Bubble

[This was written on hot summer's day in May '08 :) ]

Two men caught my eye today. They were sitting in the shade in front of a random shop, totally oblivious to the heat that was scorching the ground two feet away from them. A broken wooden stool and a large stone were veritable thrones and a low cracked table lay magnificently between them. But what made me smile was the pack of cards that lay strewn on the table – they looked like the oldest deck I had ever seen, it was a miracle that they could be read at all. They sat in two beautiful fans in the hands of those kings, their backs worn out just at the places where fingers touched them, probably where fingers had been touching them for many years. 

I loved the picture they painted for me. I loved the way that the sunlight caught in the silver of the old man’s hair, giving him a clear halo. I just had to grin when I saw the younger man, perhaps his son, bite his lip in concentration as he peered at the hand he was dealt. I liked the sound that the cards made as they were flicked across the table, one by one; the swish as the card sailed and the soft, almost inaudible smaller swish as it landed. Every so often, the two would look up from their cards and catch each other’s eye – sometimes smiling, sometimes glaring in triumph, sometimes teasing, sometimes just looking, sharing the companionship in silence. 

The air around them seemed to be so calm and peaceful, and in such contrast with everything else around them that it felt like the scene was a bubble. They were so removed from the heat and sweaty grime, the hurried pace of people around them, the noises of a TV in the background and someone yelling for a ‘beedi’ – all of it. It was like I was looking at this bubble of simple happiness, that had just landed there is some cosmic twist of time and space. 

Of course after a while, the older man caught me staring at them. I wanted to look away because there was no way to explain to him what I had been looking at without having him doubt my sanity but somehow, I couldn’t. Our gazes met steady and he must’ve understood some of what I was feeling or felt the magic of the moment too because he gave me a knowing smile and said “Kheloge?” My face broke into the biggest grin it has seen in a long time and before long the three of us were like three simpleton idiots, smiling at each other in the middle of a street. The bubble now held three.

As I walked away and reached the bend in the road, I turned around. I could still see the halo of sunlight over his head.