this place smelled of dyes and spirit.
Colourful sheets of clothes were spread over a huge distance, basking in the sun light.
The little girl hurriedly ran towards a small garden. The garden was more of a garbage dump, a few naked kids played around with cycle tyres.
Her hurried steps began turning into strides. She almost slipped in the dingy drain pit adjacent to the muddy wheel of a wooden trolley. It looked dirty and smelled of different flavours infused in moist wood. There were painted images of ice candies on the body of the trolley and a big metal bell hung on the top shaft with a tattered rope.
The tiny yellow girl opened her palm wide open.
I was smeared with her sweat. I could clearly see her face. A pale face with shining eyes and dry purple lips which adorned one of the most beautiful smiles I had seen and probably would ever see again.
Between you and me I was exchanged for an ice candy- between me and the yellow skinned girl I was exchanged for happiness. I felt so elated sliding inside the iron box kept over the ice cream trolley.