“There is as much magic around us as much we allow ourselves to infuse.”
It was a regular bus ride. Apart from the fact that elaborate theatrics were involved in getting the bus to stop at the apparent yet non- existent bus station and subsequently getting on to it, it was as mundane as possible.
Except that it wasn’t.
Once we got on, It took me a minute to scan across the vehicle for a gaze of recognition and the slightest nod that whispered ‘Yes, I’m here and not likely to fall off this bus’ from my friends- new found friends; well at least some of them were new, perhaps all. I’ve never been good at this. At telling when I have crossed the line into being someone’s friend, that is if the word means anything to them. I know it does to me. My inability to place myself on either side of someone’s line and tendency to blur my own lines have made me skeptical in a way I never wanted to be. It amazes me how my brain comes up with metaphors so quickly, even as my conscious brain is trying to desperately figure out a way to stand so that the menacing elbow of the saree clad lady standing next to me doesn’t poke me. In case you are wondering, that mission was unsuccessful. The once fragrant flowers in her hair had dried, almost indicating the time and flavour of the day.
It was two stops before some of us got a seat. The rest just stood swaying to the driver’s whims.
Sitting in the window seat, her hair irradiated with breeze like punctuation marks in a poem, she decided it was time. She took out the two paans almost as if she were pulling rabbits out of a hat and offered me one. I looked around at the seeming impossibility of eating a food as messy as a semi- melted chocolate paan in a place like this, pursed my lips at the prospect of being stared at and asked her to go ahead and eat her paan and I would eat mine when I got a seat. “No. This is a together thing.” she was ever so articulate. And just like that, I had two options, her hand held out, my mind caved in. I was never going to meet anyone in that bus again, yet I feared their gaze so much. Acknowledging that you are afraid takes away its power. I reached out and took it from her.
The chocolate was delicious. The leaf juicy, The insides rich with flavour. Serene, within the layers, It was a magical paan.
By the end of the scrumptious two minutes it took us to gorge it, both of us were licking the paper off it’s last remnants of chocolate, absolutely oblivious to anything around us. The elbows didn’t bother me, nor did the condescending eyes. As we stood still in time, engrossed in stomaching every molecule of that masterpiece paan, I heard someone say “I see the halo around you.” It was my friend- new found- friend nevertheless, there were no lines. She was smiling, amused at the entire paan eating business, referring to my halo as a state of pure bliss. That it was. Pure bliss.
Shortly, chocolate on her face, she launched into an explanation of another betel leaf paan she had eaten around campus. She spoke of it like it was the only thing worthwhile eating in the world. Usually, I don’t like people recounting things from their own past because I feel like it takes away from the present experience while almost outrageously comparing it with another. But there was something in the way she spoke that made me warm, almost soft. “ I see the halo expanding” our friend commented.
I finally got a seat towards the front of the bus. As I walked away from her, I looked back, she was staring out of the window. She was smiling, a smile that reached the eyes and twinkled in the wake of the playful breeze. There is something iridescent about her. I know in that moment that I would write about that day, about her. I even tell her, at some point along the bus ride that I will.
If we, as humans, are capable of enjoying a chocolate paan on a crowded bus, we have it in us to get through most things. We do.
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