Gone with the scrap

As a child from a village, hawkers paying us money fascinated me

Approximately forty-five years ago, my family shifted from a small village to a town. Life in the small village was entirely different. Many things intrigued me as a child in that new set-up, and one of them was scrap dealers. Perhaps because they were the only ones who came to buy, and we received money from them while the other hawkers wanted to sell. In those days, scrap dealers used to frequent our locality almost every day, riding on bicycles that were decorated with hanging rags. Their shouting in a hoarse voice, “Raddi akbaar vech, purana loha vech” (sell newspaper waste, sell old iron), always fascinated me. My mother, like all the frugal ladies of that time, used to store our filled notebooks or other discarded items. In a month or two, we had accumulated enough things to call such a dealer. When summoned, my sisters and I used to gather all the things that could be sold, hoping to earn some money.

On one such occasion, a dealer was called into our home, and all the collected things were placed before him. He very meticulously segregated notebooks, newspapers, cardboard, and other broken plastic or rubber footwear. He weighed them separately and calculated that five rupees and sixty paise were the amount we had earned. He gave my mother a ten-rupee note, but we had no change. He asked my mother to send me with him to the next square so that he could give me the amount. My mother nodded, and I was only too happy to be walking with him. After walking for around 10 minutes, he made me sit in a tea stall and asked me to wait there so that he could bring the money to give me. He rode off on his bicycle, announcing his arrival to others in the area. I remained sitting there, waiting for him to come back with our five rupees and sixty paise.

When I did not return, my mother got worried. She rushed off to my father’s office, which was close by, and my mother was weeping, fearing I might be stolen. My father, along with his colleagues, started a search for me. After some time, they came to the stall where I was sitting and waiting for the dealer to get my money. After finding me safe, my parents thanked god and asked me why I remained sitting there for such a long time. I told them that I was afraid I would be rebuked for my carelessness. My father smiled and said that the “dealer duped you.”

Even after many years, my mother could not forget, and she used to narrate the incident till the end of her life about how carelessly she trusted a stranger and staked her 10-year-old son just for five rupees and
sixty paise.