It was the weekend and father was not at home. This would have been a trope to unleash a tale of pandemonium but since this is a day from one of my many childhoods, I will keep it honest. After dispensing with the breakfast mother reminded me and my younger stupid sibling to go and procure the plants and pots from the nursery. Since the order had already been paid for, all we had to do was to go to the nursery, hire a rickshaw and bring back the bounty. Rickshaw was only for the return journey and we had to take a bus to reach there. The bus-stop was few paces down the road. Brother and I took our positions at the two ends of stop and looked in both directions. For 15 minutes there was no sign of anything, then the buses began to arrive. One, two, three, four, five, in a row, all going in opposite directions. My stupid companion looked accusingly towards me, I averted his gaze and looked at what was coming in our direction. A crane. The driver was standing and driving, there was no place for even him to sit down.
The bus came and deposited us within 10 minutes at the nursery gate. My brother was fiddling with his belt all this while. He was very proud of this possession, particularly its buckle, which to be honest was bigger than his face. But it was kind of cool too. It had four pointers for telling which direction was wind blowing. My brother only walks in the direction of wind so he was always in consultation with his buckle. In the nursery nothing happened. The owner was reading a very small book named Camus and did not have time for us. Our order was placed inside the nursery rickshaw, with the driver putting up some airs. First he told us that he only carried plants and pots and unless we were one of them we couldn’t sit in the rickshaw. Seeing our faces he insisted that he was only joking.
During the ride he told us that in his village he had been the undisputed rickshaw champion and would tell jokes while racing it in circles. Some people would get the beginning of a joke and some its end. All in all, he said he was an egalitarian, like the nursery owner. In the heat of discourse he had picked up some speed, I was about to suggest him to slow down, when the whole world turned over. I lost sense of time but when I woke up, I saw that three pots were broken, most of the plants were smashed and my brother was standing, holding his shorts up with one hand. It was funny the way he was trying to hide his modesty but then I saw that he was also holding up in his other hand the only thing that had survived this catastrophe. A single daffodil flower.