Congratulating Ms Mukta Madam
Terrific news! Previously unemployed regular customer-mistress Ms Mukta madam has managed to get herself a job – as a cleaner in a nearby office. She assures me that, despite the fact she is now a young lady of independent means, she will continue to visit me in my capacity as her local humble-head shoelicker, but she emphasises that I must now show her even more respect and it will no longer be appropriate for her to be friendly and chatty towards me, since she has now gone up in the world.
I heartily congratulate customer-mistress Ms Mukta, and assure her of my undying respect and admiration for her. She hitches up her dirty jean-hem and orders me to kiss her on the side of her sock. As I feel the soft, cotton stitching of her blue and white, starry-themed sock beneath my trembling foot-lackey lips, I contemplate how this is the sock of a beautiful and successful, young immigrant woman who is half my age and who, now being in receipt of the female minimum wage, is infinitely richer than me, since I earn absolutely nothing. Truly she is a somebody and I am a nobody. I am not even worthy to be kissing her on the sock; a female cleaner’s sock.
As she turns to walk away from me with a smug, self-congratulatory smile on her pretty, Pakistani face, I find myself fervently hoping and praying that she will keep her promise to continue to visit me regularly in order to have her shoes lickshined, in spite of the fact that she is now going up in the world and is very much leaving me behind to wallow in the lowly street-dirt beneath her feet, where I belong.