LUCKY STRIKE–Vengrai Parthasarathy
During one of her shopping expeditions in the Moore Bazaar, Suchitra saw an antique painting of Baby Krishna, a plump and cuddly, wonder. He and Balarama were stealing butter from a glut of overflowing pots. The picture, for all its years, was still charming . Suchitra was clean bowled by it. She started bargaining with the shop keeper, a grizzly old man. I’ll give it to you for four hundred Rupees, he said. One fifty, she countered. .She pretended to walk away. He pretended to put the picture back in its place. Finally The deal was finally closed at two hundred forty.
She cleaned and fixed the picture. A month went by. Suchitra, who had been married three years, had some gladsome tidings for her husband.,.an expected addition to the family. A coy, mega-smile said it all. To say that Vivek was overjoyed would be an under statement.. Thereafter, each week brought some good news or other to the couple, including an unexpected raise in his job and a hefty bonus. Suchitra loaned the picture readily to her friend Dipali whose husband was in some Income Tax tangle . She wanted to share her good fortune with her friends. Baby Krishna did the trick for her
Then, one day Vivek received an unbelievable offer for a two-year tenure job in Dubai. This was an offer he could not resist. He did not resist. Before going they entrusted the picture to Vani who happily welcomed it. She was secretly hoping that the picture would fulfill her yearning for a girl , her first two being boys. The change came in the shape of a cherub of a curly-haired girl. Coincidence or Krishna’s maya?
Suchitra returned from Dubai. In a short period her family grew. Two children in three years and one more on the way. She had more than enough on her plate and was emotionally frayed.. Even good fortune can satiate. Baby Krishna.! She was in a ‘pudding’ dilemma. She could not part with it and keep it too!
Enter Bahu Kutumbi Sarma, a distant relative of Vivek and Publicity Director of the Family Planning Division. He came, he saw and was conquered by the picture. His brain sizzled. with ideas. Why not a calendar with the chubby Krishna and his brother, to go with the slogan of ‘ Two Will Do”.! And, perhaps, two more as a follow-up with Sita and Sumitra.. Calendars are seen every day of the year. Well, Suchitra, in her present predicament, was easily persuaded to part with her prized good-luck picture.
The Famly Planning branch was a spiffy and clean office, and Sarma’s office was posh and well-appointed. At 53, he was still an unencumbered bachelor. He had the picture framed and displayed. Sarma was over- joyed when his division won the State Award for Best Performance, attributed partly to the calendar.
Sarma now faced a new, thorny problem..Krishna was at his mischief, it seemed. His spick and span office was over-run by rats of all shapes and sizes. “Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats” as Robert Browning would have described.,They were on the rampage in the old records room and migrated to Sarma’s desk drawers too. Tearing his hair in great despair, Sarma called for his P.A. “ I want two things done.Put me on to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I want to talk to him NOW! And, secondly, get some cats; you know, great cats, small cats, lean cats, fat cats and all that. (Vengrai@hotmail.com)