Binoculars by Devesh Mhatre (leveled readers TXT) 📖

"Did you bring them?" She asks him, completely ignoring his quite audible panting caused by the excursion of having to climb all the way to the terrace of her apartment building.

On the pretext of trying to recover his breath, he tentatively takes in the sight of their meeting place, trying to familiarize himself with his best friend's usual haunt. Even though they have been friends for years now, this is only the third time he has been here; and out of those three, this being his first time with her alone. That thought makes him shiver for some reason.

‘This is still nothing special, that’s for sure!’, he thinks to himself, as he dangles the object of her earlier enquiry in her face. She snatches it from his hand, and holds it close to her face for a quick, but thorough, inspection. Once she deems it good enough, she clumsily gets up from the dirty floor, and makes her way to the nearest railing.

He follows closely behind her, taking note of everything that catches his fancy along the way. As he had noted earlier, the terrace is unremarkable and badly maintained. The concrete tiles look as though they haven’t been washed since WWII, and –aside from the shaded area that she was sitting under when he got here—the entire terrace floor is exposed to the sweltry summer sun.

There is a large swimming pool right in the middle of the terrace. Normally, this would have made him dance a jig. But in this particular case, he gives the pool a cold glare, wishing death upon it as only a child would. The reason behind such animosity would be the fact that the pool was devoid of any water! Instead of playing water games in this pool, he and all of their other friends were made to play a game of kabaddi on the occasion of her 10th birthday last year; his knees feel as though they are still bruised and scraped to this day!

“Will you stop glaring at the pool, and be of some use for once?” She snaps at him from her new perch by the terrace railings, not removing the binoculars from her face as she does so. This causes him to change targets. Stomping the gap between the both of them away, he halts beside her crouched frame, glaring holes into her spy-mad head.

“If it wasn’t for me, you would never have those binoculars helping you fulfil your spy fantasies, you know?” He declares in a cocky tone of voice, “And you haven’t even thanked me yet, loser!”

This outburst has absolutely zero effect on her, as she continues to scan the streets with the help of the binoculars; something that further riles him up. It was business as usual for the two of them. So long as her adventurous streak is fed and watered, and she has managed to put a scowl on his face, all is well in her life.

“Your friends are at it again”, she remarks after some time has passed. By this time, he has cooled down enough to take interest in what she has to say.

“What do you mean?”

“They are stealing candies from poor Mr Gokhale again.”

“It isn’t stealing if he is sharing the candies with them willingly, you pig”, he gripes, feeling the need to defend his friends. “I don’t even need the binoculars to check that!” He finishes with his trademark superior sniff.

Sometimes she wishes if she could just slap that annoying sniff out of him. But she knows—from experience—that all that will accomplish is him crying his eyeballs out. But she can’t just let him have the last word in!

“Mr Gokhale buys those candies with his own money for his two little grandsons, who don’t receive pocket money as far as Mom can tell”, she starts with uncharacteristic patience. “Which means that their only source of candies is their grandfather. Right?”

He nods his head cluelessly, his mind too naive to foresee where she is leading him with her words. She continues as soon as she sees him nodding.

“Now consider this”, she has started talking animatedly at this point, the binoculars all but forgotten on the floor next to her feet. “Mr Gokhale buys 8 candies for his 2 grandsons, 4 for each. Fair enough?” She doesn’t wait for his nod this time, especially because she knows it won’t be coming any time soon; the dummy hates maths and numbers more than vegetables.

“But what if he has to share 3 of those candies with your dummy friends?” She relishes in his dumbfounded expression. This is what she was aiming for. He may have quick wit on his side, but a quick brain? Not so much!

True to her thoughts, his face is a reflection of his thought process: confused beyond belief. He is failing to grasp at the ends of the conversation, try as he might. Finally, after a while, he stomps on the ground once out of habit, conceding defeat! Smartly acknowledging the small gesture, she continues talking.

“When Mr Gokhale shares 3 of the candies with your friends, wouldn’t his grandsons receive 3 less candies?” She asks him.

He nods, but with a somewhat sceptical look on his face. It goes unnoticed by her as she is in an absolute lecture mode at this point, talking even more animatedly than before.

