Stray Away: A Tale of Survival and Belonging | Thursday Tale No. 8

  One person's scrap is another person's home. What looks like refuse to some is the thread others use to stitch into shelter, memory, and belonging. Stray Away is a story of a boy and the bonds that kept him tethered to a world that has little space for him. 

Stray Away

Digital illustration by Mercy Rebonica.

  “Sheru!!” cried Chintu as he hopped onto his big rusty red bicycle, which staggered under the grip of his nine-year-old relatively feeble body. He followed the tracks of the four wheels that were speeding away. 

  His frantic pedalling seemed to catch momentum only when the vehicle stopped occasionally at traffic signals, and to capture their next target. He pedalled down Lal Hardev Sahai Marg, turning through several streets he visited every day, and entered streets whose names he could no longer recognise. 

  He must have ridden several kilometers away from Rani Jhansi Road flyover before his calves turned rock sore, and he could pedal no more. He allowed himself, and his bicycle to collapse onto the edge of an almost dry footpath. He could hear his heart throb, feel his chest puff up and down in rapid motion, taste the rustiness of his cracked lip, which he tried to wet with his tongue. He let his body lay there along an ever-extending deserted road running parallel to an industrial compound wall.

  As his body relaxed further, he could feel a few blades of grass, cracking through the concrete pavement, tickling his collar; a mild dampness from the puddle on the roadside soaking his new pants, which he had found inside a bin near Azad market. Although the pants were pulled together with a few stitches in odd places, and held loosely on his body, it was one of the best pieces of clothing he had in his possession. 

  After catching a long breath, he moved his eyes around, trying to locate the familiar buttercup hue of the flyover. The bridge was a significant part of his life. It was under the bridge that his first memory was etched. He must have been three-and-a-half or four years old. He still remembered how drops of rainwater dripped on his tiny forehead, as his maa sat there, holding him in one arm, and making roti on a bonfire with the other hand. He still remembered the cool splashes of the drops, and the sweet aroma of the hot rotis. Chintu grew up into a nine-year-old boy under the shades of the flyover, the lullaby of buzzing motor vehicles, and the whooshing stereo of the metro. The flyover was his address, his identity, and his family. 

  Chintu’s family had shifted there from a village which still did not have street lamps in Madhya Pradesh. They had, at first, bought a jhuggi in a cluster of shanties in Shakur Basti from Mota Saheb for 20 thousand, an amount they had acquired from selling out their last piece of land — their only connection to their ancestry. But, a few months after Chintu’s conception, a clearance drive deprived them of the shelter. So, his parents, indignantly moved to the narrow strip of road in Lal Hardev Sahai Marg lying between the pillars of Rani Jhansi Road flyover, and the metro tracks of Tiz Hazari station. Then on, his family held on to that place with great resolution, even through police raids and several razes. It was under the flyover that Chintu was born. 

  His baby brother was also born there, however, his birth killed his maa in labour. When Chintu, who was five years old then, held that warm bundle, and felt its tiny heartbeats, all the memories of his maa’s pale body faded away. Chintu sat in a corner with Pintu on his lap, a sachet of milk in his hands, and eyes observing his papa clean drains, and clear loads of construction debris every day. He bathed and coddled Pintu, and he even found a milk bottle to feed him from. 

  But Pintu had no will power, and so, when he was six and a half weeks old, and winter set in, he succumbed to pneumonia he was born with. So Chintu and his papa carried the weightless body to a wasteland near a dumpyard, and performed the last rites. On the way back, his papa carried Chintu in his arms, and held him tighter than ever. Chintu still seemed to remember the grip and warmth of that calloused hold. 

  As they walked, they heard a mild whine. They looked in the direction of the sound, hoping to see Pintu emerge from the small burning pyre, and for everything they had lived through to be just one big nightmare. But from beside it, emerged a tiny growling golden, or in local terms, a brown pup. Chintu looked at his papa and his papa looked at him. Pointing to the pup, Chintu nodded. His papa nodded back, lowering him to reach for the pup. Chintu picked up the pup, which, as if it had known them forever, grunted and fell asleep in his arms. The pup’s tiny breaths felt like Pintu had never left. Considering the pup’s brave approach, his papa named him Sheru. 

