Alas! After a week the water tanker is here. With utter drowsiness I picked up a broken bucket and rushed to be the first one to get some life saving liquid. To my dismay I am in the midst of the most annoying and quarelling people. Some push, some yell and some act smart. I refrain to move and that’s when they call me ‘adamant’. Mother is happy to see me gather some buckets of water. Her face lits up as if I have won the war and yes! It is indeed a war.
After the tanker is gone, I with my friends picked up the basket and are out to howl the whole day just to sell the vegetables that we got from the farm that the landlord owns. I am always eager to sell accesories rather than vegetables. I get an extra income from accessories from which I manage to get a ‘kulfi’ for my siblings. The market was as usual crowded. My friends were early today and have started shouting about the best prices they were offering. I also started yelling and some gathered around to buy them. With a long and tiring day I sold all of them. Now it was the time to drink some water from the nearby tap and board the train to sell accesories. I waited for the train to arrive and tried to balance the carts and boarded the ladies compartment. After bargaining as usual I tried to sell some of them. I look at some of them. They seem to be of my age but their faces are free of wrinkles, their tresses are shinier and I aspired to be them one day. I was envious of their clothes. While I was in my own thoughts a lady called me “ What is your Name?” My Mother calls me “GUDDI” and my father calls me “ Panavti” meaning a ‘bad omen”. She was taken aback and asked another one “Whats is your age?” “No one knows when I was born, so i dont know my age” I exclaimed. My face grew expressionless.She bargained for a few pennies but I did not budge.I sold a few clips to her. Standing near the door I saw my slum near the railway tracks.I realized,this world is for the rich.
The train entered the station and once again I balanced the carts to get down. While getting down I saw a beautiful child sitting on her fathers lap. I wondered what makes me a 'panavti'. I took some coins and thought of eating a vada pav and took some for my siblings. The paper in which it was tied had a picture of a tall man with a child in his hands walking amidst the crowd. May be they were celebrating "the birth of a girl”. I was happy to see that only I was considered a ‘Panavti’. When the first morsel went inside, it was like heaven. I sat down in the platform and counted the coins and notes. I earned 200 rupees today. Out of which 100 goes to the ‘Seth’ from whom I bought my accesories. Rs. 50 goes to the vegetables that I bought from the landlord. Left with 50 of which 25 will go to my father for his booze. It’s 25 for me and my mother. I was happy to be rich that day as I earned more than Rs. 32 but a question lingered in my mind throughout the day :
"When was I born and how old am I????"
