A token of surprise
I had planned on telling you a completely different story until my friend reminded me today, of a particular material that I hold close to my heart.
Let me rewind a little bit. The year was 2016 and I had just started teaching. I was travelling to Chennai by train; simple chair car seat. For a change, it was a weekday and most of the seats were empty. I knew I would be eventually be bored and so I decided to carry a book with me. Whenever I am reading, I am in this habit of annotating in the sides of the pages, again to not get too attached to my thoughts. I was using a pen pencil that one of my colleagues had casually presented it to me. As I am buried in the book, I hear a voice from behind asking me what I was holding in my hand. I was confused and I didn’t know what the person was referring to.
I turn back and I see an old man curiously staring at my pen pencil. He was dressed in a white kurta and his beard indicated that he might be somewhere around 50 years old. I just smiled at him and told him that it was a pen-pencil. He was surprised or rather confused to hear both the words refer to one single object. He asked me if he could take a look at it. He twiddled with it to check how it works and his face expressed deep contentment in handling such a simple object. The faint twinkle in his eye mixed with a nervous smile made him look a child discovering a new toy. I knew that object was a present from my friend but I was willing to part away from it only to capture the look of wonder on his face. I told him to keep it and he was shocked, perhaps, he never expected anyone to have given him things so freely. He refused but I insisted that he keep it. He was still reluctant to randomly accept a stranger’s belonging or let’s say, a gift!
After much hesitation, he did accept the gift but under a condition. From the pocket of his kurta, he took out a small brown bottle that I didn’t know that seemed unfamiliar to me. He told me that he wouldn’t take things for free and would accept my gift only if I accepted his. I was curious to know what it was and I asked him what it was and he told me that it was attar or ittar (an essential oil extracted from plants, usually flowers).
I was so humbled by this gesture because I never expected anything in return from him and yet he was kind enough to offer me a return gift. Thus, happened the exchange of gifts between two strangers.
After this, we also mutually chose not to communicate further and I still don’t know why. Now, I only own the attar but sadly I don’t remember his face. I never bothered to ask him his name either. Maybe, this is what it means to be a human, to go beyond all your identities and express love in different ways.
