Every penny counts

Surrendering to God’s will and adapt according to it was a lesson that I learnt at a very young age. It was my third birthday when I lost my father. My elder brother was only six years old. We both did not have any clue about what had actually happened and kept on asking our mother to tell us about it. Being the strong woman she was, my mom took a decision to bring up us both in a way that my father dreamt of. She also knew the fact that it would not be so easy for her. Whether you consider it patriarchal or not, a father is the head of the house. Everyone in the family feels secure under his leadership, although it’s circumstantial.

We moved out of our native and made our way towards the northern part of the country. Through this journey, we kept on changing domiciles and found us well-versed with a fact that money rules one’s living. My mom used her passion that is music, to earn money to bring us up. She made us both study in English medium schools which helped us in keeping up with the others. One anonymous fact that we both came across was that life was our teacher rather than the studies.

I came across the most important lesson of my life in the beautiful state of Himachal Pradesh. Me and mom used to stay there whereas my brother was studying in a boarding school in Mussorie. My mom took a huge debt to meet the expenses of making him study there. She used to work in a school there and I was studying in the third grade of the same school and staying with her. Due to the huge debt and less income, we had to go through various difficult times in terms of bad financial condition at home. The last week of any month would always prove miserable and difficult for us as there was always a shortage of money at home.

It was another day of the last week of a month. We were eagerly waiting for Mom’s salary to arrive along with my father’s EPF pension. It was almost like waiting for Christmas so that Santa comes and delivers Christmas gifts. The day went on quietly with a tense situation wherein my mom told me that there was nothing left in the kitchen to eat and probably we both have to sleep with an empty stomach. I felt helpless as I could not do anything for my mom and probably she felt the same way too.

Eventually, the night dawned upon the blue sky and it was the time for dinner. Mom came up to me and told me to complete my homework. I was a bit hungry but didn’t feel like telling mom as she would be worried. Finally we both sat together to arrange something to eat. My mom had a small pouch wherein she used to keep some money mostly some left over coins. She got the pouch and started searching it for some money. I saw only five or six coins in it which made me even sadder. Mom took out the coins and counted them; it was five rupees. I understood that this was the budget for the dinner. I got the money from her and went down to a bakery shop which was about to be closed down. I bought a piece of small bread as it was the only thing I could get for five rupees.

I came to my house upstairs, sat with mom and shared the bread with a glass of water. I didn’t know how to react to such a situation. Either to blame God for this joke or accept it as God’s will. But certainly I noted a fact in my memories that every penny in this world counts. After having the dinner, we both slept off without talking to each other as if we were two strangers with nothing to talk. Day in and day out, several memories cross my mind and even some of them shade away with the tide of time, but this memory is stuck in the deepest of roots of my mind. Now when I lead a reasonably happy life, I still breathe with a fear that a similar kind of night may be across the corner.