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.