Lolly-pop!

 

Lolly-pop! by Dhrupad Rishav (19148) 12th grade

The baby screeched like an angry parrot...

‘What is it now?’ thought the tired mother. Putting away the novel she was reading, she went to see what the matter was.

‘Lolly-pop!’ the baby demanded, gesturing at the TV, where a goggle-eyed toddler was relishing a said condiment. Her mother sighed and looked at the baby. Her head still ached as she recalled the tantrum her child had thrown just half an hour ago for reasons still unknown.

‘No baby,’ she said, ‘not now.’

‘Lolly-pop,’ the baby screamed, louder this time. 

The little despot, his mother thought. She glanced at the book she had been reading, a pirated copy of a bestselling romantic saga, bought from the footpath. Wanting to get back to it, she said impatiently, ‘Tomorrow. You can have one tomorrow.’

What is ‘tomorrow’? The baby gave a glass-shattering wail. His mother tried desperately to console him, the insides of her ears liquefying at the child’s shrieking. ‘Stop it, stop it!’ she cried. Then, giving up, she knocked on the door of their bedroom, where her husband was working.

‘What’s all that ruckus about?’ he reproached her, not looking up from his computer.

‘A lollipop. Now come and help me, he won’t stop.’

‘Ugh… do something, I have work, I can’t—’

She threatened to sell his laptop to the scrap dealer.

The two of them together could not make the child stop, and finally, putting on his windcheater, the father hurried out of the house to see if he could quickly get a lollipop at the corner shop nearby. It was intensely hot weather, and the blistering and humid air hung low and heavy on the road, almost visible. Sweating profusely, Baby’s father noted with dismay that the corner shop was shuttered. He remembered with dismay that Ganesh—the shop owner—had gone to his village for a wedding. Oh well, since he was out already, perhaps he could drive to the nearest supermarket. It was only ten minutes away. Unfortunately, the chaotic traffic, made of a melee of cars, buses and rickshaws, coupled with potholed roads and dug up drainage pipes, turned ten minutes into thirty. The father was at his wits end by the time he entered the supermarket, and it took a good thirty minutes of tedious searching before he realised that lollipops were kept near the billing counters as small change, or that he could have just asked one of the employees for help.

All’s well that ends well. He put the sweet in his pocket. Now that he’d got his lollipop, he could head straight home.

Or so he thought.

The traffic was even more treacherous now than it had been when he had left home. Somewhere, a truck carrying crates full of live chickens had hit the divider. Its doors had fallen open, spilling the crates on the road, and allowing a flock of chickens to run amok between the traffic. A little ahead, a happy cow wandered onto the road at a leisurely pace, and seated itself right at the centre of the chicken versus car chaos, chewing the cud and staring royally and nonchalantly at the swarm of cars honking in front of it.

By this time the father was already frustrated beyond measure. Mother was anxious and phoned him several times, “Where are you? What are you doing?” Desperate and angry, he tried to take a shortcut. In his blurred state of mind, he took a wrong turn, and ended up in a ridiculously remote slum in the middle of nowhere. 

Meanwhile, his wife tried to occupy herself now with housework, watching TV, and then with more housework. Flustered and anxious; she wondered why getting a lollipop was taking so long. The baby, by this time, had fallen blissfully asleep.

It took the father nearly an hour and a half to return.

‘What took you so long?’ his wife demanded, looking at his deranged figure up and down. The baby had woken up now, and was drowsily staring into space.

‘The corner shop was closed, and there was huge jam on the way to the supermarket…’

‘You went to the supermarket? Then why didn’t you buy anything else? I’ve been telling you for so long that we need to buy tomatoes and garlic and this and that and whatnot—’

‘Never mind all that!’ said the father, ‘I got the lollipop, didn’t I?’

The baby remembered the lollipop, and began clamouring for it again. His father gave him a tired smile and put his hand triumphantly into his pocket. His hand materialised below the

pocket. 

The pocket was torn.

* * *

On the footpath next to the supermarket, a starving beggar woman with an emaciated child trudged along, begging in vain as people in extravagant clothes and fancy parasols walked past. The sunlight stung her, burning her skeletal, almost transparent skin, and she tried in vain to shield her child from the heat and the dusty air and smoke, with the ragged end of her sari.

Defeated by the impossibility of life, she sat down helplessly on the edge of the footpath, clutching her child, preparing for yet another day without anything to eat. Suddenly, her eye fell upon a lollipop, still fully wrapped and uneaten, lying on the footpath. She fell upon it as a ravenous vulture would fall upon a corpse, and gave it to her child, who licked away at it, as if without a care in the world.