Short Story: Tring Town by Vishaal Pathak

In this short story, Vishaal Pathak takes us on a trip down memory lane to the time when telephones were the latest addition and obsession in our lives, recreating the chaos they brought along.

One cold evening, when April was still a cold month, Vaibhav came home to a serious kind of commotion – not the funny kind that Mr. Verma objected to. Well, Mr. Verma objected to pretty much everything – he was the society President, after all. “Hey, no funny business here. No playing on the street. Or in your house. Where’s the permission for this or that?”, he’d yell from the comfort of his lawn, sipping his cuppa tea pretty much any time of the day. His days were numbered, that’s what everybody said. As the society president, of course.

With the school bag still on his back, Vaibhav stood by the door and watched as two men scampered in and out of the drawing room, leaned a ladder against the pole on the street – one climbed up while the other listened to a strange-looking object and shook his head. His younger sister scratched her head and then pinched his arm. “Are we being robbed?” she asked in a hushed tone. Alarmed, the duo clutched their bags tightly. And then – loosely, in afterthought.