A Hundred-Rupee Note

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The story finished earlier than I planned. As they say, eat your dinner when ready. There is a charm to serving the dinner hot, more than it feels to munch it hot. Here's a story that tries to pack pathos and humour at the same time. Hope my readers like it.

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A Hundred-Rupee Note

In those days when I was a child, eating nice food was every child’s dream. If a feast were being thrown twenty kilometres away, we would rush there barefoot, eat heartily, and return the same day—or night. Gate-crashing was no dishonour; certainly not within a radius of twenty kilometres, where we were familiar faces anyway—famous for our epicurean proclivity.

Sometimes, the host would even pay us twenty-five paise—one-fourth of a rupee. They said they saw the god in us children and honoured us. Feasts were many: before an expectant mother’s delivery—what they now call a baby shower—at housewarmings, after a death, or during marriages. The menu was simple: puffed rice with watery buttermilk, gur or semi-liquid molasses, a mixed curry of pumpkin and sundry vegetables. Marriage feasts were slightly better, though nothing compared to today’s extravaganzas—nowadays, even stray dogs cannot finish what is wasted, and if a cow tastes the over-spiced leftovers, her tummy bloats; sometimes, she dies.

Oh, no! I’m waffling. Without further filibuster, let me go straight to the anecdote.

The Hundred-Rupee Game

Once, someone twice my age invited me to the market fifteen kilometres away. I agreed without calculating that the round trip would mean thirty kilometres of walking—just for the promise of good snacks. Both of us were barefoot. Out of a hundred villagers back then, hardly ten owned flip-flops. Bamboo splinters and berry thorns forever pierced my feet—souvenirs of poverty more than the berries were of taste.

As we walked and chatted, my elder companion opened the inevitable topic:

“If you find a hundred-rupee note on the road, what will you do?”

I didn’t quibble, “Why only a hundred, why not more?” Instead, I jumped straight in:

“First, I’ll eat aloo dum—potatoes boiled and drowned in spices and chillies. That will cost me one rupee. Then I’ll buy puffed rice, mix it with aloo dum, fritters and relish. Five rupees gone.”

“And the remaining ninety-five?” he asked.

“You’ll eat snacks worth ten rupees,” I declared generously. After all, it was his magnanimity that let me keep the whole imaginary note.

My elder smiled. His own list was grander: samosas, rasgullas, fritters—for fifteen rupees at least. Would I sponsor him? Of course, yes.

Now I still had eighty-five left. What to do? I thought of my friends. “Ten rupees for lozenges to distribute among them. I’ll be their leader as long as the stock lasts.”

Seventy-five left. It was kite-flying season. I had always been a kite-runner, collecting fallen threads from trees—once I fell from a tree onto a pandanus bush and hardly sustained any injury. With ten rupees, I would finally buy real kites and thread. A dream was about to be realised!

Sixty-five remained. I remembered my seven sisters—all elder to me, the youngest just a year older, my quarrelsome rival. I wanted to give them the rest. But arithmetic puzzled me. I could not provide ten rupees each, because seven times ten would be seventy, exceeding my available amount. Then I tried seven times nine—it came to sixty-three, yet I had sixty-five. How to divide? Multiplication and division are of no use. However, by the time we reached town, the solution struck: six sisters would get ten rupees each, and the quarrelsome one would be punished with only five!

I had spent the entire hundred without ever holding it in my hand.

The White Ointment

Now came my companion’s turn to feed me. But first things first; he had shopping to do. We stopped at a shop called Chandsi, its black tar-painted doors marked with a chalk drawing of a snake. It was a Unani medicine shop. My friend had a fractured finger that always pained him; he wanted white ointment to massage it.

He had only fifty paise—half a rupee. He planned to buy the ointment for twenty-five paise and feed me with the other twenty-five. But the shopkeeper demanded all fifty for a packet. My friend was in a fix: either feed me and leave his finger untreated, or buy medicine and let both of us go hungry.

He turned to me for judgment. By then, I had learned enough from my imaginary fortune to decide swiftly:

“Buy the ointment. Let’s go home. Tomorrow, we’ll catch fish from the pond—it has never sent me back empty-handed.”

That day, the feast was in imagination only. But the walk, the arithmetic of hunger, and the snake-painted shop remain fresher in memory than any plate of aloo dum.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar

24-08-2025

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