Scribbles by Sudhansh

At the tea stall I sat with yesterday’s complaints…
still bangin’ in an already heavy head,
the kind of day that makes a grown man
feel small for no good reason.
Then he appeared…
Don’t know his name, thirteen maybe,
skinny frame wrapped in a faded oversized sweater,
dark brown skin catching the late sun,
a small black mole on his chin like a full stop
at the beginning of a sentence.
His eyes were the brightest thing about him,
shiny as wet stones,
and they landed on my shoes first.

“Nice shoes, Sir,” he said,
not begging, not mocking, just noticing,
the way a boy who owns almost nothing
still finds room to admire what isn’t his.
I laughed, surprised,
and the laugh loosened a thread in my head that I didn’t know needed it.
We talked the way strangers do when neither has much to lose…
short sentences, half smiles,
Sheeps bleating behind him like impatient background music.

Pachaas tho baadi kul, he said,
his responsibility since he was nine.
School?
A few years, then nothing.
His brother died of pneumonia one winter,
Neemonia hoi gawa!
The books that could’ve been close stayed closed.
He said it plainly,
no drama, no self-pity,
just fact,
like telling me the sky was blue.

I nearly overlooked that he bought a bundle of beedi despite being underage.
I looked at him again really looked
at the skinny frame, the cracked lips,
the way he stood with the easy balance
of someone who has walked more miles
than most adults will in a year.

And suddenly my deadlines,
answer sheets waiting for evaluation came at me,
the lecture I botched…
they shrank to the size of dust.
He could have been anything,
this boy with the bright eyes and the mole like a punctuation mark.
A scientist. A poet. A teacher like me.
Instead he is a shepherd whose name I can’t remember,
carrying fifty sheep and one ghost brother
across the dry grass outside the university gates.

When he left, trailing his flock,
he waved once without turning around.
I stayed at the stall a long time after,
tea gone cold,
watching the Kapilvastu sun setting behind him,
feeling smaller than ever…
and, for the first time in months,
properly grateful.