23rd dec 2008, buying fruits...a sweet experience!

yesterday evening, as we walked out of office we crossed the road to by some fruits. the season's queen oranges, regular bananas, surprisingly good guavas and many more fruits were there. the guavas excited us, so we were asking the price and also checking out if they would taste good. we did what most customers do, "are they tasty/ramro cha?" the fruitseller responded in the way sellers do, with a toothless smile, "ramro cha, ramro cha." could be his age or could be his smile, but it was comfortable and easy trusting him, taking his words at face value. we were picking up the guavas, choosing the ones we decide to be tastiest from the lot. of course we have no standards, we were just doing it blindly and hoping they will taste good. i was remembering guavas back home, the guava tree i used to climb and hide during hide-and-seek so many times hoping i won't be seeked. that guava tree was special for so many reasons. i fell from it and got hurt. i wrote about it to my then penpal. seemed like an another life now. he would write back his concerns and advised me not to jump from guava trees. i thought that was the best balm ever. it is funny now. there was only one big guava tree at my place where i can do climbing up and jumping down. suddenly in the middle of my thoughts of the guava tree which no ,longer exist and a penpal with whom i am no longer in touch in this age of e-mails and smses, a girl appeared and smiled at me saying "hello". hello, i smiled back. then all quiet. we gave the guavas for weighing. she kept smiling, as if reassuring us that there will be no problem in communicating, which was really great. the old man gestured that it is lesser than one kilo which cost 45 NPR. we told the girl we just want eight guavas and not more. the old man said something and she said, "that is 800 grams..200 grams lesser". that was helpful. we asked for some bananas and she asked anything more. it was a really surreal experience. in the middle of busy kathmandu a young girl suddenly popping out to help her grandfather with his non-nepali speaking customers. maybe we are watching too many films or reading too many things. it was like some words written in pages of book or a scene from a feel-good film but not reality. it was a nice feeling. communication was made easy and the little girl is helping her grandfather making him enjoy the benefit of educating his grand-daughter.
i miss my own grandfather who is now only fragments of memories. no matter how mard i try to join them, i cant get the perfect, unbroken peice of memory of my grandfather. the two of them yesterday reminded me of my own grandfather and his absence. he never saw me growing up, he was not a part of the things that had happened in my life though i always included him in most of my life's events. the emptiness he left behind, is the only truth of his presence in my life. somehow i am missing him more after coming to nepal. not able to understand why this is happening. maybe in nepal i am getting time to think and remember myself.