Billu's Shop

 

Billu was the shopkeeper of the little shop in front of the Kharkhoda house. Manu, Golhu, Uma, Chhotu would all go to Billu’s shop to buy biscuits, toffees, imli pipes, sweet jellies, and little toys in the shapes of animals and birds made of colored plastic. One particular delicacy that had come up and was popular with children was the ‘ABCD’ biscuits – biscuits in the shapes of letters, that all the four children used to make names from, and then gobble up – the simple taste of these biscuits was a taste of happiness, as they were eaten during the happiest, most playful moments created by the name making game.

‘ABCD’ biscuits costed a rupee for 20 of them. Billu was a frugal shopkeeper, he counted 20 little biscuits each one like a part of treasure he was about to share, with utmost attention, as if he was using his weak, spectacled eyes in the best possible way – to get a little money, that was the motive of his life, and in the process making his eyesight worse. Billu was in the habit of saying little phrases three times consecutively – for instance, to make the animals like the cows and dogs to go on from the gate of his house, he would say ‘chal re, chal re, chal re’ (go on, go on, go on), and to make someone step aside he would say ‘hat re, hat re, hat re’ (step aside, step aside, step aside).

Billu was dark as the night, slim like a stick, cunning like a fox, attentive on matters of money, trapped in a little house that contained a shop in the top corner – a small ladder was used to reach to the shop, it was a kind of metaphor for his philosophy – that business and matters of money are 2 feet above all the other matters in life. Billu was not honest – he would try with his cunning mind to remove 2-3 biscuits while counting, he would sometimes miscalculate willingly for his profit, and to the simple children, he would often sell washed colorful stones that he had gathered from his walks at a good price.

Whatever the case, his shop was the favorite of the children – it had so many of the things that the children are crazy about, so many colorful bright things, so many of the lip-smacking sticky delicacies – and thus Manu fondly remembers Billu’s shop – it was a fortunate thing in the order of the things that happened – that a shopkeeper like Billu chose to open a shop in Kharkhoda, that made up Manu’s childhood…

© Manan sheel.