With his small means he set up a shop selling dry fruits, one amongst the many teeming in the neighborhood. The nation was going through troubled times and austerity measures were being propogated, dry fruits was one of the last things in peoples mind. The business was slow and earnings meagre and the competition made it worse.

One day when the business was particularly slow and the sun at its zenith, he was contemplating on what more to do to sell his wares or start something new. It was then when this shadow of an unfamiliar visitor fell on him. He looked up and saw a man, tall with aristocratic bearings smiling at him. The man was tall, strong and wore striped long pathani suit and a red pugree. He also had a beard dyed in henna but it was his smile which was captivating.

The visitor wanted a sack of dry fruits which was a large order because even though it was a wholesale market, often there were people who wanted a handful of dry fruits. What was also a positive sign was that the visitor did not bargain on the price but he had an offer to make.

The visitor promised the shopkeeper that we will return in a few days for another sack of dryfruits but he had three conditions. One the shopkeeper must not ever ask him for any personal information – like from where he is? what he does and so on two, never follow him and three the visitor will give him a bag of money for the dryfruits in return which the shopkeeper must open only after the visitor had left with the sack of dryfruits.

The shopkeeper was amused at the fairytale promises and thought of it as nothing. He almost forgot about the incident, till the next week, when the visitor returned with his disarming smile on an empty day.

He remembered the promise made to the visitor and gave him a sack of dry fruits. As promised, the visitor took out a shiny velvety ruby red money bag and kept it on the table of the shopkeeper and went away carrying the large sack. The shopkeeper thought nothing of his visitor carrying the large sack singlehandedly, because he was eager to open the bag.

When the shopkeeper opened the bag in the confines of his little shop he was astonished to see a handful of gold coins, the value much more than the sack of dryfruits he had just given the visitor. His mother and grandmothers had told him of stories of djinns who had pots of gold coins and recently he heard through gossipmongers of people who had gold coins stored in their basements and attics. But then it was only hearsay and he had never seen any gold coins in his life before. He wasnt sure of what to do with it.

That night he had a tough time sleeping, he kept tossing and turning and weighing his options with the visitor and the numerous questions in his mind. Who the visitor was, where did he come from and more importantly will he return?

The next few days went in a blur. His sales were ok but he was really depending on the visitor to return. Towards the later part of the week on a particularly drowsy afternoon, the familiar shadow fell on his store.

The instant the visitor carried the sack of dryfruits leaving behind, another similar ruby red money bag, the shopkeeper opened it to find the familiar gold coins.

This went on for few months now and over time, the shopkeeper disclosed the reasons of his sudden fortune with his family. The family was astonished, perplexed and inquisitive at first but gradually were at peace with the event in their family except for that boy.

That boy, the shopkeepers nephew was bent on discovering the identity of the visitor even if it meant breaking the golden rules. For the next few weeks he started accompanying the shopkeeper so he could familiarize with the visitor. True to the stories, the visitor came every week without fail. And one such lazy afternoon when the visitor came for his usual sack of dryfruits, the boy decided to follow him. As the visitor turned his back, the boy quietly got up from his seat and began following the visitor cautiously, stealthily. Even with the large sack, the visitor walked briskly taking sudden turns that the boy had a hard time catching up with himm that he almost collided into the passing cycle rickshaws on more than one ocassion. But the boy, inquisitively close to the visitor now refused to give up his chase. He was sure that he will now know where the visitor stayed because he knew the street where the visitor had just turned was a dead end. The boy quickly picked up his steps and peeked from the corner of the narrow street to see the visitor vanishing into a brick wall, forever.

A story from a family, I know