The mall, once bustling with shoppers drifting from fabric stalls to jewellery counters, from appliance stores to food courts, now stands hushed, a tree thinned of leaves and birds. Your competitors have flocked to younger, shinier centres. Yet, on the ground floor, beside the broken escalator, your shop remains open from Monday to Sunday, ten to eight, without fail.
You began it sixty-five years ago with nothing but a handshake-loan from your uncle and three bales of cheap cotton stacked in the corner. After years of toil came proper shelves, then staff, then customers to crowd the aisles. Your wedding photograph still hangs above the register. In the bottom drawer rests the first ledger, its pages brittle with figures written by a younger hand.
You turned eighty-two yesterday. The stairs leave you breathless now, and you rise from your chair only when you must. You remember your doctor’s words, “It’s time,” but you don’t dwell. When your son, now a “data analyst” abroad repeated the same advice over the phone, all you could say was, “Then who will mend the hem on Mrs. Han’s dress?”
So each morning, your wife counts the till, your workers unpack bales and tend to shoppers in the aisles, and you sit at the corner desk, watching the corridor, ready to greet a customer, bargain with a supplier, straighten a crooked mannequin, or suggest an extra meter of lining.
You know that soon, the shutters will stay down. Dust will gather on the mannequins’ shoulders. Your wife will remain at home, your son abroad, your workers at competitors. But you remain at the stop, sitting at your desk, steady as the shelves, working while waiting—like the last light left on in the mall.
Vikesh Mirchandani is a writer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. His work won third prize in the Anthology Flash Fiction Competition. His flash fiction has also been longlisted by Cranked Anvil Press, the Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction, and Flash 500. He is currently at work on his first novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment