Munni's LIA - A Serial Fiction - Episode 1

Note: All characters and venues are totally fictional; any semblance to real persons or places is merely coincidental. 
Synopsis:Munni is introduced to the reader; he works night shifts in a convenience store.

Munni's LIA - Episode 1

Munni on the treadmill

Annotations:  LIA- Life in America;  R2I = Return To India
     Munagala Gengu Reddy (MGR) looked at the R2I Club forum screen on his laptop tucked away from view, under the cash register and sighed. It is past 10 PM and there are no customers in the store. He worked night shift at Jack's Convenience Stores in Ypsilanti. His boss never had someone last that long in the night shift- two years. So he got MGR a CPL, fully paid for by the store. The store had a gun that he could use, if needed. 

The last thing MGR wanted was a Concealed Pistol License; he wished he had got a ticket to the Hindi movie house near Wayne State. After all, at night, anything above a couple of hundred is put into the one-way door of the safety box anyhow. At the hindi movie house, he could see desi girls, may be even sit next to one and inhale the scent of home. 

MGR’s wife worked day shift at a sporting goods store. She was good with guns. She got a lot of customers during the deer hunting season. She came over from Russia on a K1-visa and had been married to someone who worked at the GM (general motors) plant; but then things didn't work out. After the divorce, she got a part time job at MGR’s uncle’s convenient store. MGR’s uncle liked her a lot; called her OK Reddy, a relative on the Russian branch of Reddys, saying that she is “OK” for anything and “ready” anytime, with a sly smile. She worked nights, she was strong, took no shit from nobody, even the bunches of chicanos or blacks who came in wearing matching neck chains and making finger signs and saying p**a all the time. 

When MGR came to TriValleyU. in California on a student visa, MGR’s uncle had said on the phone, "boy....why waste time in that…why don't you just come over here", and when MGR came to Detroit during a Thanksgiving break some two years ago, Oksana and he got married. Oksana called him “munni”, and kept her last name from the GM guy she had married earlier. MGR cooked dinners for his wife; but most often she came home late and he had to go to work before she came. He had dirty dishes to wash in the morning, and occasionally it seemed like she had friends over.