THE WOEFUL CUP OF COFFEE

This incidence took place 40 years ago.

The village primary school had reopened after summer holidays. The euphoria of sitting in the benches of the 5th standard (while one had to be content sitting cross legged at the rough cemented floors in all the rest of the lower classes) was gradually waning. The class teacher-cum-headmaster, Rangu Sir', was at the verge of dozing off, after writing a few simple exercises in multiplication and division on the black board for the students to work out in their slates. The oppressive heat of the summer was yet to wane, and the forenoon sun at 11 AM was particularly harsh that day.

Unable to concentrate on the sums, I was simply gazing out aimlessly through the window, at the dusty road outside, where, other than a couple of stray dogs, there was virtually no traffic. Within moments, there was a sight of a bullock cart, turning left from the Agraharam' and coming at a monotonously slow pace towards the school. It was unmistakably the bullock cart of the Oil Monger.

Though the Oil monger was a weekly visitor to our street, we had never ever bought a drop of oil from him at our house. I had never seen him doing any brisk or major sale of oils with any householder in our streets. He carried 2 Brass Drums of Oil (the contents of which, I never knew) along with a sack of Oil Cakes. He used to ring the bell hanging over his head in the cart as an announcement of his arrival. I never noticed him calling out anybody to try or buy his oils, or exchanging any pleasantries with anybody, never ever smiling. His facial expression was always distant, as if he was executing a divine mission of circumambulating the street as sort of a penance for a past misdeed, seeking no reward what so ever for his weekly mission. He was too lanky for his generation, had a concave stomach indicative of impoverish ness, and always wore a dirty and greasy slack and an equally matching dhoti that had lost its whiteness ages ago.

His bullock had an equally pathetic, impoverished look, and one can even compare its facial features with its master's and trace out some distant relationship, perhaps a few births earlier. Myself and my elder sister used to wonder how the Oil Monger ever made his ends meet with a tell-tale expression on his face that seemed to state a life-mission "I will never make a living out of selling Oil"! We used to joke about his oily looks saying "At the end of the day, he will take out all

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