“Of course, they will! And doesn’t that constitute to what stealing is all about?” She implores, even widening her eyes dramatically and pumping her little fists in the air in an attempt to drive her point across.

He takes his sweet time to contemplate over her explanation as to why she thinks his band of friends were stealing those candies, instead of thinking that they received them in the form of a treat courtesy of Mr Gokhale. He comes to a conclusion that makes sense to his young mind.

“Well”, he stretches it as long as his lungs allow him; he receives a steely glare from his companion for his troubles. “I think, at this point, Mr Gokhale must have gotten used to the routine of sharing the candies that he buys for his grandsons with the other kids of the society.” At this, he hears her snort, as if she is saying, “Does that even matter?”

“Because of this, he must be buying extra candies, so that even if he has to share some of them with the boys”, he says with enough enthusiasm that he is practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, “There will be enough candies remaining for his grandkids in the end, as well!”

This time, her face shows clear signs of doubt after listening to her friend’s theory. She starts talking immediately after he has stopped talking, so as to not give him the chance to bask in the glory of supposedly winning an argument with her.

“What?” She snipes at him, “You think everyone has heaps of money lying around in their houses to buy candies for all the kids in the world?”

“Not all the kids in the world, just the kids in our own society”, he says, pouting slightly, no doubt sour about the fact that she did not hand him the win as he had thought she would. “We are not that many, you know?”

“I don’t see any reason why he would buy candies for every kid in the society, even if he has the money to do so”, she says in deathly calm in tone, with narrowed eyes and pursed lips, promising pain in case he dares to continue on with this pointless argument.

Smart enough to take the hint, he quips, “I don’t know about that, but I’m getting parched!” He looks back towards the shaded area where he had found her sitting earlier, and then, turning back towards her, asks, “You brought water, right?”

She simply shrugs and retorts, “Why would I? It’s not like we were planning on having a picnic or anything like that.”

At this, he glowers at her, and starts walking back towards the stairs with the intent of getting some water from her house.

“Bring me some on your way back while you are at it”, she calls after him, irritating him further.

Alone again, she picks up the binoculars, and, without any conscious thought, trains them on the window right in front of her. It just so happens to belong to her best friend’s house. At first, she doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

But then, both of his parents come inside the frame. It looks to her as though his father summoned his mother there. They are both standing in front of each other, with his father holding what appears to be a fancy looking handbag in his hand. They start arguing with each other over—she assumes—the fancy handbag, for some reason.

After a while, the father starts screaming at the mother. This prompts the mother to start screaming, as well. She obviously has no idea as to why they are fighting, but she could tell that it must be something serious.

As far as she knew, both of his parents are pretty much ordinary. Nothing remarkable about them; unlike her father, whom her Mom describes as ‘abnormal’. Her aunt assures her whenever she asks her about her father that her Mom “was better off without him in her life.”

Unlike her parents, however, his parents look good together. Even her Mom compliments both of them from time to time, his father more so than his mother for some reason. Thus, she finds it impossible to make sense of whatever is happening in front of her. But before she could give it anymore thought, she senses movement behind her.

Quickly putting the binoculars down, she turns away from the scene and comes face to face with her best friend. Quickly devising a plan to keep him from discovering what she had, she starts walking towards the stairs, passing his panting form halfway through.

“Hey! Where are you running off to?” He calls after her, waving the bottle of water that he had brought for her.

“Let’s go downstairs, I’m bored!” She quips, leaving no room for any argument.

“Again?!” He screams, outraged that he had to climb all the way up to the terrace just to be told that he has to climb back down immediately.

“Quit whining, or no sandwiches for you!” She threatens him from the top of the stairs, where she is waiting for him. That prompts him to walk towards her in double time, previous exhaustion all but forgotten after hearing about getting some yummy sandwiches.

Plan successfully executed, she hides her curiosity—about whatever she had witnessed on the terrace through the binoculars that her best friend had given her—behind her mask of aloofness. No need to make him worry over something that might not even be anything serious.

She will be sorely mistaken in the future about this. For it was something serious!

Publication Date: 03-22-2019

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