Radhesh pulled up shutter of the garage and it opened with a loud impact. For long he has been thinking of the removing the old stuff and clean the garage. It was now necessity to make space in garage as navigation of the car has been a problem since he upgraded to a bigger one. Being a long weekend, today looks the perfect day to finish this task. He reversed the parked car and navigated to park on the side of road in front of house.
Now back to garage, Radhesh was pondering where to start with, there are 2 scooters, a spare car wheel, a large tool box, a box of old clothes and some waste parts kept in a tin container. Perhaps the garage needs some color and additional light fixture to make it peppy. Also the old scooter seems to be a viable option to move out, this olive green wight is almost making a silver jublee sitting in corner, but that one is real duckie to his dad.
Convincing dad to chuck this old scooter is going to be an invincible task. He too has been unwilling earlier to part with this chunk as there are many memories associated with it, but today he has planned to be practical. He has always called the old scooter a chetak, symbolising horse of Maharana Pratap that has led to many victories on the battles. He remembered, when 4 of them will pile on chetak to reach the corner chatwala in the civic center or sometime to have dosa at Coffee House. Radhesh’s dad would be in the riding seat, mother on the pillion seat, he would be sandwiched between the rider and pillion and his little sister would be on the pedal board. Chetak would never navigate the roads beyond 40 kmph even in best of it’s health. Infact, there has been occasions to accommodate the guests as well, when one of his cousins will land at home. If they would be of same age as of his sister they would be accommodated in the pedal board and if they are elder or similar to his age, they would sit on the Stepney tyre. So fantastico was the proposition at that time, that Radhesh and his sister were ready to navigate with Chetak anytime, whether it is going to their aunty’s house that was 45 km from their town or it was 5 km ride to local bazzar.
So Radhesh pulled up all the courage to walk up to his father who was reading the newspaper in the sitout listening music on Radio. DAD! Can we move this scooter out and sell it. It was a 2 second silence and the reply came, I am also Old now and not of use, how about me first. Radhesh knew he had to be firm this time. We just don’t have a space for this drivel, he argued and Dad that’s a non-living creature. Tad reply came NO! I have spent more time with it then you, it is good as you for me.
Radesh realised he can make a space in the garage but he can’t remove the space the old scooter occupies in his dad’s heart. It is better where it is and he needs to move the new scooter out and park it on the porch
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