Writing prompt: OKAY
Provided by: RosieC , fellow participant of the A to Z challenge.Visit her! Please leave me prompts if you haven’t already! And many thanks also to Vicky Roy for the photograph, and the inspirational story behind his life. I have added links to unfamiliar words.
Raju woke up each morning to the sight of his mother’s rear end. She lay with her back turned towards him, her flower-printed maxi knotted between her thighs, not two feet away on a metal bunk fixed to the wall opposite.
As he clambered down from his perch, taking care not to awaken his siblings asleep on the various bunks beneath him, he wondered how people lived in a house which had a room for each activity: one for cooking, one for sleeping in, one for people to just talk and watch TV, yet another to sit and eat. In the Bollywood movies he had seen, the heroes and heroines lived in such palaces, and walked from room to room. They seemed so lonely.
Beneath the lowest bunk, he fumbled around for the matches, lit the stove and set water to boil. Mumbai never grew cold, but it was December and the air in his kholi held a slight chill at dawn. He made himself some tea, but left the milk alone. Mother needed it for his toddling sister.
In the semi-dark, he pulled on a t-shirt from the nearest peg, threading his fingers through the holes that riddled its front, stifling a giggle. His younger siblings liked to tickle him through the holes on the evenings he babysat them. From under the sink, he dragged out a pair of mismatched boots his mother had found, stuck some rags into them so they won’t hang loose on his small, nine-year-old feet, and tied the pieces of string that worked as shoelaces. In his sack, he took some extra rags to tie on his hands and mouth later when he reached the dump.He had learnt in the last two years that a nose without roiling stink and a hand protected from cuts found more booty.
“One day, I’ll rule Mumbai,” he said, mimicking Shah Rukh’s screen accent and hiccupy laughter. He picked up paper soap and tooth brush from the carton in the corner to try his luck at the common restrooms of the chawl. He had woken early enough to find an empty sink, or maybe even a vacant toilet.
“Raju, you’re leaving?” groaned his mother from the top bunk. As usual.
“Make sure to bring everything in different bags, okay, and today try to find something we can really sell, okay?”
Maybe today was the day, who knew? Just like Lakhan two months ago, who had found a stash of notes in an old carboard bag while rifling through the trash.
As he pulled the door of his kholi shut, Raju whistled a tune. He thought not of the stench to come, the filth, or the sun on his back, but instead of the surprises the day might bring. He knew he was going to be okay.