Ep 1

A boy leaned over the parapet of a balcony of his apartment on the fifteenth floor. The preparation for the evening bhajan rituals had begun, he deducted from the escalating hum downstairs. The building watchman was arranging gray Neelkamal chairs in a semi circle between a sleek red Honda and a black Chevrolet SUV.. The boy looked back up at the jumble of skyscrapers. Yardley gardens was one of Mumbai's plushest townships that his family had recently relocated to from the humble cobwebs of Nashik. The westward sun made the boy squint and he withdrew to his cushy C-backed bamboo swing, resuming the novel in his hand. There are few things as relaxing as an evening breeze tickling you while you turn the delicious pages of Adiga's The White Tiger.

That boy name was Neo.

It was now nearing six and Neo could hear the boys playing football downstairs.In spite of wanting to join them, Neo stubbornly clung on to his novel . He didn't want to open his mouth and make a fool of himself. He remembered reading "it's better to stay silent and be thought wise than open your mouth and be proven foolish". Or was it the other way around? Immaterial, he wasn't leaving.

His tenth standard was to start in a few days' Time . You could say he was a little nervous. The relocation was a little bit of , like they say , a ' culture shock' to Neo . His father had taken up a new job that offered thrice the pay of the previous , along with a horde of benefits like company quarters at the place they live ,a Tata sedan and discount coupons at various dining joints. A personal pizza was no more to be shared by the family . The visit to the restaurants no more meant a strict decorum of mere daal, a paneer subzi and roti . He could unblinkingly order appertizers to overpriced cokes without a warning eyebrow. Just the very thought of them now made him hungry. He got up from the swing.

'Mom, can I have some money ? I want to go out, eat something' He shouted as he want inside the house.

' Why do you want to go outside ?' The voice came from the living room . Neo spotted his mother knitting red and white yarn balls by her side.' Your grandmother has packed us some .....'

'Mom!'

' These kids of today,' she muttered without annoyance . She was quite jovial ever since they would moved in. And in spite of being the unwilling kitchen recluse that she was . She made Neo Take a plate of parathas to both their neighbours, without paying any head to neo.' But what do I say to them?' What happened next is something Neo fervently hope that twenty years later he will look back and laugh at .

Neo's mom set aside the half finished scarf for his grandmother and finished her hand into her purse that hung by the armrest of the couch . All the years they stayed with his grandparents in his native town. There was a non-stop bickering between Neo mother and grandmother . The day they left, Neo sneaked a look at his mother crying in his grandmother's lap and the usually stoic lady that his grandmother is , Even she couldn't hold back the Ganges streaming down her eyes.

' Don't spend all of it,' she said . A crisp hundred rupees note, from which Gandhiji grinned at Neo.

~~ to be continued ~~

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