Fourth

Raju was running late. It was the 4th of the month.

Flying through the by-lanes of Kalbadevi, dodging tempos and thelas, the occasional car, and people - vendors, pedestrians, people generally passing time on the road - he would have looked at his watch every two seconds, had he had one.

Watching his light-as-a-feather, bony little self almost glide the air currents, one would think he was no more than five or six years old. He would actually turn eleven this year, or so Anees chacha said. He and his family of three begums and seven children then had been around when Raju's pregnant mother had been picked up by a local NGO coming once a month to round up severely ill slum-residents needing urgent medical care and taking them to the nearest municipality hospital. His mother had disappeared after his birth, and the NGO volunteer had delivered him to the neighbor - Anees chacha's doorstep. Chacha had accepted him as a gift from Allah and the newest member of his ever-expanding family.

That was eleven years ago and here he was now. A rag-picker/scavenger by day and waiter-boy at the Good-fun bar in the evenings. Sometimes, the lala at General kirana used him as a delivery boy and sent him to some of the affluent neighborhoods in the vicinity with parcels of atta and tel.

As Raju passed lala's dukaan, he waved out to the portly figure sitting behind the counter. Lala looked at his flying form and shouted - "Abbe kidhar bhaag raha hai be, bawla hai ka!". Further on, as he neared the police thana, his urgency to immediately be someplace else become much more acute, but he slowed his frenzied pace to a brisk trot, so as to not attract attention. As a young urchin around this area he already knew that getting in trouble with the police was as easy as one of them noticing his seemingly purposeless existence.

As he turned that last corner without incident and came within sight of his destination, his feet grew wings again and with the single-minded focus of an Olympian near the finish line, he sprinted the last twenty meters faster than Usain Bolt, just as the clock struck one and the gates to the Hanuman temple started to shut. He flew in and sat down, just in time to have a man put a plate in front of him and another ladle out a huge portion of freshly made, piping hot, deliciously aromatic - khichdi onto it.