Resumo de Beware! Why This Woman Smiles For No Reason!

Beware! Why this woman smiles for no reason!My dear Chandru, Lots of blessings.My letter may surprie you. Where is the time to write letters often, amidst house hold chores--never ending! We get water supply for two hours a day, i.e. from 4 to 6 a.m. To store it in buckets and pitchers, small and big, tires us out. Well, Mumbai life is like that. A life of adjustments and compromises on all fronts. Some special routine, peculiar to this city. I missed Rakhi festival this year. My brothers are angry.Something very urgent concerning your dear son, Mihir needs your attention. Well, don't take this message lightly.Rush immediately, and come straight to me. Keep this trip secret for the time being. Nothing to worry about his health. Take my word for that. But, don't delay. More, when me meet. Your loving aunty,Janni.P.S. Do come urgently.--Chnduka read the letter repeatedly. The familiar writing--curious, small, sharp syllables! Each word of it pricked like a thron. She cursed her Profesor-husband instantly, bring greatly worried about Mihir. That was all that she could do at that time! She came out of the house and began to take a slow, thoughtful walk. A capricious summer breeze greeted her. What could have happened in Mumbai?More confusion awaited her when Janni's brother arrived to meet her. He had some alarming news about Mihir. She took the first train to Mumbai from Mathura, the next day.The catastrophic development must be averted, she thought grimly.------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------Mashi Seth belonged to the first generation in Mumbai, of the earliest migrants from Palen. He was just six years young, when his father arrived at Mumbai and stayed for ever. In 1942, on the eve of Quit India Movement, he quit Palen. Mounting interest load on borrowing from money-lenders, stark poverty--and one night, he secretly left the village, with bare belongings bundled in a sack, without locking his two-roomed tenement of mud-walls and thatched roof. Nothing inside, to be protected by any lock! By the time the village woke up to his 'missing-with-family' news, he was on the train, en-route to Mumbai. In the noisy and messy unreserved compartment, wherre passengers sat huddled together. In that summer heat like potatoes in an oven! A fierce wind blew! The compartment was as hot as a brick-kiln, from top to bottom. Some of its ancient fans struggled to rotate. It was hot in sections with no fans, hotter with fans!But the call from Mumba was with a mysterious perspective. Some success stories from villages around and from his own village made the journey hopeful and comfortable. He looked forward to his life in Mumbai with optimism, with nothing to look backward!--After spending two days and three nights in the foot-path below a tree in Goregaon, a distant suburb, and not rejecting the unsolicited small coin charity shown and thrown by the hurrying populace destined for bus Qs and the suburban train station, taking them to be a beggar family, he stumbled across a stable-lord, who owned a good hundred buffaloes. He got an immediate job and was lucky to get a small 10 x 10 ft.room. He had two rooms in the village--now one! In place of mud walls, tin walls. In place of thatched roof, roof of Mangalore tiles! In place of empty stomach, not-so-empty stomach now!Enough work too, in the stable for him and his wife. The lad Mashi looked after himself, jumping in and out of the room. He found instant friends of his age, from such tenements in a row, around the stable and enjoyed the frequent squabbles between the children-brigade!So, they got themselves assimilated in the city life. Prospective voters!Their routine?.....Stand in Q before the common water tap--Before the dusk or wait for the dawn, to manage nature's call beside the railway tracks under the cover of dustgreen bushes herthere, to protest themselves from the shame and cursing railway passengers. On many occasions, it was an open affair!They got accustomed to noises of all sorts from al directions!

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