Onion Skingh was tired. Today, sitting on the upturned basket that marked his gaddi, he truly felt his age. He decided he needed a break. He turned to the turnip that was running around in circles around his basket in the name of security and said, “Turnturn Skingh, come here!”
Turnturn stopped running and hopped atop the basket.
“Go tell Madame Baingan… er…. Madame Brinjal that I am taking the day off. I need a holiday.”
Turnturn’s jaw dropped. Onion hardly took holidays. Granted, no one really saw him every day really, but everyone knew that he was sitting on top of the basket and running things in the kitchen – at least tried to appeared to. The real power, everyone knew, lay in the vegetable crisper inside the fridge.
Turnturn returned quickly with permission granted. Onion was relieved. He hopped down from the basket and rolled to the bowl where all the other members of his family lay. He called out to his wife, “Gunion, O Gunion! Let’s go out somewhere today.”
But Gunion was having a good time with her family members, playing cards. “Oh, ji! I am bijee ji… You go.”
Onion was disappointed. It was lonely on top of the basket. He had been hoping that Gunion would come. But now… he was alone, alone… It was alone at the top. Reflecting sadly on the situation that Time had placed him in, he hopped out of the window and rolled to the tar road outside the compound of the house he lived in. No one saw him leave. Not even the cook.
Poor Onion… alone and isolated on top of the upturned basket in the kitchen for years, no one told him that the world outside was not so safe. He missed being grabbed by a passing woman, narrowly dodged the wheel of a passing car, was nosed about by a dog that thought he was a ball till he found the opportunity to escape…! His heart thundering(not a good sign at this age), he rolled on till he found a shady spot beneath a stone near a tree. Gasping for breath, he lay there… until a drunken man lying on the shade of the very same tree spotted him and grabbed him. The man must have been hungry for he lifted Onion to bite into him skin and all, when his wife, who had been looking for him came by and grabbed Onion.
“Oho! Onions are selling at Rs.80 a kg and you want to enjoy it alone!!! You drunken lout! I am going put this in to a subzi I am making for the kids. Now come home immediately.”
A helpless Onion, firm in her grasp, was taken to the hovel which passed for her home. Three scruffy children sat there fighting with each other and playing some game on the mud floor. “If only Bir Raj were here,” thought Onion, “He would have made best use of this opportunity.”
He missed the media at this moment. He could imagine the headlines if they caught him, Onion Skingh, in the hovel of this wretchedly poor woman: ‘Onion breaks bread with Poorvathy Devi! Spends night feeding her kids!”
Sighing, for Poorvathy still held him tightly in her grasp, Onion watched the kids play. Suddenly the kids spotted Onion in their mother’s fist.
“An onion! Maa… you are cooking onion today. I get to taste it first!” said one.
“No, I get the first taste!” said the other.
In the scuffle, one of the children caught hold of Onion and threw him far… He could hear the family scream their loss as he sailed through the air and landed… outside the gate of the home where his kitchen was situated.
Greatly relieved, he rolled in, hopped back through the kitchen window, to the kitchen counter where the upturned basket lay. He was happy to be back where he belonged.
He was never going to take a holiday ever again.
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