Short Story: Ghost of four thousand rupees by Haritha T Chandran

Haritha Chandran’s short story captures the challenges faced by the poor and needy in the name of employment to earn and survive.

   Burgeon of the technicolor international mall had created such a racket in the city that everyone peered in to take a look at it in its full glory. Don’t get me wrong, it had not sprouted up on a single night. The abandoned cinema hall was meticulously broken down, brick by brick, the earth beneath the structure bared naked, only to be mounted again with concrete and tiles. The idea of a new mall had been incubated in the neighborhood’s minds from the first day of its resurrection till the opening of the mall. City dwellers chimed in discord on the enigmatic shopping mall in the incipient months with a pinch of cynicism. Erudite intellectuals bickered over capitalism systematically destroying individualism and manufacturing replicas of the west in the east. The elderly blamed it all on the kali yuga.  Youth contended of scores of jobs that the development offered. But embroiled in heated arguments over whether a mall is necessary for the city, the city had gradually given in, intoxicated by animated conversations of new prospects the mall would bring to the city.