Aug 6, 2012

Portrait- A boy with a bunch of stale roses

This current happy state of being translated into a huge tangible smile when I spotted my third portrait on this wonderful Monday morning. He was about 7-8-9 years old, I think. I first spotted him peeping into the autorickshaw which was right in front of my auto at a signal in Bandra. He had a huge smile on his face which could well have been a grin. He wore this red-t-shirt, black shorts, had his ear pierced, had a huge number of (atleast 6-7) "friendship bands" tied on his left wrist. I am presuming they were friendship bands since it was the much maligned Friendship's Day yesterday. And he held a bunch of stale red roses in his hand. It was easy to miss the roses because of his truly eclectic personality. He was a stud! A rockstar.

He soon came towards my auto. And instead of hard-selling the roses to me, he pointed towards my hand which has a bit of an injury and said, "Aapke haath ko kya hua didi?" It just took me a second to get over the fact that thats the first thing he noticed and actually asked an almost personal question. I thought he peeped a bit inside my life or atleast the last few days of my life. And then he looked at me and said with a vague hand gesture, "Aapka eyes bahut achacha hai". I am sure I must have blushed since I am not very good and sophisticated about excepting compliments. I just had a sheepish huge smile on my face.

Well, sorry. Back to his portrait. He was just like a perfect morning. Bright, sparkling, happy, with a measured amount of sunlight. He definitely was not a good salesman because he seemed to want to see so much more in life and in people. In our one or two minutes conversation, he just said once, "didi roses lelo. Daal chawal khana hai." That was the only thing about him that sounded so automated. Even without waiting for a concrete no, he moved onto the other auto.

Or may be was a good salesman. Because as soon as he left, I felt terribly sad about not picking up those roses from him even though I don't like roses and even though the roses were dying.

To read other portraits, click here



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