  Chintu and Sheru grew up under the fortress of the flyover’s pillars. They played together, ate together, slept together, and even tried helping papa fetch water, carry small loads, collect scrap from roadside and deliver it, or even massage his back after long shifts. Sheru sat by Chintu even when Rahul bhai from Butterflies visited to teach him rhymes and tables. Sheru was his best accomplice — his bhai. 

  Even when his papa, who was as fit as a log, suddenly became terrified of water and experienced extreme muscle spasms, and left to join Pintu and his mother, Sheru was by his side. Sheru had barked the loudest when the scrap dealer, aware of his papa’s demise, paid not a rupee for the load of scrap they had delivered. That night, only Sheru cared to feed the hungry Chintu with some leftover puffs from a paperbag found in a bin outside an eatery. 

  Similarly, Chintu’s only objective was to never let either of them go hungry. So he approached Ramesh chacha, who had previously encouraged his papa to allow Chintu to work for Mota Saheb and earn money instead of wasting time with Rahul bhai. But after losing the jhuggi, their only asset, his papa did not want to make any deal with him. But Chintu had to go on, so he requested Ramesh chacha to take him to Mota Saheb. 

  Mota Saheb immediately hired him at ₹30 per day for selling out minimum 50 seasonal tokens like flowers, national flag brooches and stickers, pens, lanterns, diyas, fans, dolls, etc. He had given Chintu the option of buying out a quota of roses for ₹500 and take the profit completely, but since Chintu could not afford it, he chose the other option. 

  Chintu roamed the streets of Tis Hazari and the adjacent roads through heat, rain, and haze. His routine included collecting his quota from Mota Saheb early in the morning, selling as many tokens as possible, and collecting his wages, buying kulcha chole for himself and Parle-G biscuit for Sheru, and enjoying it under moonlit nights. Until one day, a neighbour promised to offer him two big rotis and achar, sufficient for two meals, for ₹6. 

  In this manner, Chintu enabled himself to buy milk for Sheru, and also save up a few rupees in the hope of being able to buy a quota from Mota Saheb.

  One day, Rahul bhai visited him, like he did every once in a while. Ever since his papa passed, Rahul bhai, realising that Chintu’s focus had shifted from learning to surviving, only stopped by to meet them and leave them with some clothes, or sweets — especially Chintu’s favourite honey cake. He also always brought biscuits for Sheru. That day, while he was feeding Sheru some biscuits he said, “Did you hear about the new order the government has passed? They say they’ll take away all street dogs and put them in a shelter.”

  Chintu, considering the fact that Sheru was his pet and family, the distance of the news's impact, and the immense faith he had in the implementation power of the system, shrugged off the idea. Until a van drew up near his tent and cast a net around Sheru, who was peacefully guarding him. It was the howl that startled him out of his tarpaulin tent — tied up as a slope from the compound wall to a horizontal bamboo stick fixed to the pavement. When he stepped out he saw the blue van — packed from all sides, with only a single window barbed with criss-crossed metal on the back — that was creating such mayhem. 

  He pleaded with them to release Sheru. He cried and begged them to leave them be. But they continued shutting Sheru with a litter of dogs in the back of the van. He explained to them how Sheru was his pet, but one of the officers flung him away and sneered, “Go away, you stray. I don’t know when a rule will come to rid people like you.” 

  They set to ride away. He quickly hopped onto his papa’s timeworn bicycle and rode behind them. At several junctures he risked losing them, but the van stopped occasionally either at a signal, or to pick up another dog. All through the ride, he kept crying out to Sheru, who could only howl and look at him through the gaps of the wire. Soon, he lost sight of Sheru, who was pushed to the back of the van by the newly loaded dogs, and of the van that sped away when it hit the lonely vacant road where Chintu collapsed. 

  After everything had passed, he looked around to find not a single trace of the buttercup pillars of the flyover, nor a single signboard, street name, or houses that he could recognise. A new kind of dizziness took him over. At that moment he wished to have known how to read and write the spelling of the place he resided in, or at least the name, the direction or the spelling of the bridge. The only word he knew was “flyover”. And every time he attempted to ask for direction, people chased him away, or gave him a rupee or two. And all the while he only remembered the last howl and the tearful eyes of Sheru before he was pushed to the back. 

  Chintu picked up the cycle, which was almost completely disintegrated, dumped it on a corner by the walls that compounded an industry by the side of the road the van disappeared into, and began looking for a discarded banner or tarpaulin.

- Mercy Rebonica