The PASTRY

By Richa Srivastava

It was a festive time in India, and Delhi, in keeping with its innate characteristic of larger-than-life living was celebrating Diwali, like it was a very recent event that Lord Rama had just returned to Ayodhya in his Rolls-Royce, with his troops following in a huge parade of Royal Enfield bikes with their silencers removed. All in all, Delhi was fully invested in celebrating the pomp and show of the festival rather than the actual message of the same, or so it seemed to my jaundiced and heavily biased eyes.

Being a person who hadn’t been able to accept Delhi yet, even after staying here for the past couple of years, I was in my usually sulky mood, ruining the festive vibe for everyone in my family. My father, showing clear signs of the “Optimistic Papa-Logic” syndrome decided to cheer me up. Literally pulling me up from the sofa, where I was half lying down like a couch-potato, watching a rerun of MasterChef India for probably the 50th time, my dad suggested that we go for a drive, to look at all the decorations and the lighting. To his dismay, before he could finish his exuberant suggestion, I added “And see all animals run around scared because of the loud noises”. Seeing my father’s expression almost flail into a disappointed grin, I tried to make amends. Keeping my laptop aside, I got up on my own two feet and said, “Let’s go! I’ll drive”.

We were driving wherever the road was taking us. The lights on the streets and people laughing and talking did elevate my mood. Maybe happiness is indeed contagious. Right on cue, probably sensing that I was in a better mood, my dad asked, “Want to eat something sweet?”. I nodded nonchalantly. Honestly, just to ingratiate my dad after his repeated efforts to improve my mood, I had said yes. We took a right turn and entered the primary market area.

For as far as the eye could see, there were people. We parked the car at the edge of the road, fearing of getting stuck in the chaos, and decided to walk. The place was bustling with people, laughing, bargaining, helping their kids maneuver through the crowds, elderly woman with kindred spirits sprinting from one shop to another, not even once discouraged by their arthritis, etcetera.

We enter this dingy confectionery shop. It looked old, with broken windows. An old man behind the counter greeted us with a warm smile, wishing us ‘Happy Diwali’. It was not our usual haunt, but something we decided to go for after being discouraged by the constant shoulder nudges and full-on over-enthusiastic pushes. Me, being my judgmental self, had already decided to turn back and leave even before I entered the shop. But probably just to amuse my dad, I stepped inside.

I was standing there with my usual discomposed expression, not really gauging what the confectionery had to offer and critically judging it all the same. My regular confectionery haunt being Theobroma made that shop's perfectly palatable delicacies seemingly too cheap for me to consume. I found my spoilt arrogant-self speaking to my dad in half a whisper, “These are too cheap.. we can’t eat here !”

Right on cue, a woman, probably around my age enters the shop. She is tightly holding the hands of two little girls, probably 8-10 years of age. They enter the shop nervously and their mother passes me and my father a faint smile. Moving close to the counter where the old man was seated, they ask “Can we have 2 pieces of pastries?”

The old man gestured them towards the display rack where all kinds of pastries were put on display. For some weird reason, I stayed back to watch. The little girls shyly point towards what looked like a pineapple pastry. The woman asks, “How much for this?”. The old man responds, “Fifty rupees”. The woman then moves her gaze towards a smaller looking pastry and pointing towards it, asks, “And this one?” The old man responds dryly, “Forty rupees”.

The woman lets go the hand of the seemingly younger girl on her right and opens her palm. She was tightly holding onto some notes and a few coins. Opening her palm she counts them carefully, looking up towards the display rack and down at her palm, doing this a couple of times. Releasing a rather painful silent sigh, she lowers her head and looks at the little girls. Their expectant eyes had now lost their light. The little girl, slips her hand back into the woman’s palm, and with a rather sad smile says, “I don’t want a pastry.” The woman gently smiles at her little girls again and the trio leave the shop as silently as they had entered.

Witnessing this, almost like in a trance, I feel tiny teardrops rolling off my cheeks. I walk up to my dad, hold his hand and whisper, “Thank you”. Picking up a few pieces of the same pineapple pastry, we walk to the car silently, a concoction of sad heaviness and warm gratitude in my heart. I was glad I stepped out to see The Light.