Smoking beedis and sitting in the chai shop, we discuss The Motorcycle Diaries and the biking trip we plan to take once we finish college. We call out to the waiter to get us a plate of pazhampuris with beef fry, flipping the beedi stump in the direction of the bin. The chai shop owner waves his account book in our faces, threatening — three months of pending bills.
Thief!
Across the road, a boy runs out of the mobile shop, the shop owner in hot pursuit.
We tie our mundus tighter to prevent them from unravelling and run across the road. We catch him under the railway bridge.
Land the first blow.
Second blow — for the jobs we don't see.
Third blow — for the education without the learning.
Fourth — for money we don’t have.
Fifth — for the backlog of failed exams.
Sixth, seventh…
A mob joins.
We run when he collapses.
The boy.
His face in our chai, on the wall, in our children’s faces, and at the dining table. The boy at twenty, at fifty, his face fifteen, body growing. Sometimes his mother’s face curls out of our mouths in wisps of smoke — hissing — when we cross the road or pass a railway bridge and when I teach my children right from wrong.
Savera Zachariah’s stories appear in Fractured Lit., Bending Genres, National Flash Fiction, Ruby Literary Press and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2025 and was a finalist for Fractured Lit.’s Flash Open 2025 contest. She is a published food and travel writer.
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