Beans, potatoes and a mature romance

It was a vegetable market. 

He wore a striped t-shirt, faded jeans and canvas shoes. She wore a saree and her hair was tied back into a ponytail which looked beautiful with her gold-framed spectacles.

His age would have been any number between 60 and 70. The same could be said of her.

I secretly wished that she was elder to him.  

His mildly trembling hands moved over the vegetables kept in display. He then gave her a questioning look which received her smile as the response. Watching him carefully choose beans after that made me wonder about the various meanings smiles exchanged between couples hold.

How amazing would it be to understand a preferred vegetable by a smile? What else would they communicate with just a smile? Preferred dress in a textile shop? Preferred dish in a restaurant? Preferred reply to a relative’s question?

I could not take my eyes off the couple. 

How much would their relationship have gone through in the 40-50 years since it had blossomed? How many fights and how many little consolations and patch-ups? How many times would have either one of the two fallen ill and intense affection would have been medicated? How many walks would their legs have enjoyed? How many words would have been wrongly uttered? How many words would have been wrongly never uttered? 

I experienced a feeling of envy. 

How great would it be to begin a relationship from such a point, with 40-50 years of understanding as the base?

But then I realized that the beauty of the romance lay in the very process of building up that understanding. It lay in figuring out if a smile meant beans or carrot. It lay in figuring out if a smile meant a blue shirt or a black shirt. 

I walked closer to the couple. The husband noticed me. I smiled. He reciprocated. 

His smile had an inexplicable charm. I wondered what his smile would signify to his wife at that moment. But the potatoes that lay before me caught my attention more than the thought. 

“Priorities!”, I told myself and started focusing on the potatoes. Love could wait.

Flapping towards freedom

I was standing on the terrace of our apartment. The evening breeze was a tad more ferocious than usual. The clothes that had been hung over the clotheslines were flapping wildly, trying to escape their traps. There were clothes pinned to three different clotheslines - each belonging to different houses in the apartment. But the clothes never really seemed to care about the differences. They playfully hit each other, caressed each other and at times, even twisted each other. Looking at the scene, I felt sad.
Cotton and nylon and synthetic have so easily figured out the path for peaceful lives when we still face severe difficulties.

Gratitude in cold

With every day that passes, the weather here seems to be getting moodier. 
Splashing water on the face in the mornings has begun requiring more courage.
Sitting with the legs folded on the floor has begun taking a toll on the thighs. 
Keeping the windows open at night has become a rebellious act.

Some mornings, I set out on the heroic journey of buying milk from the shop down my street without wearing a sweater/sweatshirt. "Let me test my body's tolerance limit", I tell myself on those walks. But it is more a matter of mental tolerance. 
During these journeys, I cross a construction site with a small stone-walled room beside it. The room, which would approximately be the size of the kitchen in many middle-class homes and the size of the washroom in many upper-class homes, shelters a family of three. 
Whenever I get the privilege of crossing this tiny paradise when its door is open or when its inhabitants are out, playing with the sand and gravel from the construction site, I notice a constant smile on the faces. They seem to have realized that happiness seldom cares about its environment. 
I wish people who visit spiritual centers in search of happiness visit this humble home too.

There are nights when my generally brave blanket starts shivering. At such times, I get really close to whining. But I stop myself from doing so, thinking about the family in the stone-walled home.
Comforted by solid concrete walls and roofs, protected by woolen clothes and blankets, am I not inequitably lucky than they are?
I then hold my shivering blanket tightly and express my gratitude to life.

For some days, I kept wondering where the family of three took its motivation from. "What will they be grateful for?" I thought. 
Later, on one cold night, I saw a street dog lying outside the gate of an apartment, its body and legs held as closely as possible. 
Watching the dog, I understood how life, gratitude, and happiness worked.