Written piece
Currency Dreams
Sukhjit Singh
India
About this piece
Currency dreams, the allure of pounds and dollars, and a hope for better life with it, leads to a flow of bodies, a lot of it illegal, threading across the commonwealth, across the globe. Sometimes the dreams come true. Mostly, they leave families shattered and mothers waiting.
It takes her a while to find the exact change from under the jute cover on the wooden counter after the boy hands her a 200 rupee note.
She returns a few ten-rupee notes and a five-rupee coin to the boy and starts sorting the onion pile.
“Mata look here.” The boy is polite. Addressing her as a mother.
For a moment she thinks she has made a mistake in counting change. Her mind is not as sharp as it once was. She never went to school and had learned her numbers and counting helping her husband with the vegetable shop. It is five years since he died.
“What happened son?”
The boy returns the coin.
“Mata this is not five rupees.”
She looks at the coin.
“This is one pound and is equal to one hundred rupees. Looks like someone gave this to you by mistake.”
The coin becomes a wonder in her eyes.
“This is England’s currency.”
The wonder turns to weight in her hands. And a pain in her heart.
A cry rises up. But she curbs it.
She walks back to the place where she keeps shop money and looks for another coin.
After the boy leaves, she collapses on to the mud floor.
Her only son was 20 when he left. For England.
All her jewellery paid the travel agent to get him there.
The media called it the Malta boat tragedy. They said nearly three hundred drowned.
It is thirty years since her heart broke.
In the evening she spends a long time looking at the only photo she has of her son.
“I will send pounds from England mother. You will live like a queen.” He had said before he left.
She places the coin in front of the photo.