The Blue Bedspread Read Online Free PDF

wall, red in colour. If I am standing in the bus, I keep looking through the window and when that red wall comes into my view, I know it’s time to start walking towards the door.
    When I got down, the conductor gave me the change since my sister had gotten down from the door in front. The conductor gave me four one-rupee coins and twenty paise. We started running because the clock on top of the Bowbazar market showed eight fifteen already. Only five minutes to reach the classroom, dump the bag and run downstairs for the Assembly.
    Just as we entered the school, the first bell rang. We were both running, my sister and I, when I remembered that I had the change from the bus and I stopped, I wasn’t supposed to carry any money and so I gave her all the coins I had.
    During the lunch recess, I stood in the veranda, in front of my classroom, talking to my friend Chetan Shah, who has broken his arm and it has been two weeks but he still has a cast.
    He is a very rich boy because he comes in a car and always gets cheese for lunch, triangular cheese wrapped in shiny paper. His father has a toy shop on Park Street and he tells me all about the latest toys that have come. On my birthday this year, he gave me a Rubik’s cube. I am not very good with it.
    I was talking to Chetan and I don’t exactly know what happened but I had my hand in my pocket and I was about to take out my handkerchief when I felt it. It was a one-rupee coin. By God, I got frightened.
    Whose money was this? Where had the one-rupee coin come from? I didn’t know, I was scared. Father would be very angry if he saw me with money. I am not supposed to keep any money with me, money is bad. What do I do? All sorts of questions went round and round in my head. Chetan had gone downstairs to drink water and I was very frightened. So I took the coin, looked all around but no one was watching, and threw it as far as I could. Into the playground, I saw the coin land, fall in the grass, I saw a bit of it shining in the sun but only for a moment because when I looked away and turned to look at it for a second time, I couldn’t see it any more. It had vanished into the grass.
    Classes began, we had Geography, Art and English, the story about Uncle Podger hanging a picture, I forgot all about the coin until I reached home and in the evening when Father came back from work and checked our school diaries, he asked my sister for the change. She went to her bag and gave Father all the change she had. One rupee was missing.
    I promise, it didn’t strike me, that feeling in my pocket, Chetan going down to drink water, me throwing the coin into the playground, watching it land. I know it sounds as if I’m lying but at that time I forgot that the missing coin had been in my pocket and that I had thrown it away because I was afraid.
    ‘Where is the one rupee?’ Father said and my sister said she didn’t know. Father got angry, angrier.
    First, he slapped my sister, like he often does. A slap on her cheek, my sister is a very, very brave girl and she never cries when Father beats her. This makes Father more angry and he beats her harder but she just stands there, like a statue, until he gives up and says that his hands hurt.
    But this time Father got very angry, he kept on shouting and sister went to the next room. He followed her and locked the door from the inside, Bhabani heard and came running from the kitchen. A few minutes later, we heard the noises coming from that room, Father’s angry shouts and my sister running, dodging him as the slaps fell on her.
    She runs, she crashes against the dressing table and the powder box, the combs fall, we can hear the sound. Bhabani shouts that one rupee is not such a big thing and she tells Father to stop because everybody in the building can hear him. She says that if he doesn’t have any love, he should at least have some shame.
    It’s then that it all comes back, the crowd in the bus, I’m getting down, the conductor gives me the