“A rose for miss?” pleaded Sarita, 22, as she trudged alongside the Bentley at the traffic signal. Under the Bandra flyover in Mumbai, where she worked daily, selling everything from trinkets to sweetly-scented Mogra flowers. A scent that occasionally whisked her out of her existential angst.
Today was special. It was February 14, Valentine’s Day. A day she had been waiting for, ever since she had seen the big hoarding. The one that showed glimpses of the lives people like them could never lead.
A couple of metres away from her was Sameer, her elder brother, who made a living selling chana jor garam. Today was not his day, though. It belonged to her, the girl with the red roses. She had already sold a dozen, before a guy in a Mercedes swooped in and bought the entire bunch. Luckily, there was more where that came from. She scampered to get it, tinged with a sadness that she had perhaps gotten too less.
Who would ever think that money could buy you love?
“Better you find a man who loves you, Sarita. Someone who treats you well.” Her mother had uttered these words to Sarita the previous night, under a canopy of stars. Sarita loved these nights of calm reflection. When she did not have to think if they would get food to eat. The stars in the sky are the same for us all, rich or poor, she thought. It was her way of somehow feeling normal. As though she might numb the pain that coursed through her veins. Like the heroin in her brother’s veins.
“Tomorrow is a big day, Amma. I have gotten the most beautiful roses from Dadar, especially for Valentine’s Day.”
“What is Valentine’s Day?” Her mother looked haggard and confused. Her husband had fought a bitter battle with alcohol before succumbing to its perils some time back.
“It’s Valentine’s Day, Amma. The day people tell each other that they love them.”
“And they have a day for that?” Her mother laughed, but not out of scorn. All she wanted was for her daughter to live… and for her son to not die.
Finding a man who loved her
Sarita had no luck with the Bentley’s teenage driver. She had dressed in her finest sari to be ‘appropriate’ for the grand occasion. It was one of the rare treasures she possessed, a gift from a stranger in a car much like the Bentley that had sped away, and was now making its way to the Bandra Sea Link. She took a few moments to pause and count her earnings. Amma would be happy, she reflected. Amma, who was busy working at Mahim Junction. Begging for alms, something Sarita had staunchly refused to do.
“I want to make a decent living, Amma”, she had told her mother years ago.
“Decent? What makes you think anything about our life is decent?” Sarita’s mother had said, gesticulating to the filth lying around. It was one of the rare times poverty had got to her. Sarita had asked her then,”Amma, how was Abba?”
Today, on Valentine’s Day, in that small window of time before the long signal turned back to red and the cars started to pile up again, Sarita thought back to the previous night. When Amma had told her to find a man who loved her.
A long pause, before her mother said, teary-eyed: “He was a good man. Not that anyone in the world would ever care, you know?” And then she burst into tears. Sarita took her mother in her arms and squeezed her tight.
“I care, Amma, and you care.”
Sarita did not fight back the tears. Unlike her brother, she chose pain over numbness.
Today, on Valentine’s Day, in that small window of time before the long signal turned back to red and the cars started to pile up again, Sarita thought back to the previous night. When Amma had told her to find a man who loved her.
But a man had indeed loved her. It had been her Abba, who must have held her tightly, kissed her head, pulled her cheeks. She had been too small to remember him loving her, but her Amma had told her he did, and that was enough.
Love is a feeling you cannot hold onto
Love is all about moments that make us blessed to be alive Pixabay
The traffic light turned green. Sarita found herself walking to the cars, just like her brother and Javed chacha, who sold books she could not understand. While the others walked mechanically, she had a spring in her step. A thought flashed across her mind before she made her way to a car nearby: “You’re my Valentine, daddy, and you always will be… I will sell all the roses I have today, except for one. That one’s for you.”
At night, Sarita felt a rush of happiness, knowing she was bringing joy to faces she had never seen, through her roses that would have, in all probability, reached their destinations by now.
She thought of the last person who had bought a rose from her. It was a gentleman she had felt the strangest sense of attraction towards. Not that he would ever want to have anything to do with someone like her, but she had sensed that he felt something, too.
That is the romantic love people speak of, she thought, as she looked up at the stars. It seemed serendipitous almost that she should feel that pleasantly strange sensation on a day devoted to love. She glimpsed at the rose in her hand, which she had clutched tightly. As though it were her father, and she never wanted to let him go.
Love is a feeling you cannot hold onto, even if you tried your darndest best. Amidst life’s mundane trivialities, there are these moments that make you feel blessed to be alive. Moments of unspeakable beauty. Moments that are special, only because of the impossibility of their being forever.
While we continually love others over time, only fleeting moments of beauty let us feel love. That is perhaps why people have an entire day devoted to these moments, wondered Sairta.
So that, perhaps, we might feel them even more. And yet, we cannot. And yet, it is enough.
Rohit Trilokekar is a novelist from Mumbai who flirts with the idea of what it means to love. His heart’s compass swerves ever so often towards Kolkata, the city he believes has the most discerning literary audience.
