Small Gestures, Big Smiles

-


For a short period of time, I was living alone at home. Around that time, I had a small health issue, and the doctor suggested I quit non-veg and make coconut water and buttermilk a regular part of my diet.

There’s an aunty near my place who sells coconuts. I’ve known her since childhood, and she’s always been the kind of person who greets you with a smile. Since I was on my own, I started visiting her shop almost every other evening after work. It became a small routine. I’d have a coconut and spend some time chatting with her. Our conversations would drift from the village to politics to random everyday things.

One day, she offered me a sweet, telling me it was her wedding anniversary. She’s almost my mother’s age, a hardworking woman who spends nearly 8–9 hours at her shop every day. Normally, she sold coconuts for ₹50, but for me, it was always ₹40. That small gesture always felt special.

This routine went on for a while until I started having coconuts less frequently, and eventually, my parents came back home. On my birthday, my mom made gulab jamun. I carried some to Aunty’s shop, told her it was my birthday, and offered her the sweet. She happily ate it, wished me, and just when I was about to leave, she stopped me. With a smile, she handed me a coconut and said, “Take this as a birthday gift from me.”

It was such a simple moment, but it made my day feel even more special.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reunion

-
Image
On the day I joined the residential school at 8 years old, Tulasi and P. Anitha were the very first classmates I spoke to. They gave me a place to sit with them. Tulasi, Anitha, Divya Sree, Kiranmaiyee, Naveena, Nissi, Swapna, and some others were already close friends, and they just adopted me into their gang. As our school was residential, students were not allowed to go out at any cost. But for the first time, Tulasi, Divya Sree, and I broke the rule and jumped the compound wall, running to my home (only my home was very near to my school, while all my other friends' homes were nearly 100km away). At that time, my brother was an infant, just 3 months old. Nobody had seen my brother other than my family, but Tulasi and Divya Sree were the first people who saw my infant brother. Soon after, they divided the whole class into 3 sections. All of us were in the same Section except Tulasi; she was in a different Section. But we used to play games together every day during game time. As...
Read more

One Exam.

-
Image
This happened after the "Tank Bund" incident, by which time we had completely lost our trust in autos and auto drivers. It was during our sixth semester, the last semester of our graduation. We had to write multiple entrance exams to get into postgraduate programs, including one called ICET. I applied for it and got an exam center that was very far from our college. Only one of my friends got the same exam center as me, so we both planned to go together. The exam was set to start at 10 a.m., and we needed to be there by 9 a.m., which meant we had to leave by 6 or 6:30 a.m. because it was very far. We decided to go by bus, needing to change three buses and take one auto to reach the college. However, we were unsure about the bus numbers; at the time, we weren't new to the city but weren't experienced with all the routes. So, on the day of the exam, with a lot of confidence, my friend Ashu and I started from our hostel at 6 a.m. We were standing on the road discussing h...
Read more

Hyderabad To Rameshwaram

-
Image
Day 1: Hyderabad → Arunachalam We started early in the morning from home by 9:30 AM We reached Kurnool and had breakfast. Before Kurnool, we had one stop at Beechupally (one of the famous Hanuman temples beside the Krishna river). After breakfast, we reached Kadapa by lunchtime. After lunch, we drove directly from Kadapa to Arunachalam. By 11:30 PM, we reached Arunachalam. If you travel in winter, you can reach a bit earlier, but since we traveled in summer, the temperature was higher than expected, so we had to stop in between for the vehicle to cool down. Routes: HYD - KUR: via NH44 KUR - KDP: via NH40 Kadapa to Arunachalam via Chittoor, Vellore Day 2: Arunachalam → Thanjavur After completing darshan at Arunachalam, we started for Thanjavur by 5PM we reached. It’s only 220 km — if we had started early, we would have reached earlier — but thankfully we reached just on time. As soon as we entered Thanjavur, we directly went to Maratha Palace because it closes around 5:40...
Read more