Mumbai Story by Lily Bass

Author:Lily Bass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen, fiction, mumbai, urban, crime, ghosts, love, hate, poverty, dreams, sadness, death, police, corruption, law, order, juvinelle, India, friends, girls, boys
ISBN: 9780957286122
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2012-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

It was not easy for Bu to rid her mind of three people at the same time, dead Mangal, Kalpana the flirt and Vivek the...the flirt, obviously but also, and of course more importantly than being a flirt, the possible killer of dead Mangal. It was one thirty and outside the huge grey and white building of Churchgate station Bu tried to buy something from the rows of trolley stalls as a treat for herself. She tested the cotton of a floral night gown by pulling it taught between her fingers, counted the packs of one hundred cotton buds and tried to unravel the stitched on south Indian sari from a Barbie doll with a milky white face. She caught herself in an orange-rimmed shaving mirror. Ajit Yadav’s bruises around her neck were now the size of two rupee coins and a yellowy blue. She walked down Veer Nariman Road and stopped at the fountain named after a Roman Goddess, Flora. It was thirty three degrees and the most humid day of the year so far. She dipped her hands into the warm water. They looked like they belonged to an old woman. Her palms were pinkish red raw and spotted with blisters from carrying rice and oil from the shops and scrubbing the grey collars of her father’s shirts. No wonder, she had no one to help her with her burdens and they seemed to be mounting every day. Sweat was collecting under her nose. As she went for more water she bumped shoulders with someone. It was a boy from her school, Rohit Mehta.

‘Hi,’ said Bu quickly wiping her upper lip with the back of her hand.

Rohit was the kind of handsome that made heads turn, not just girls but parents too, he never greased up his hair and he was the only vegetarian in her class that did not wear glasses. Rohit pointed to her, he pretended not to know who she was, they laughed, it was funny. Bu asked him if he was shopping alone. He said he was just alone. They laughed again. Bu and Rohit strayed around the city. On one of the clogged and labyrinth like gullies that bordered Fort, the business district of Mumbai, Rohit bought her a drink from a stall - cool coconut water with a stripey straw. They past St Marks a school that neither of them had been able to get into and pointed to a group of three geeky guys and Rohit said that they looked like they waxed their facial hair. They laughed some more, it was funny. By sunset they were strolling along the coffin size shops and the sweet marts smelling of frying chick pea flour and raw sugar on Kalbadevi Road. Rohit bought her a packet of Bourbon biscuits. She glanced at the bottom, the sell by date had been scratched off. Slates of cardboard stuck together with old paper cream but she ate them anyway and the more she swallowed the better they tasted.

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