In this short story, Barnali Ray Shukla shares a poignant story of a child witnessing the complexities of relationships and struggling to understand them.
Mridula saw that car on her way home. She remembered the first sighting. It felt like an oasis on that blazing May afternoon, a spot of mint blue and chrome, as she walked from the Fern Road share-auto-stand to her home in Bosepukur, jostling through the tapering edge of Gariahat bazaar. Hustle and the heat seemed to keep the passersby high strung, someone even cursed as she accidentally touched their wares kept by the pavement. A lungi and vest store. Some catcalls followed, normally she felt protected in her sunglasses but today they were forgotten by her office desk. She walked past with an apparent ease, her mind racing. That sunglass was her mother’s, Mridula wanted it from the moment she had seen her mother in them.