Episode 5

 The Umbrella shop

On the west wall of the side room, an umbrella hangs on the nail. It has a yellow crook-handle and is white cloth with Dalmatian puppy prints, and is smaller than a regular umbrella. Prior to all school-reopening, new pencil box, lunchbox, water-bottle settles down on the shelves. Puppy-printed umbrella’s entry to shelf had to see a lot of struggle in its ways. After long hours of tears and fake sobs, the umbrella travels along with the girl in yellow petticoat to the school on rainy days. When school shuts off for summer vacation, the umbrella goes back to hang on the wall.

After a few days, the umbrella has been started to seen mysteriously hung inverted from the guava tree on the yard. Some old plastic bottles started appearing on the bed of withered leaves. Neatly arranged green round jackfruit leaves have been placed on the creak of the branch. The inverted umbrella has become a shop. Rounded-glazed small stones are heaped on one side of the umbrella and hibiscus petals are pasted in a coconut shell.

Girl in yellow petticoat plays the customer, who always buys a cup of mud tea. Her sister runs the shop. Old medicine bottles have become milk bottles and begin to appear under the jackfruit tree, on the top of the fridge, below the dining table and maybe inside the cupboards.  As days passed, items in the umbrella shop doubled. Newspaper currency replaced dried jackfruit leaves. Dried cashew nuts circulated as coins. All the imaginary pals queued up in the front of the shop.

It seems like days on vacation are shorter than school days. But their business flourished.

One evening, the girl in yellow petticoat and her sister, set out to the shop. As they approached, a strong fruity smell covered them. A large cloud of flies circled around and they saw the mushy yellow pulp of jackfruit splattered, left open to the sky. Whitish button seeds bulged out the yellow flesh.  The big black ants march on the jackfruit corpse. Two crows with cunning- eyed sits on the edge of the guava branch with the back claw ever ready to take off.

 Beneath the trashed jackfruit, puppy printed umbrella mercilessly collapsed. The thin steel rods of umbrella stood upright. Cashew nuts coins are scattered on the bed on dry grass ground. The end of the unnamed thick vine, the girls’ water pipe, is hanging loosely without purpose. The bottles, big, stout, long and tiny are floored on the ground, many left capless. They stood looking at the disaster in horror. The eyes were welled up. Together the girls took the bottles, coconut shell, and few dried cashew nuts with a cold face and walked back home as the sun sets low.

The big black umbrella with the wooden crook handle is missing from the wall of grandmother room.