Short Story

03-Dec-2011

The Bicycle Thief

A hot summer afternoon in the month of May. Shopkeepers had closed their shops and they had gone home for lunch. There were hardly any human souls on the road. The only shop that stood out in this bland view was ‘Rafique’s Salon’ with a missing ‘o’. The saloon’s board stretched across with the pictures of Indian cricketers and cine stars. Though the pictures can hardly be classified as portraits, nonetheless a good stare can help one identify the immortals. The shop was teeming with customers. Inside the shop, the barber was busy cutting hair and there were least five customers waiting for their turn. One thing was common among the customers (even the person who was getting attended by the barber), once in a while they looked outside the shop to make sure that their bicycles were safe.

Raju was sitting beneath a banyan tree and he looked attentively at the barbershop, which was across the road. He neither belonged to that village nor he was interested to get a haircut. He was interested in the bicycles parked outside the shop. He had calculated the risk and narrowed down on the bicycle, which he would steal. After waiting for sometime, he went to the shop. He opened the door and quickly glanced at the customers. With an air of disappointment he turned towards the barber, ’How much time will it take?’ Barber greeted Raju with a warm smile and like a shrewd mathematician he looked at his customers and calculated, ‘ One… One and half hour Sir’

‘Okay, I will come later’, replied Raju.

Raju closed the door behind him. On the right side of the shop, a bicycle was kept slanted to the shop’s wall. There was no lock on that bicycle. Raju took that bicycle and rode away with it at a normal speed. After riding the bicycle for a good five minutes, he looked carefully at the bicycle’s machine. In the bright sunshine, he could easily see those silver letters inscribed on the machine. He ran his fingers over the letters, which said ‘Rafique’

Like an artist, who was satisfied with his work, Raju looked pleased with his current possession. He rang the bicycle bell and said to himself, ‘ One... One and half hour ’

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