The Kid at the CD shop

H
e was of a height that was a little over my hip. He wore a shirt that had green and white lines running alternatively one below the other. The pant was a lighter shade of khaki. A pair of gleaming white eyes, below a curly mop of hair and a small forehead, stared curiously at the surroundings. His skin was a color that would easily make anyone mistake him to be a Negro, with his curly hair adding more than a touch of credibility to that mistaken assumption.

Engrossed in the small write-up on the DVD cover of the movie Million Dollar Baby I never took notice of the kid standing next to me. It was only when he tugged at my shirt did I turn and look down into those twinkling pair of eyes. He was holding up a CD of Tamil movie star Vijay’s “Thirumalai”.

“Is this “Thirupatchi” movie?”

“No it is not. It is “Thirumalai”

“Oh!” he fell silent.

His little fingers ran on the Tamil lettering on the CD cover.

“Thirumalai!” he beamed happily.

Before I could say anything he spoke to me “You know… this is Vijay! “Gilli” Vijay”

“Oh! Is it? Do you watch movies?”

“Yes”

“Who takes you to the theatre?”

“No. I watch in TV. The house where my mother works has a TV. I watch movies there.”

He answered without looking at me as he was busy scanning the latest DVDs stacked up on the wooded table at the entrance of the shop.

He stopped scanning when a Jackie Chan movie came up.

I thought of asking if he knew who the actor was but decided to remain silent assuming the poor kid wouldn’t know.

He looked up at me, smiled and pointed to the CD “Jackie Chan!”

“It is a super movie. See...this little kid over here is very funny. There are many fights in the movie. You have seen this movie?”

“No” my answer was more of a whisper.

“What movie is that in your hand?”

“It…it is a English movie” said I.

“Oh”

“What standard do you study?” I asked

“I don’t study”

“What does your father do?”

The loud blare of the train horn drowned his words. Through the small window in the shop I saw the numerous bogies of the Park station bound train rattle past. Yet another loud cry erupted from the front of the train and within moments all that was left was the distant rumblings of a far away locomotive.

“What does your father do?”

“He is dead. He poured kerosene on himself and set fire”

The shop owner entered with the pirated copy of a recent Tamil movie and handed it over to me.

“What movie is that?”. The kid pulled the CD from my hand, when the shop keeper hit him on the head with a remote control.

“Here! Take this and run off!” he said placing a one rupee coin in his hand.

Rubbing his head with one hand he took the coin with the other and without a word ran out of the shop, into the street and disappeared in the darkness of the nearby slum…