The eight year old kid hung on to
the parapet of the balcony looking down at the street. He could feel the hot
railing on the fair skin of his thin hands. Yet his eyes were fixed on the man
pushing a wooden cart on the other side of the street. He was still a few
houses away. The edge of the cart was lined with bottles full of colored
liquids. Green, red, yellow, maroon, orange, blue, all dancing inside the
bottle as the man slowly moved towards the house in which the kid was. The man
picked up a copper bell kept on his cart and shook it. The whole street was
filled with the high pitched ringing of the bell.
“Uncle, wait!” The boy shouted
from the balcony. The man stopped pushing the cart and looked around. He wiped the
sweat off his forehead.
“Uncle wait, I am coming!” The
boy shouted again in a shrill voice. The man looked up at the kid and slung the
towel over his right shoulder.
The boy jumped off the parapet
and ran down the stairs, two at a time. He was excited to see all the colored
liquid in the bottle. He could feel the coolness of the crushed ice on his
tongue. The tanginess of the flavoured syrups made his mouth water. He pushed
the big iron gate and slid through the small parting. With a five rupee note in
his hand, he ran to the other side of the street without bothering to look on either
side of the road.
“Make me a gola.” He ordered the
man.
The ice candy man took out a
block of ice from underneath a piece of wet jute bag and began to run it on the
crusher. The boy enchanted, stared at the hands of the man crushing the ice. The
tumbler kept below the crusher filled slowly with the cool crystals through
which the burning sun shone as if it had been broken into a thousand pieces. A
trickle of sweat ran down behind his left ear as shards of broken ice fell on
the cart and turned into water at the blink of the eye. The man fixed a stick
into the ice and pulled the whole gola out.
“Which flavor do you want?” The
man asked. The enchantment broke for a second.
“That one and that one and that
one.” The boy said pointing to green, orange and maroon bottles.
The ice candy man picked up the
green bottle and overturned it onto the small mound of ice. The thick syrupy
liquid fell and the icy crystals turned green. He then picked the orange syrup
and the ice began to change color again.
The boy felt as if the scorching
sun had disappeared and it was night. He was on the moon. The surface was cool
and white as snow. He had a huge brush in his hand. The brush was dripping with
green color. He began to paint the surface of moon green. The temperature fell
and he felt a cool tingling in his spine. Then he dipped the paint brush in a
bucket full of orange color and began to paint the surface again with broad
bold orange strokes. At the same time when he was painting the moon he could
see the moon from the earth, some part of it had turned green and some orange,
a few patches of white still remained, he wanted to put the maroon color on
those spots.
“Hey kid, are you sleeping?” The
ice candy man was shouting in his face.
The ice candy was ready and he
was holding it right in front of the boy’s eyes. The boy took the ice candy
from the man’s hand and gave him the five rupee note. He looked at the ice
candy, his mouth watering but he controlled himself, turned around and slowly
walked towards the big iron gate that led into the bungalow he had come out of.
He smacked his lips as he approached the gate. He looked around. Everyone was holed
up in their houses hiding from the sun in that June afternoon. He gave the ice
candy a few quick licks.
“Raju!” He heard the voice of a
woman calling him from inside the house. “Did you get hit by a truck? Where is
my ice candy?”
“Abhi laya memsahib!” Raju
shouted, looked at the ice candy with sad eyes and walked inside the iron door.
Based on a story idea by a friend.
