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Sabu’s mother would give him a five or ten-rupee note and a chit of paper with some grocery items scribbled on it. Sabu would hand over the chit to the grocer Bakul and wait for him to put the sugar or pulses or salt or the like on the weighing scale and get the weighing scale at the horizontal level by taking bits and bits out of the sugar or pulses or salt or something else on the left pan. The right pan contained black iron weights of different sizes.
The iron weights were things that appealed very much to Sabu. He, sometimes, wanted to take those weights in hands and nurtured them between his palms, touching and feeling them. The grocer gave him the weights when he wanted and when there was no buyer.
With many questions clouded in his little mind, Sabu used to be very reserved. Most often, he remained calm and quiet. He only let his big curious eyes watch everything and find answer. He had a broad forehead, on to which a brush of deep black oily hair would happily descend to play.
Born to Hindu Kayastha family, Sabu’s had a traditional conservative family. Sabu’s father worked for the government. But, the commonplace government job of his father had made their family stable to live, not economically able to do his upbringing well along with his siblings in a family of five. This was kind of a curse in blessings for Sabu who owed his distinction of being born of a very good family to his parents. Because the monetary paucity in the family had made it difficult to leave that distinction unfaltering. Often times, his father had to borrow money from one of their relatives and Sabu knew that very well. Living within the four walls, the want in the family was not a secret to him. Thanks to his good blood that the want in the family did not let him go wanton when he grew up, though.
He, like the rest in the family, never nagged over anything that was not a basic need, the unavoidable. Because he knew very well that, his undesirable demand only would embarrass his father who was somehow keeping the food and clothes up for this family.
Sabu’s mother had a closed ceramic pot with a slit on top of it. He saw his mother drop one or two one rupee or fifty-pice coins down the slit every other day. And, he saw her shake the coins-pot upside down to let the coins fall off it. She would pick up the coins and give them to his father to make up for a smaller shortage of money, when there was. Sabu never wanted a coin from his mother even though he knew she would give him one to spend if he wanted one. Because he also knew that his mother would give him a coin on her own and pass her uneven, calloused fingers through his hair most affectionately whenever she thought so. Sabu always waited for his mother to give him a coin. It would give him much more delight to spend the coin than to get one from her by being insistent.
Anyway, the grocer’s shop had one more attraction, one ultimate attraction for Sabu. It was a big glass container with a round metal lid on the top. The glass container had in it special biscuits, which looked crescent moon. Each one of them was bigger than his palm. The biscuits had a charming flavour and they were so good to taste that every time Sabu visited the grocery, he wished he had gathered fifty-pice to buy a big moon. Fifty-pice was too costly for a single biscuit. He and the boys who were also his playmates in the village, always wanted to have a bite of that moon biscuit. The very sight made their mouth water.
