Kabuliwala

It was a cold winter morning. Men were all sleeping in the village outside their houses on the wooden cots. Most of the doors of the homes were not locked. There was no fear of theft or any other reason for the people of the village to close their doors. The old clock stuck 4 a.m and birds started their crippling sounds making attempts to begin their fly for the day. People could hear the sound of the kabuliwala in a distance... singing the fate of the day in front of every house and going on...
Slowly the elder women started to wake up and water their lawns and draw the kolams before sunrise.
"Kamala, Kamala, get up and get ready before sun-rise" Called the father at 5 am. The bullock cart got ready and the family of two daughters, parents and grandparents set to the weekly village fair. Kamala came out and suddently noticed her father talking to the Kabuliwala. She brought him the tea in a mud cup and the old kabuliwala looked at her.
" Bless you my child. Huh,, don't know how you are going to live?" and he gave back the cup to her and went off. Father stood looking in the way the old man went.
Kamala did not understand the statement. She asked her father what he meant. His father smiled and patted her on the back and got into the cart and all of them drove away.
On the way back, she could not hold her inquisitiveness and asked her father what the kabuliwala said.
"Kamala, he is my friend for ages, for every day he said that I am going to do good, things went so well for me. Today for the first time, he told me good bye. Even I don't understand what he meant".... explained the father.
Few days later, the father died suddenly in an accident. Unusually, the kabuliwala did not come to the street for that week. Kamala was shocked. Is that what the kabuliwala already indicated to her and her family. She could not believe it.
Kamala with her family left to the town to stay with her maternal uncle's family after the tragedy. It was after several years, that she suddenly came across Kabuliwala in a railway station. She ran behind him and caught him to speak.
"Sir, what you said year backs, I am still not able to understand? Can you explain to me " For this question from Kamala, Kabuliwala said that they go by the intuition to predict things and when the predictions happen for wrong reasons, they leave the place and go. He had hinted that he may not see her father after that day and that is what had happened and he could not return to the village where his old friend is no more. Kamala looked bewildered, was it his friendship that made him have this instinct or is the concept of kabuliwala real...she stood there still wondering as the old man took his next train...........