It was a Tuesday. The kind of day that smells like diesel, disappointment, and the faint whiff of my own irrelevance. I was in Chembur, sipping my overpriced black plum juice…..yes, black plum, not jamun. I say it that way because the fancy café near my house calls it “black plum juice” and charges triple for it. Same jamun, just served in a glass that looks like it’s judging you.

Anyway, I was mid-sip, contemplating the futility of my LinkedIn endorsements, when I saw him.

A boy. Barefoot. Shirt hanging off him like it had survived a cyclone. He walked up to the lottery stall with the confidence of someone who’d just inherited the moon. No hesitation. No drama. Just fifty rupees…..crumpled, sacred…..and a look that said, I’m about to rewrite destiny with a ballpoint pen.

I was intrigued. Not by the poverty…..I’ve seen enough of that to be numb…..but by the precision of his hope. He wasn’t gambling. He was investing. In a future that hadn’t been invented yet.

I did what any emotionally constipated adult would do: I bought glucose biscuits. Because nothing says “I care” like dry, flavourless carbs that taste like powdered empathy.

I walked over. He accepted the biscuits with the solemnity of a monk receiving alms. No smile. No thank you. Just a nod. I asked him why he bought the ticket.

“My mother gave me money for food,” he said. “But I’ll win. Then I’ll buy food for everyone. And a house. With a roof. And a bulb.”

A bulb. Not a chandelier. Not a smart light. A bulb. The kind that flickers like it’s haunted by unpaid electricity bills.

He told me about his sister Meena, who coughed like the soundtrack of their nights…..soft, persistent, and impossible to ignore. His father brought food when he found work. His mother collected garbage and wore gloves made from socks. I was one tragic detail away from adopting the entire family and naming them after characters from old Doordarshan serials……Lajo, Masterji, Nanhe……

Then he said, “I saw the number in my dream. Forty-seven.”

I wanted to tell him about probability. About how the lottery is a capitalist fever dream designed to keep hope alive and wallets empty. But he looked at me like he’d already won. So I shut up and ate a biscuit. It tasted like guilt.

Two days later, I returned. He was dressed in a shirt that had clearly been ironed by optimism. Meena had a ribbon in her hair. His father had shown up early. They sat together like a family waiting for a miracle…..or a train that never comes.

The number was 83.

He stared at the ticket. Tore it in half. Placed it on the ground like a failed prophecy. “Next time,” he said.

I, meanwhile, was having a full-blown existential meltdown. This boy had just lost his shot at salvation and was handling it better than I did when my Uber driver took a wrong turn, and ended up stuck in traffic behind a wedding procession with a noisy brass band.

He didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Just recalibrated his entire life plan in five seconds flat.

I started visiting more often. He began helping his mother. Found better trash. Negotiated with chaiwalas. I watched him build a micro-economy with the precision of a McKinsey consultant and the charm of a street magician.

Someone gave him a notebook and crayons. He drew their future: blue walls, a fan, a bulb outside. “So Papa can find it at night,” he said.

I cried. Quietly. Behind my sunglasses. I cried. Quietly. Behind my sunglasses. Like a man who’d just realized his black plum juice wasn’t fixing his life….. it was just a more expensive way to pee more.

I called a friend who ran an NGO. Papers were arranged. Meena joined school. Aman went to evening classes. His mother got a tea cart. His father found regular work. I watched this family go from footpath to fan in six months.

Then Aman invited me to their new home. A rented room in the slum behind a billboard advertising luxury apartments. It had a door. A fan. A bulb. Meena had stopped coughing. His mother smiled. His father slept.

Aman showed me his drawings. One was of a school. “For kids like me,” he said. “No papers. Just people.”

I walked home that night, questioning everything. My career. My choices. My obsession with antioxidant-rich beverages. This boy didn’t win the lottery. He became it.

And me? I was just the guy who gave him biscuits.