“Who knows, we may meet again,” said Ashok. “Don't they say its a small world.”
Having waved off Ashok, Chandra resumed his wait for Rashid.
“Wonder how he got that worldly outlook,” Chandra thought about Ashok, as he waited for Rashid, "at such a young age at that! Maybe, it's the upbringing in Bombay. But for him, I would've remained clueless about it all. So far, so good, now it all depends on Rashid.‟
When Rashid came, past ten, Chandra was half-dead by then. While Rashid was going through Ashok's missive, Chandra scanned the nuances of his facial features. Reading between the lines of the imagined frown on Rashid's forehead, Chandra felt he failed to impress. Thus, as Rashid extended his hand in the end, Chandra grabbed that, as would the sinking a straw.
“What a coincidence!” said Rashid prognostically, “I rented this place to share it with a friend. But that bugger ditched me and you‟re here like a bolt from the blue. Now understand how welcome you are.”
“Oh, I‟m really lucky,” said Chandra, with apparent relief.
“Looks like I'm only half-lucky,” said Rashid feeling lost.
“Why, what's the matter?”
“I was all set to start a petty business here,” said Rashid dejectedly. “Now I'm back to square one.”
“What a coincidence,” exclaimed Chandra. “I've come here just for that.”
“Oh, it's capital!”
“I've enough of it for both of us,” said Chandra clasping Rashid's hands.
“Inshah Allah,” said Rashid and insensibly bent on his knees in prayer, and rising, he embraced Chandra thrice over, as if he was out to guard the deal from both the sides.
“So it's on?” said Chandra, as he extricated himself from Rashid's embrace as though to pay obeisance to his face.
When he spread his holdall, Chandra couldn't hold himself any longer. Thanking his stars and recalling Ashok's helping hand, he hit the pillow in relief. But with the exciting turn of events, an overwhelmed Rashid stayed awake for long. Attributing it all to the will of Allah, he, at last, succumbed to the need of nature.
Rashid, as Chandra would learn later, was the progeny of a petty mason in Alleppy. He was the eldest of his father's five children from his begum. Of course, his father, rather habitually, sired four more from the second biwi. Barely fourteen, he dropped out of school to lend his earning hand to his abbu. That was to make both ends meet for the unwieldy dozen living in the outskirts of the town. Starting as a cleaner in a motel nearby the highway, he climbed the ladder of "labor of drudgery‟ with an uncanny ease. Before he turned twenty, he could help his father set up a dhaba of their own. But with a couple of his siblings coming to assist his father, he ventured into retailing of assorted goods. Blessed by nature with enterprise and steeled by poverty to persevere, he found his moorings in the nitty-gritty of petty trade.