MALL

‘…but Dad, you can buy pin to plane there’. My twelve year old one was trying his best to convince me. I could clearly see his stretched face; bow shaped strained eyebrows his body language everything spilling his obvious frustrations. I could gauge all that, as if he wanted to tell his adamant father that is me, ‘you ignorant old man you don’t know what the Mall is. Just open your eyes & try to look where the world is moving…’. Truly speaking I didn’t know much about the Mall & I hadn’t seen any before; neither I was interested. Actually I was in a teasing mood, ‘look sonny, I don’t need any pin & I can’t afford the plane either. So why go, you better study exams are coming up’. He left room thumping his feet as hard as he could. My ‘study’ plot was just right weapon to unarm him. ‘Let’s go the Mall today evening, can’t we?’. Exactly third minute my son disappeared from before me, I heard a sweetest possible voice from the kitchen side. He was my son after all; he’d filed his petition in the high court, from where he knows judgments are issued without any hearing. I folded the Sunday Times to take all that valuable afternoon nap. The request from the kitchen side wasn’t so, it was an order. Any obedient, not so obedient, harsh or a man who calls himself husband can easily understand. So why not take a sweet nap before getting raided?

‘Deposit your baggage there’ a strong & sturdy lady in uniform advised us in as politely as an hundred & thirty kilogram weighing six feet heighten coal dark coloured woman would in her voice resembling five quintal weighing snoring sick ox with common cold in the stable. I meekly obeyed her whispering into my sons ear, ‘but if we have to buy something inside?’ ‘They give us different bags inside’ now my son apparently started distancing himself from his ignorant dad.

It was too a big space inside bigger than my whole company where I go to work to be a part in manufacturing automobiles. It was posh & chilled than my managing directors’ cabin. ‘How’d they afford to sale table salt in here?’ now afraid of my sons body language I filled in my wife’s ear with my ignorance. She too walked swiftly behind her son leaving me behind, keeping me unanswered. Whole of my life till then I was never neglected like this, thanks to development & changing culture. I was used to buy table salt in kilogram bags full for my monthly requirement from regular grocery shop standing outside the counter in hot sun while the fellow inside fill the grocery duly weighing. Here every woman customer barring my sari clad wife were half naked & men barring myself & my son were in half pants & T shirts. They were taking things from the shelves & stuffing into their wheeled carriers as if they were not buying but burgling the mall. It had all that I’d seen & much much more than that. Imported chocolates to dog chains, designer bras, only my stupidity revealed it was bra, ‘what’s that cobweb like?’ when I asked to sales girl I’d never seen through my naked eyes to woolen over coat which may not be useful till the ice age comes or in place suitable like Siberia, Alaska etc.

Mall was filled with items just stuffed with. I was thanking myself for getting chance to see all those things in one place & having discovered living so far without those too. ‘You’d have to cross the road outside the mall there in that restaurant you’ll get water, we keep only cold drinks’ a beautiful film actress material sweet girl was explaining me. Tired of walking inside those by lanes while I’d quenched my thirst just looking at her only. Finally I decided to buy a bottle of cold drink to really quench my thirst which that sweet girl did with opening the bottle in my hand. ‘How much you get here?’ I popped up a question to her taking undue advantage of my gray hairs. Sometimes simple decisions can change the life. I’d refused to buy the costly dye & decided to remain old looking man till I get my economy pack usual dye. Her answer almost fainted me. She was getting much more salary as sales girl than what I was getting as production manager in my company. And foolishly I was thinking I was a successful man.

My whole brain below my gray hairs filled with repentance. Why did I chose to be an engineer, why production, why this company,… lastly I even repented to take birth as a man & why not like that girl? While I was sinking like ship in the deep ocean my son & wife who’d made me realized the truth came with pushing their wheel carriers crammed with innumerable items I’d never seen before & not going to use in rest of my life. Yet, I was calm, perhaps after true realization great souls get calm like me. I handed over my wallet itself to my wife & dragged myself out of the Mall. They noticed just nothing about the thunder in my mind.

Nobody noted, that night after everybody slept I put my computer on silence mode & trying to log on to web sites of Wall mart, Reliance Fresh,….

By
Vijay Yelmelwar