Gift from Heaven

Mani hunched, digging his palms into his thighs to keep his body falling off from exhaustion. He heaved in a rush of the dusty evening air and eventually found the room between breaths to call out to his brother, “Anna!” The small dingy provisions store was crowded as it usually was in the evening time. Mani realised he had to be louder and gave himself a few more seconds to completely recover his breath. He could see Ram on the ladder in the store. He was busy trying to reach out for a box of detergent packets, which he threw down to the store manager. The 10 foot counter of the store was lined with people ordering, paying or waiting for their goods to be packed and Mani would not have been able to even spot Ram if he had not been perched on a ladder.

Walking back with his neighbourhood school friends, in his refitted white-once school shirt, Mani had found his house empty and the neighbour next door had given him the news. “I have done my best, my child and spent Forty three Rupees admitting her in one of the ward beds but I do not have Five Hundred Rupees to spare for the treatment. Why don’t you go ask Ram at the store?”

Mani’s mother had just had another one of her respiratory block episodes. Four Hundred and Eighty Seven Rupees was needed in the next couple of hours. This was the second time. A month ago, they had broken their earthen pot of savings and used up the Six Hundred and Fifty Six Rupees saved over five months of Ram’s job at the store. With high school behind him, Ram studied at night to graduate through one of those correspondence courses. In the day he worked at the provision store, a back breaking ten hour day running errands, moving boxes and whatever else for which the store did not have anyone specific to do. But they were happy for their mother did not have to work two jobs anymore and could get a break for the first time Mani remembered.

One of the shoppers made space to exit and a gap presented itself. Mani tactfully wedged himself in. Just then he bent down to pick up a packet of shampoo sachets dropped by someone and there under the counter slowly drifting was a gift from heaven. A five hundred rupee note. All else grew silent. The fresh batch of sweat breaking at the back of his neck chilled him. After one very long minute, Mani saw his fingers crumble the note and shove it into his pocket. He left silently unnoticed by Ram.


It was very quiet and very late when Mani stepped across the threshold of the house back from the hospital. Mani froze when he saw Ram’s torn shirt, his hair in disarray and eyes downcast. Mani wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole as he saw his brother’s bruised and beaten body crumble into his sobs.

“I told them I did not do it. No one would believe me.”