A bottle of Coke

Diwali Mela like any other fair was organised in my society with lots of stalls of food, household items, costumes, jewellery and other utility items with dance programme admist loud music and spectral lights. I hardly got any time for such celebrations. On my best friend’s request, I spared my time for this fair.

We are foodies, so attacked the food first. Tried lots of spicy as well as sweet dishes like jodhpuri mirchi pakooda, bhalla chat, tikki chat, blue berry muffin, chole bhature and pan kulfi. These days, my tummy is not used to eating such a spicy food. To digest all these stuff, I need a bottle of Coke!

While drinking it, my mind recalled a year back incidence. It was the convocation day of Sadhana Intensive Course that was organised at Gangotri in Sivananda Kutir. After attending convocation, we returned to Gangotri town, near the taxi stand. We were waiting for the other batchmates to come back to the meeting point. I was feeling hungry as I hadn’t eaten anything since morning and whatever little I had eaten came out because of sever travel sickness and vomiting. During lunch, I handed over my food to Mr. ‘G’ one of my batchmates.

I group of friends ordered samosas, tea and soft drinks. The samosas were too spicy. To digest them I was drinking Coke. Suddenly Mr. ‘G’ came and joined the group and discussion. I took a sip of Coke.

“You are drinking Coke! You are eating samosas!!” The utter surprise in his voice showed that I made a serious offence.

Mr. ‘G’ raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth. His eyes widened and his pupils even more. Little horizontal frowns appeared displacing bigger vertical frowns. His bulged eyes forgot to blink atleast for fifty two seconds. Atleast. He freezed. I laughed.

“It is just a bottle of Coke!” I said. “Anybody can read your face like a book!! ANYBODY!!!”

That transparent face, I always recalled whenever I had a bottle of Coke!