The Sixth Finger

One day Yoko told me that an owner of our favorite kurta shop has a sixth finger on his hand. The finger has grown from the root of the little finger. The length is about 7 cm and is longer than the little finger. I always check his sixth finger when I visit the shop now.

The finger has no function. It doesn't look useful, just a fake finger. I suppose he can’t move that finger at all. There seems to be no meaning to having a sixth finger because it can’t even grip anything. However, while I am thinking of the finger, I believie that it is the very finger he needs for his life and that an unnecessary finger is a very essential part at least of my life in this small town in India. This kind of necessarily but unnecessarily helps me to adjust to the world.

There are many stories in his life with the finger. I don’t know any stories but I can imagine that there must be. The start of the story is that his parents didn’t cut the finger off because they believed that it was something special. I can agree with them; I can’t cut the finger off if my child comes with a six fingered hand. Now he is in his sixties or seventies. This is a long story.