buried beneath dust

The green fluorescent light went out on the dark street draped with dim moonlight. The girl stood on the sidewalk and watched as the owner closed the last shop down. To her luck, the lock didn’t click. 

She waited till the only sounds she could hear were crickets hovering around flickering neon street lights, and made her way to the dusty old shop. It was rather ordinary, nothing special. A simple flower shop with snacks here and there in hopes of making some extra profit occasionally, a worn-out lunar calendar slightly tearing at the edges, corroded shelves housing several Hindu idols, a singular pine almirah and a mantel. Here and there, photo frames with a family picture consisting of one man, one woman, and a young boy, next to pictures of an old man taped to the wall, adorned with a jasmine garland. She was just about to leave, when she heard the lock click, and the figure of an old man emerged. 

Contrary to what she expected, he wasn’t startled, nor did he seem anxious at the prospect of a possible theft. His temperament was calm and composed, like how one would imagine the state of an old man staring out at the sky in his balcony with a cup of coffee. “I saw you come in, I noticed I hadn’t locked it, and when I turned around, you went inside”. The girl hastened to explain, but she was interrupted; “I know you weren’t trying to steal, and even if you were, there’s nothing I could offer”, he said as his lips curled into a smile. “I think your shop is beautiful” the girl said, as the old man gestured for her to have a seat on the mantel. He smiled, “Oh I know it is, by beautiful, it’s a collection of memories and broken dreams. This shop was passed on from generations, and I hold it very dear to my heart. Though it is not as modern and materialistic as one would find appealing, to me, it’s quite charming. Shame, that when I’m no more, this shop will be dismantled, and decades of dreams will be reduced to ruins.” “You have a son, won’t it get passed down to him?” the girl asked, pointing at the dusty photo frame on the shelf. “MBA” the man replied, “the only one in our family to have studied past tenth standard, and he is going on to bigger things. The world is changing, it gets quite tough to make a living out of a small shop like this. He’s a smart boy, he will earn ten folds more than me in the cities” he went on, “my son laughs, and tells me this shop is a lost cause, and that everything must come to an end. He’s right, but god forbid I justify the ache of an old man’s heart as the shop I grew up in, the shop children would run to after a long day at school to sit by the mantel and listen to my father’s stories as they stuffed their faces with free chocolates, the shop whose walls my mother would paint flowers on, the shop whose ground is etched with chalk marks and stone dents as my brother and I played silly games all day, will now be nothing but rubble, a stack of rubble that was once built on blood sweat and tears, a stack of rubble that will be pushed away with the trash, and on the same ground, the crowd will jostle in and out of the digital store built on it. In fact, my son may work in this store, and make more money than anyone in my family ever has” he said with a smile on his face and sadness in his eyes.

“I’ve come to accept it. Society is changing, it always has been, and always will be. So, if you were here to steal, I won’t let you go without anything. I cannot offer you money, I can only offer you this.” He said as he gave her an old box which was chipped at the corners. She opened it and it was a box of drawings, pictures and old news paper articles. “it’s a box of my favorite memories” he said. “My childhood, my parents, my wedding, and my son. This shop has been there through everything”. “I could easily give you a part of my savings, my wife is no more, and my son is too busy to call, but that money means nothing. A box of memories is worth more than a few hundred notes” he said as he sat on the mantel and pulled out a pillow. “I think I will sleep here tonight; you may take your leave”. 

The girl smiled, for she didn’t know what to say, and left. A few days later, she learned that the old man had passed away that night on the mantel. He was right, in the end, his shop was nothing but a lost memory.