Read Half a Rupee: Stories for Free Online Page B

She muttered something more under her breath and hurried out of the house.
    Damoo looked at his daughter. There were now only the three of them—Damoo, Kishni and the goat. Love for his daughter was spilling out of his bosom. He wanted to reach out to her, to strike up a conversation.
    ‘Are there any onions in the house, beti? Will you give me one—sliced? Sprinkle some salt on it.’
    Kishni began to slice an onion without a word. And Damoo scooped up the bottle of booze from the window and filled his glass all over again.
    ‘Pour me a glass of water too, from the
matki
.’
    Without saying anything, Kishni filled a mug with water and gave it to her father. Damoo now had half a glass of booze topped to the brim with water. Kishni had walked back to her corner of the room before Damoo could extend his quivering hand over her head in blessing. The hand kept flapping in the air for a few orphan moments, quite like a bird in mid-fight, and then came down to roost.
    ‘You no worry, beti. I’ll arrange your marriage with style. Will give you twenty-five thousand rupees kholi, another twenty–five thousand for clothes and jewellery. And also give your man twenty-five thousand cash. Full one lakh I’ll bring. Will spend all on your marriage. One lakh, too much, no? All right, fifty thousand then. I’ll get fifty thousand for your marriage.’
    He must have said this at least twenty-five thousand times, this talk of fifty thousand rupees. Every time Shobha would snub him, ‘Where from? Where will you bring the money from—bet on a race or do a dacoity or what?’
    This was what Shobha told him every time. And he too, in every drunken stupor of his, would put his hand in blessing over his daughter’s head in his own inimitable style and repeat the exact same words, ‘You no worry, beti …’
    Kishni put down the plate of sliced onions and salt and moved out of Damoo’s sight. The floodwater had by now started seeping into the house. The bucket in the kitchen was still ringing with raindrops trickling in from the leaking roof. The goat had been squatting on the floor. It now stood up on all fours.
    Shobha was not yet back. It had been quite some time. Kishni had braved the rain and ventured out to find her mother. She too had now been gone for over half an hour. Damoo began to worry about their possessions.
    The first thing he secured was his litre of booze: he put it on a higher shelf. The other bottle was still safe, hidden inside a canister of daal in the kitchen. Then he filled a jug with water and kept it safely aside. After that he hauled the two tin trunks up on the wooden plank that also doubled up as their bed. The third trunk proved too heavy for him. He hurt his feet trying to drag it up—so he let that be.
    The goat stood crouched in a corner in silent prayer. Damoo found some puffed rice in a jar, filled some intohis pockets, scooped some in his hands and returned to where he had been sitting—and continued drinking and munching. The kholi was now fast filling up with floodwater.
    Now, Shobha returned, but not Kishni. She had hitched her sari over her knees. She yelled, ‘Listen, today no cooking possible at home. Maliya’s hotel is flooded, half-filled with water. People are running for shelter to the garages on the upper side.’
    He was drunk but he remembered, ‘What about Muqadam—his house, flooded or no?’
    ‘Poor man! He’s still at it, hauling his stuff upstairs to safety. Everybody’s at it—Heera, Gopal, Sulaiman, everybody. But what to do—look after the young and the old or save the belongings?’
    Shobha was picking up the foodstuff and keeping them aside safely, one by one. She had brought some vada-pav for Damoo. As she was giving it to him, she kept on the prattle, ‘How many kids these people in our mohalla produce? At least ten kids you’ll find in every size. Thank God, we only have one.’
    Damoo was relieved to see his wife back. He shook the droplets of rain from his hair