Soda Ramana (standard:Fan Fiction, 2241 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: Nov 22 2010	Views/Reads: 3142/2045	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A sad story about street soda vendor

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

was receiving some kind of blessing from the sacred animal. Inside the 
shop, he would light-up few incense sticks to place near a picture of 
goddess Lakshimi, the Hindu deity known for improving business and 
providing wealth. This more or less concluded his daily morning prayer 
ritual. 

Opening his shop was quick; he would unlock the front metal cover, and
rested it opposite the wall next to the sewer drain. Then, he hung-up 
two large bunches of bananas, one at each end of the shop. Since he 
always slept in the shop, his soda machine, and other contents of the 
shop were secured against theft. He kept a long bamboo stick inside the 
shop to discourage wondering street cows from grabbing bananas using 
their long tongues. The wandering goats never bothered Ramana; in fact 
they kept the area around the shop clean by munching on waste papers, 
banana and orange peels. Once a week, either Friday or Saturday, both 
auspicious days for Hindus; he would donate a small amount to beggars. 
He was generous in that way but he did not like beggars bothering his 
customers. If they were persistent, he used his bamboo stick to drive 
them away. 

He bought breakfast; rice pancakes or flat deep fried wheat bread called
puri. He would shove them into his mouth hurriedly with coconut 
chutney, and potato curry to enhance the taste. He threw the large dry 
leaf in which the breakfast was packaged into the sewer drain and drank 
his coffee, a concoction of black coffee boiled with milk and sugar, a 
kind of sweet tasting coffee stew. A cheap, nearby street-side 
restaurant supplied lunch and dinner for him on a regular basis. The 
soda business provided enough profits to support his simple and 
inexpensive needs. 

Ramana was middle aged around 55 years or so, short around five feet,
bald headed with a nose that could only be compared to a small pickled 
cucumber. His face, shaved once or twice a week at a nearby barbershop 
gave an appearance of a man in perpetual somber mood. Tight lipped and 
somber faced, he sat in his semi-dark shop most of the time, nobody 
could identify him outside his shop or on the street. Many a times, 
Juggernaut failed to identify him outside his shop though he watched 
him for years. He always wore khaki short, and a white sleeveless 
undershirt that partially covered his pot belly. Very rarely, 
Juggernaut saw him wear anything different. The white canvas shoes, 
khaki shorts and white undershirt gave him the appearance of an 
off-duty cop. In his younger days, Ramana worked in reserve police 
force, a kind of police only called upon in emergencies like crowd 
control during national election campaigns and natural calamities. In 
any event, he never showed his attachment to his past profession either 
by talking about it or wearing his old uniform, except, he would salute 
in army style whenever he came face to face with Juggernaut's father, 
an ex-army official. 

His family details were sketchy, neither women nor children came to his
shop to see him. The only contact he had with a woman was a coolie 
(porter) woman who brought water from a nearby well in the morning to 
fill a large earthen container near the shop for making sodas and other 
uses. It was rumored that he had an illicit relation with her though 
they never went out openly. 

Playing brackets was only activity Ramana indulged outside his soda
business. A bracket was an illegal gambling racket run by Mafia based 
in Bombay, the commercial capital of India but syndicated throughout 
the country. A bracket is like lotto ticket, except when purchased, no 
tickets were issued, and the wining numbers (three numbers in a 
sequence) were announced neither on TV nor in the newspapers. People 
could bet on three numbers in sequence from zero to one hundred. Nobody 
in the country knew how the winning numbers were selected or who 
controlled it. Anybody can place a bet or buy brackets from street 
corner hooligans, and illicit liquor storeowners. The only attraction 
was, there is no minimum amount to place a bet. By chance, if somebody 
would win big, the vendor could disappear for good without paying the 
winning money. Playing brackets is poor man's gambling at a roadside 
casino. The actual excitement was anticipation for the winning numbers 
to arrive through word of mouth at early morning hours just after 1 AM. 
Rickshaw-pullers, coolies, and small soda shop owners like Ramana wait 
for the winning numbers at the street corners where they bought the 
brackets. 

