Tuhin Tokai

Illustration: TBS

Ragged, scraggly and burnished brown like a tamarind seed, Tuhin stood at the corner of the market watching the activity with a hawk's eye; the comings and goings of the Thursday throng around him. 

The Guava seller had his cart in the usual corner and was busy plying his trade. The girls from the garment factory are his regular customers! 

The vendor sliced the fruit deftly, gave it a sprinkle of salt, and chilli powder and divided it up amongst the girls on a tin plate handing them a few shaved wooden sticks to pierce through the fruit for convenience! One of the girls in her hurry dropped a piece, and before she could extend a hand to retrieve it, Tuhin had like greased lightening scooped it off the floor bolting it down his throat without choking. The girl looked in amazement at his face and his eyes the latter fringed with the thickest curtain of lashes she had ever seen, his skinny little malnourished frame and the sweetest impish gaze met her and she couldn't but grin back. She gently chided him for eating the fruit from the dirty pavement. 

"It was too delicious to resist Apu" he replied unabashedly. The girls went their way. Lunch break was non-existent for them. 

Tuhin returned to his corner and watched. All of eight years old, wizened before his time, by lack of nourishing food, yet a togetherness in his bearing, a grave ness to that expression and a general fastidiousness in his worn-out clothes. An unknown genealogy hung about his little person an inexplicable aura but of course, all the other mendicants and urchins were completely unaware and immune to that charm!

The older boys taught him all sorts of iniquities. His little nimble fingers were taught to pick the occasional pocket and sort through rubbish and garbage to see if some treasure had been discarded or could be retooled into some object that was usable. 

On occasion, he sold wilted red roses during Valentine's and strings of white 'Beli' Phool during Pohela Boishakh at exorbitant prices to passersby! He was schooled in sleight of hand and fraudulence. 

And yet the Tokai had a strange streak running through him which occasionally rebelled and hissed sibilantly in his heart. The elders could not always bend him to their will. Something deep inside his unformed ID made him baulk at extreme acts of thievery, violence and crime! He had not worked out why he shied away and got his ears soundly cuffed or his tiny frame was often subject to beatings, for refusing to comply. 'Ganja khabi? Biri phukbi?' Strangely he was never tempted. Much to the chagrin of his peers! 

That Thursday morning, Jenna stepped onto the pavement from her car, unaware of the pair of eyes watching her actions with avid interest. She was meeting Tariq for lunch at the restaurant but first, she would have to negotiate the stairs which were slap bang in the middle of that very same dirty pavement, where the beggars, crippled and severely damaged, disturbingly lined up to ask for alms and coins, and the wretched guava seller had set up the cart and never gave quarter or so it seemed to anyone trying to reach the stairs! 

Jenna in her fitted kameez walked smartly up to the first step unaware her chiffon dupatta had caught in the wheels of the guava cart! Arrested in mid stride she tripped and fell ignominiously on that very step! Her handbag jerked from her grip and landed smartly at Tuhin's feet. The clasp opened, contents spilling out and doing a slow roll. Her first thought was she should never have worn the diamond engagement ring as it was loose and needed to be tightened. It slipped out of her slender ring finger and rolled off on its own volition. Jenna was winded but more than alarmed at the thought of retrieving her property or not being able to recover everything. 

Tuhin stared at the largesse from Jenna's bag land at his feet, wallet, lipstick and an ever so minuscule bottle of perfume with a flat pink bow stuck to the flacon! He had never seen anything like it before though he was aware of what a lipstick case looked like. The TV monitors on the building's roof showed all manner of cosmetic ads, but nothing like the tiny tiny bottle with a pale golden liquid. His eyes followed the path the ring made and he darted and scooped it up whilst his other hand began stuffing the contents of the handbag back in. He was surprisingly fast and ambidextrous! 

The vendor stopped his work and hauled Jenna gingerly to her feet. The beggars kept a respectful distance. A little awed and sympathetically one said "Apa are you all right?" 

But instead of responding her panic-stricken voice uttered "My bag? My ring?"

"Tuhin has your bag and your ring," they all replied in unison. 

Tuhin approached Jenna and held out her bag with one hand and nestled in his palm which he held out to her was the recalcitrant ring, the solitaire winking in the sunlight! 

Jenna stared down at that nut brown face the dark pool of Tuhin's eyes, solemn, grave concerned for her. Jenna caught her breath and some unfathomable emotion snaked out to the Tokai! A kindness that she felt for this unknown waif who was returning her expensive goods back to her intact. She smiled and the radiance that emanated from her,  cloaked Tuhin like a benediction.  

She was like an Angel, a 'Pori ' a fairy, ethereal and dainty. Jenna opened her bag fished in her wallet and gladly distributed a generous sum of cash to the vendor and the beggars over there. None had bothered or disturbed her or even touched her. For Tuhin she held out a Tk 500 note. He deserved it because of his honesty and quickness of action but it was something about that lost impish face that had tugged at her heart. 

Tuhin took his reward squirrelling it into the back pocket of his frayed shorts along with one other tiny object no one had noticed. The most delicate hint of her scent assailed his nostrils as Jenna made her ascent on the stairs. She turned to look at Tuhin one last time and smiled benignly. In turn, he gave her his lopsided smile his eyes crinkling at the corners. A strange connection had been made. Whether for better or for worse for Tuhin only time would tell. An affection had been given and accepted and in turn, an adoration reached out from him to Jenna. It may or may not shape his destiny. Who could tell? 

In the deepest darkest hours of his lonely world, Tuhin would take out the tiny bottle of perfume he had hidden as his spoil from his secret stash of goodies, remove the stopper and take a sniff from time to time.

Disclaimer: The story was developed in Dhaka Flow's creative writing workshop named "Pen Warriors".