The First Job

Govind the street rat was unfettered and jobless. His father a drunkard, mother a house-maid. The street was his home and the TV his ally. He knew every nook and crevice of his street. Villagers would count on him to get errands done and save them from bullies. Wearing his white sneakers, thrown on him from the Sahib’s family, he leaped from terraces and porches. He was the neighborhood parkour artist. Petty thieves abhorred him. One day on the back lanes, he met his first-ever employer. The town’s infamous mafia dressed in all black, offering him handsome money for his first murder.