Pay Day!

I just remembered the glory of 'pay days' of my childhood years!It was pay days that created moods of festivity among the elders and young ones...
Pay day mornings invariably downed with a promise of joy and relief for the tappers who had been sweating,toiling,tending very hard and relentless to produce gallons after gallons of the latex(rubber).
Every fortnight,(usually in the middle of the month)there would be an allowance called 'belanja' which would be paid out to the estate workers and another much more bigger amount would be paid on the pay day(gaji) at the end of the month.
on pay day,everyone would be smiling! Every face would be a mask of happiness,awaiting the call for the pay out in the evening.
Most of my mom's friends would be assembled on our bench,eating beetle leaves and spitting the red saliva glory into the drain that run along my home.On this bench many promises would be made,pay back debts,pay back emergency loans(my mom used to be the unofficial money lender of sorts,i think,who never asked back loans unless one wished to pay back! and these ladies sometimes paid back and most of the times,gave excuses and my mom would only shrug her shoulders and look up to heaven and smile!)
I made many 'lady enemies' bcoz i would sneak behind these liars and demand they pay back my mom's ringgit and cents!And for this act I unfailingly got a 'shoo off' from them with their fingers threatening warnings and at times when I called them ungrateful dogs,I also earned verbal insults which I would shrug off as dust and walk on,with my head held high.
At school,the mood was same as that of our elders.As the afternoon dragged on,the children became so fidgety and their impatient was so palpable that the HM always released us almost half an hour earlier most of the time!He would ring the bell unusually for a longer time and we would scream with joy and glee as we fetched our things to get out of our classrooms....all heading for home to get a bath at the public tap as not to line up in queue with the adults at home! As i walked home with a majestic gait,not rushing,cool walk,I wanted to show off to my 'subjects' that I had special privileges ,as my dad was the head 'Kangani'(supervisor),we enjoyed an extra tap right in front of our home which made it possible for me to bath for hours at will if I want.Maybe such privileges from the estate management were the causes which added to my 'sometimes snobbish,mean attitude ' towards others...!
I still remember one of those pay days very well,though...My sister had cooked egg curry and spinach with coconut on that day.And there was the usual lime pickles too,of which I never failed to help myself to a generous portion with my afternoon meals,which added a severe sourish taste to my taste buds,much to my mom's scorn though.
I was very well into my lunch when I noticed a shadow behind one of the wooden pillars on my 'five foot'(porch) .I was sitting on the wooden bench (my usual lunch hub)and the shadow turned into a figure.His back was now turned towards me so i quickly got of my bench and walked towards this 'spy' so stealthily that he did not notice me till I was right behind him,and let out a holler that he almost tripped and fell into the drain,almost,luckily god saved him,i guess!
The spy was non other than the Loose,i discovered,and kicked his thigh hardly since i still had my lunch plate in my hands.He grinned sheepishly and rubbed his thigh and asked me if I wanted to play 'thiefantpolice' after my lunch.As he stammered ,he tried to control his drooling,which started to flood his taste buds as the smell of spicy egg curry and pickles entered his nostrils.
I noticed his suffering and in a moment of kindness asked him casually if he would have some rice at my home since the curry was good and if he wanted I could go in get a plate?The Loose obviously didn't expect this show of kindness from me,the tyrant leader,but realized he couldn't let go of this rare moment and shook his head vigorously in consent.
He seated himself on the bench and was waiting for my goodwill plate of the day.When i handed him his plate full of rice and egg curry with the pickle,he devoured it,that's what it was,simple gobbling of good food which had to be eaten with compliment,but he devoured it!It was like,'now i see it,now i don't' kind of haste.
He seemed so ravenous he didn't even wash his hands!I just looked on for him to finish,thinking about one of my mother's wisdom statements, 'Once hunger strikes,all ten codes of conduct will fly out through the door...!'I was grateful to god at that instant that i had never been hungry and wished I would never be hungry in my life for anything.

Once he finished his meal,i told him to stop licking his fingers and wash his hands at the tap.He told me his granny didn't give him any lunch bcoz he failed to bring home firewood after school!I was so angry I dragged him to his house to confront his granny.She was in the kitchen and I called out to her so loudly her neighbour told me to shut up my 'volume'!

'Katthayee patti!' I wanted to ask her the Loose had the right to his lunch after school,isn't it?How can he go to the woods to look for firewood on a school day?And does his parents know that his grandma deprived him his lunch and now is eating all the rice herself?When I saw what she was eating,I got a shock! The rice in her plate was burnt,burnt and brown,and she told me to sit down first before i spat out any more accusations.
She told me that neither the Loose or his siblings wanted to eat this burnt rice,and she asked me whats wrong with burnt rice?Its just that it has been overcooked,and very brittle to touch but does this Loose and her siblings know whats her age is?She had forgotten about the rice in her haste to prepare the curry for the rice,and non of these children helped her with cooking.She told me that she was half blind as I knew,and these people had no kindness for her health.I was already feeling so sheepish for my hasty attitude and asked her if I could be of any help.
Old lady Kaathayee looked at me hard and intense for a moment and told me,'Muthu,never ,ever throw away rice,whether its burnt or leftover,for if anyone does that,they would have to walk a mile for single grain of rice later in their life!
I walked back home and asked my mother if it was true and my mother sat me down in her lap and told me what Kaathayee said was true. I made a promise to myself that I would respect the rice from now on,and no matter how much my mom dished out on my plate ,I would eat it all up,though I got a stomach ache after that.