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own appetite, and ate and
drank very little. There

was no money coming in.
He had his savings in a
bank in Tehri, but it was
a terrible thing to have
to dip into them! To save
money, he had dismissed
the blundering Rajaram.

So, he was left without
any company. The roof
leaked, and the wind got in
through the corrugated tin
sheets, but Ram Bharosa

didn’t care.

Bijju and Binya passed his shop almost every day.
Bijju went by with a loud but tuneless whistle. He was one of the
world’s whistlers; cares rested lightly on his shoulders.
Why did Binya
But, strangely enough, Binya crept quietly past the shop, looking creep past Ram
Just a Minute!
the other way, almost as though she was in some way responsible Bharosa’s shop?
for the misery of Ram Bharosa.

She kept reasoning with herself, telling herself that the umbrella was her very own, and
that she couldn’t help it if others were jealous of it. But had she loved the umbrella too
much? Had it mattered more to her than people mattered? She couldn’t help feeling that
in a small way she was the cause of the sad look on Ram Bharosa’s face (‘His face is a yard
long,’ said Bijju) and the ruinous condition of his shop. It was all due to his own greed, no
doubt; but she didn’t want him to feel too bad about what he’d done, because it made her

feel bad about herself; and so she closed the umbrella whenever she came near the shop,
opening it again only when she was out of sight.

One day towards the end of October, when she had ten paise in her pocket, she entered the
shop and asked the old man for a toffee.

She was Ram Bharosa’s first customer in almost two weeks. He looked suspiciously at the
girl. Had she come to taunt him, to flaunt the umbrella dismissed: sent away

in his face? She had placed her coin on the counter. blundering: making careless mistakes
Perhaps it was a bad coin. Ram Bharosa picked it up corrugated: (of a material or surface)
and bit it; he held it up to the light; he rang it on the shaped into a series of parallel ridges
and grooves so as to give strength
ground. It was a good coin. He gave Binya the toffee. flaunt: display (something) especially in
order to provoke envy or admiration

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