On some occasions Juggernaut saw Ramana examining cartoon strips in
local newspapers with a hand-held magnifying glass for clues in his 
dimly lit shop. Numbers associated with or depicted anyway in a cartoon 
such as a character uttering few numbers, or fruits on ground below a 
mango tree or birds flying in the sky or peculiar shaped clouds in the 
sky depicting some odd shaped numbers, or finger or toes conspicuously 
shown on any cartoon character were considered as a clue for selecting 
winning bracket numbers. Between preparing and selling sodas, Ramana 
wasted no time for examining closely the cartoon strips for clues to 
gamble on brackets. For coolies, rickshaw-pullers and small shop 
owners, selecting numbers to play brackets was challenging; they needed 
some sort of divine help in form of cartoons rather than random 
numbers. When they lose money, which was very often, at least they have 
some thing to fallback on; their fate. After all the numbers they 
picked were from the sky above appeared in form of figurines in the 
newspapers. 

One morning, Ramana did not open his shop, and that was the very first
time his shop was not opened in the morning. Then, the shop was kept 
closed for three days in a row. Though Ramana's patrons went to other 
shops around to buy sodas, they were curious what happened to him. 

Rumors were abound on Ramana's disappearance; some said that he ran away
to escape debts, some thought he ran away with the coolie woman 
although she was spotted carrying water to other shops, the following 
day. Eventually one day the shop was reopened but with a new owner, a 
Muslim man from a neighboring state of Kerala. 

The man from Kerala was dark skinned with well-greased curly hair. He
wore a traditional dress, a striped wrap-around long cloth called 
lungi. Since it was hot inside the kiosk, he wore sleeveless 
undershirt. Juggernaut went to the soda shop to buy a banana, an excuse 
to find whereabouts of Ramana. The bad news was that Ramana pawned his 
shop to gamble on brackets with the entire money just to lose it all 
overnight. 

The Kerala man removed the Hindu deity pictures and replaced with
pictures of Mecca and Madina, the holy sites for Muslims. For some 
reason, he developed a liking towards Juggernaut and gave two bananas 
for the price of one. The new owner spoke with an accent since he was 
not originally from the local area. 

Few years passed, all of a sudden Ramana re-appeared in the area making
sodas using a small hand operated machine placed on the roadside since 
he had no shop. Juggernaut was so excited to see him, he told his 
parents several times that Soda Ramana was back. They never paid that 
much attention to him when he had his business in the past, and did not 
showed much enthusiasm now either. Juggernaut went running to Soda 
Ramana to buy a soda just to get his attention, and strike a 
conversation. But, he was as usual, in somber mood, he appeared as if 
he did not recognize Juggernaut. May be he was ashamed for selling 
sodas from roadside. During night times, he stored his soda machine and 
a small cylinder of soda gas at the nearby street corner restaurant. 

That night, Juggernaut prayed goddess Lakshmi and Lord Vinayaka the god
with the elephant-head to deliver confidence and bless Soda Ramana in 
his come-back attempt to re-establish his old soda business not that 
the Kerala man was a bad person. Somehow, Juggernaut never accepted 
misfortune even if it struck a distant acquaintance like Soda Ramana. 
Juggernaut wished that Ramana would buy back his old shop and starts 
selling sodas, and performs his daily rituals for juggernaut to see. 
But the Kerala man was fastidious in his work and improved the business 
by selling several varieties of flavored sodas with crown-cork seal 
that attracted more customers. Ramana had no chance to get back his 
business from the Kerala man. People slowly forgot about Ramana and his 
reputation for strong plain carbonated sodas, so he moved away from 
that area. Juggernaut saw Ramana a couple of times outside cinema 
theaters carrying a wooden crate on his shoulder, and yelling loudly to 
sell sodas. Juggernaut prayers to goddess Lakshmi and Lord Vinayaka did 
not bring back his business. “May be I was too emotionally involved by 
just watching him too long and him going down the tubes,” thought 
Juggernaut. 


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