A Benefactor

Karim tried to shake him off.

“I don’t have food, go away.” He snapped.

The kid got up, sobbing, and stood there silently. Staring at him from underneath, bleary eyes. Karim had an inkling the kid had no idea what he was saying.

“Go AWAY!” he said, pushing him gently away. The kid only started sobbing harder.

“Fine, come along then, but mum won’t have you.” He said. He was sure he was making the biggest mistake of his small life. But there was something about those round black eyes, that face, and the kid’s total innocence that he couldn’t ward off. This was going to mean trouble and a lot of problems. But Boontoo would stay with him, and Karim was no stranger to trouble.

He grabbed the kid by his arm and started walking him away from his home. He had a place in mind. He kept walking till he reached the end of the platform, he jumped down next to the tracks, and lifted the kid and stood him on the same level as himself. Boontoo was heavy for his age, well fed, Karim thought. He was going to have to rely on some of his feeding now, for Karim wasn’t sure how much food he could nick for him. Maybe it was wrong, very wrong on his part, to try and help this kid. Maybe it was less cruel on him to be left on his own, atleast, he would not be deluded by false hope.

Karim was very thoughtful for his age. He had been fending for himself ever since the day, he had been able to talk properly. His mother was a sweeper on the platform. Not a Railway employee, but the self appointed type. The plus point of this was, she got to choose her working areas and timings. The minus was that there was no surety of payment. She relied on the few generous or pretentiously rich people that saw fit to pay her, when she walked around begging for payment, after having swept an area.

Karim, had started working when he was six years old. He had joined a group of urchins, who were begging on the trains that stood there and on the platforms. They were multi-taskers; they would beg for money and food, scavenge the platform for leftovers, or for things that people dropped and that would fetch money if sold to Bhanu Da. Bhanu Da was a small level trade center for such stuff, he was a pawn broker, a money lender, a banker, a barter system for all of them on the platform. He was one of the richest guys Karim knew, though he had heard that Bhanu Da also worked for someone.

But the real money spinner for Karim and his gang, was the picketing. They had perfected their methods. One group would go about performing on some worn out Bolly number, or begging about, in a way that was bound to draw attention. The second group, of children called lifters, would go about stealthily looking for vulnerable targets and lifting off whatever they could, from whoever was distracted enough. Karim was a lifter, he was also the head of his gang. At a membership of seven, it was the dominant gang of urchins on platform 23. Karim had fought and strived for this domination. It was the key to his survival.

He took a right and walked through a hole in the wall. Then he said to Boontoo, in the manner of a real estate agent showing a particularly envied piece of property,

“Here you are. Welcome home!”