Chapter 1 : On a Christmas evening...
The old café played the music that I have grown up listening to. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee still lingers in the cosy little shop that has stocked the most tempting cookies and breads, stuff I have never seen even on the cover pages of recipe books. Mrs. Fritzee used to pack them neatly in cellophane paper with little hearts and delicate ribbons. On prom nights, children used to flock at her little cottage to cherry pick these delicacies. She used to drop in handwritten notes in each of these baskets. That made them more special. She had a way of winning hearts of old and young alike. In her silk frocks with her signature white frilled aprons usually stained with cookie batter, waving her wooden ladle she used to scurry out of the kitchen door with her boisterous laughter to welcome her guests. She was all of an old woman with grey locks and thick glasses with a singular aim in life of forcing people to eat more than they could digest. If she wasn’t cooking you could find her talking. And when she talked she used to sprinkle magic in her words. She was like a fairy god mother, someone you could run to and offload even the pettiest of things that worried you. At the ripe age of 62, she possessed more sensibility than any woman I have ever known in my life. And the lesson she taught me on one cold evening, when the world outside was busy singing Christmas carols and little bulbs danced over glass windows wishing everyone “Merry Christmas”, when the roofs were covered under a blanket of soft snow, when shops displayed SALE placards, and happy families laughed together on the way to the church, when Christmas trees dazzled at the turn of every road, when Santa roamed around with his big red sack stuffed with presents, when people were celebrating the birth of Jesus and somewhere an old lady was wiping her tears while looking at pictures dumped in the old attic. The lady was Mrs. Fritzee. The tears glistened on her wrinkled face against the soft light of the yellow lamp in the otherwise poorly lit attic. She picked up her embroidered handkerchief and quickly wiped her tears as if she was setting her mascara right. Yes, she wore mascara. She even wore scarlet red nail enamel with sparkles; said it was the colour of the season. Mrs. Fritzee was never too old for anything. But she was just too ‘not herself’ to cry. And that night she was crying alone. Alone, for her rather wholesome attitude towards life. Alone, for the rather Christmassy flavour in the air.
Both of us stared at each other and thought the moment would just pass away. But the obnoxiousness of having to see an old lady behave like a young woman having her first kiss, made me uncomfortable. What she tried to hide, was too obvious to go unnoticed. Her little nostrils flared and were candy pink, as tears swelled up in her tiny turquoise eyes. I stood there like an iron post on a lonely road too dumbstruck to even move. We tried hard to let the moment die; she by turning into a darker shade of pink and I by letting a tombstone silence envelope the small room where both of us had the misfortune of finding each other and both wanting to believe that it is just an ugly nightmare that wouldn’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t be true. She pursed her lips hard before letting them tremble to form an unfathomable combination of words and emotions inexplicable to the human heart. I’d never seen her like that before. I am sure nobody had.
Both of us stared at each other and thought the moment would just pass away. But the obnoxiousness of having to see an old lady behave like a young woman having her first kiss, made me uncomfortable. What she tried to hide, was too obvious to go unnoticed. Her little nostrils flared and were candy pink, as tears swelled up in her tiny turquoise eyes. I stood there like an iron post on a lonely road too dumbstruck to even move. We tried hard to let the moment die; she by turning into a darker shade of pink and I by letting a tombstone silence envelope the small room where both of us had the misfortune of finding each other and both wanting to believe that it is just an ugly nightmare that wouldn’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t be true. She pursed her lips hard before letting them tremble to form an unfathomable combination of words and emotions inexplicable to the human heart. I’d never seen her like that before. I am sure nobody had.
