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Friday, February 21, 2014

The Master Loot

                    paper-roll.JPG                                                                                                       
    It was Sunday on 2nd March,2003. By this time of the year, winter had almost driven itself away from the small town of Rampur. It was as early as 4:45 AM when Kabir took his Hero Cycle and started riding at high speed towards the bus-terminus. After reaching the terminus, Kabir hastily parked his cycle and ran into the bus bay where some other people also were waiting. There weren’t any buses present in the stand. Kabir went and greeted Pandey, his owner with a good morning.

      “Has the Ranchi bus arrived ?” asked Kabir for which Pandey nodded his head. Kabir heaved a sigh of relief and soon noticed a bus coming in. Bus with a  name board “Ranchi-Rampur” came to the stand and halted. The driver sprang up from his seat and walked towards the chai shop. A person from inside the bus waved his hand to Kabir and dropped a big bundle of newspapers  which were tied tightly. Kabir carried the bundle to Pandey and finished untying it. He separated some newspapers, rolled every set, tied a knot around each paper, put all those rolled ones into a bag and bid adieu to Pandey.
                   
                                     Kabir hooked the bag to his cycle and started riding. As usual, he took every paper-roll carefully, shouted “paper, sir” and flung it into the subscribers compound/balcony/lawn. It was around 5:30 AM when Kabir entered Lakshman Singh street. He threw the paper into Mr.Mohan Das’s balcony and sped fast.
             
                Krishna, 11 year old son of  Mohan Das woke up immediately after hearing the words “paper, sir”.  Krishna disclosed himself from the blanket and got out of his bed without making any sound.  He slowly took his school bag from under his bed, sat on his bed as he unzipped it. Krishna, then tiptoed till the drawer that was adjacent to his study-chair. He opened the drawer and made his fingers scout for something inside it. After being successful in finding what he wanted, Krishna slowly unlocked his room and came out.  He knew his father, Mohan Das was still asleep in his room and his mother, Kamala Das was busy washing some utensils inside kitchen. Now he thought this was the perfect time and headed out. After 5 -6 minutes , Krishna strode back to his room and locked it from inside.

                                  At around 6:40 AM, Mohan Das sauntered towards the empty space in the balcony where a teapoy and few chairs around it were present. Mohan Das placed the hot coffee cup that he was holding on the teapoy and went to the corner of the balcony to collect his newspaper. He came back and sat down in one of the chairs and started unknotting the string around the paper. Mohan was little amused and surprised at the way this knot was tied. However he unrolled the paper and opened it.  He multi-tasked sipping the coffee and reading the paper. Being Sunday, Mohan was bit casual and slow in reading the news. After skim reading through some incurious sections of the paper, he turned to the last section of the paper that titled  Sports Column.

       Mohan Das was shocked to see that page. There was a huge vacuum in that particular page. It seemed that an image was clipped(cut) away from an article.
Just above the clipped-image there was a heading that read  “Tendulkar paves the way for India's celebration at Centurion in the World-Cup’s historical game against Pakistan “.

Now Mohan got up hurriedly from his chair and carried the paper to kitchen where Kamala was present.
  
“ Where is Krishna ? ” questioned Mohan.

“ Today is Sunday and hence he is still lying on the bed. Why, What happened ?” asked Kamala with a surprised tone.

“ Oh ! you really think he is sleeping. See what your son has done.” told Mohan and showed Kamala the paper.

 “ How do you know that Krishna has done it ? “ cross-questioned Kamala showing her motherly attitude.

 “ No Paper-boy in Rampur uses his shoelace to tie a newspaper. Your beloved son has ripped off the usual thread that was used in tying this paper with scissors,        unrolled the paper after he clipped off Tendulkar’s photo.
 Then he rolled back the paper and now found nothing to tie it back as the thread’s  been ripped off.
 So he used his shoelace to tie the paper-roll“ told Mr.Das.

   Kamala burst into laughter as Mohan Das stood with a pale face.
  Inside the room , our kiddo Krishna silently crawled deeper into his blanket.
           That’s how the little master(Sachin) had been looted.

  Believe me, this is how a typical Indian kid behaves. They love and get inspired from their super-heroes. I grew up watching Sachin Tendulkar and this is my small tribute to the Legend who made my childhood  amazing and interesting.
 #ThankYouSachin for inspiring generations and making millions smile. Kudos.


 Conceived and Written By
Jayanth