THEM 'Ishman'

Chillar Party

The morning was as cheerful as ever.

The sun was spilling his rays happily all around the sky, warm and soft.

The society, even in the early morning, was as cheerful as it could be, with a grumpy society secretary who was arguing with his newspaper distributor because, according to his calculation, it was 5 rupees short.

The debate had been going on for the last 10 or maybe 7 minutes.

So, the newspaper wale bhaiya put a 10 rupee coin in the cloth bag hanging off the secretary’s balcony, an easy or lazy way to make their daily life things easier.

Bhaiya put the coin and did a salute to the secretary and sat on his cycle, and was going from there not before rolling his eyes hard and shaking his head a little.

"Areh! Oye yeh 5 rupee kise dikha raha hai? Ruk, ruk abhi. Ruk, abhi neeche aa raha huun!" Society's secretary, Mr. Kumar, a man in his 40s, was yelling from his balcony.

But the newspaper wale bhaiya was used to his antics and pedaled his cycle harder and sprinted away from the society.

"In the whole society, no one takes a step against corruption." Mr. Kumar huffed, shaking his head, as no one in the society raised their voice at the rising price of newspapers.

"Subah hui nahi ki inki chik chik shuru." Mrs. Kumar said, shaking her head, reading a recipe magazine... no, not for her husband but for her kitty party gang.

"Jaldi se breakfast kar lo." Mrs. Kumar said, nodding toward the dining table.

"Haan, isse pehle vo sab shaitaan aa jaye, mein kha hi leta huun." Mr. Kumar said, sighing and looking down from the balcony one last time before going back inside his house.

Down in the garden, Mrs. Daisy with her ever-so-judgy bitch, Rosie was walking.

Moments later, they were gone from there, but not before Rosie did her business right in the middle of the footpath.

Not much, but enough to make some tiny humans twitch in irritation.

And somewhere in the house, a mummy had turned on the TV and put on the channel 'B4U Music', where mostly old, means 90s songs were streamed, filled with Kumar Sanu, Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik, R.D. Burman, Lata Mangeshkar, and many more.

The mummy started humming and doing the chorus with the beats of the songs playing in the background.

But the humming didn’t last too long, as a little mischievous girl, around 5, changed the channel to '9xm Beats', making the soft 90s song playing in the background switch suddenly to 2000s and 2010s rock and beat, love and dance songs.

The girl giggled mischievously and looked at her mother, who just sighed and started preparing Horlicks.

Yeah, this is meh, I don't know if you guys know these channels, but they were gold. That time was gold. I toh bachpan se is like thissssssss.

Don’t ask me why I added this, but while writing this chapter I was having a little déjà vu of my own childhood memories so...

It was now 9 a.m. in the morning, and some tiny humans, humans between the age of 5 to 7 years were standing under a specific building waiting for someone, a tiny yet long specific human.

“Yaar ab yeh kaha reh gaya?” a boy wearing a summer t-shirt and blue-colored half pants asked, looking up at the building.

“Jarur mummy se maar kha raha hoga.” another boy said, who now had his hands in his hair, making them stand like a mountain.