A Ride worth Two Rupees

. . . . I couldn’t help but say what I was feeling: “You know, this is the first time since I left school that I’m buying one of these things!” But he didn’t pay any attention to my heartfelt confession, or at least didn’t show any sign even if he did.

Oh well, it didn’t matter much. I was in seventh heaven already, and there was nothing anybody could do to ruin it.

Can you ever imagine the power a two rupee coin possesses?! As I held that plastic wrap in one hand and gave the coin in exchange, I knew I had just jumped on a ride to the past: to those golden days of my school life. . . .

As he took the coin from my hand in the most carefree attitude and put it calmly in his pocket, I turned my whole attention back to the plastic wrap and how to deal with it. I mean, after six-seven years of absence the sudden appearance of a once familiar face can often put someone in a fix as to what to do next.

The first thing I remembered was that back in those days we would often ask the vendor to cut open the plastic for us. But there were always some “what’s-the-point-in-waiting” type of guys in our midst, who would immediately tear the plastic apart using their teeth and get to the brightly coloured thing kept inside within seconds. Meanwhile we would impatiently wait for the vendor as he looked around for his blade, and keep one jealous eye on that boy who was already beginning to forget the hot sun above his head. . . .

. . . . Well this time it was my turn to give a damn about asking the vendor, so I quickly chewed off the top of the plastic wrap. There, inside, dressed in a perfectly Fruity-type orange colour, waited my gift worth two rupees. I gently put the Mango-flavoured pepsi icicle in my mouth, and it was. . . .

. . . . It was like going back to those late, hot summer afternoons in front of the school. The school bus was taking longer than usual to show up, and the sun was in no mood to be considerate. But even the thermonuclear fusion reactions powering the entire solar system were no match for a white, square, one foot by one foot by one foot box made of thermocol. What lay inside was way more powerful than what the big, bad sun could ever hope of becoming in such a summer afternoon at Kolkata. We called those bright red, orange, green icy things ‘pepsi’. I guess all the kids of our age called them that. Don’t ask me why! It’s one of the biggest mysteries from my childhood days. Maybe one reason was that back then we were still not age wise, fashion sense wise, stylistically evolved enough to just pop open a bottle of real Pepsi whenever we wished and take funky sips from it like Ranbir Kapoor does now-a-days, or Sharukh Khan did during those days! Those six inches long, coloured sticks of flavoured ice were the easiest, cheapest and tastiest way to show off our macho image! So they just had to be ‘pepsi’, you know (I don’t know what was wrong with ‘cocacola’). . . .

. . . . Well, come to think of it, I hadn’t tasted too many of these Fruity-orange coloured types while in school. The most abundant ones then, at least among the white, square boxes that came to our rescue every summer in front of our school, was a more Orange-orange coloured type. And it tasted like orange I think!

But the boy with the white box in front of Muhammad Ali Park this afternoon had just given me a Mango-flavoured one! Yaba-daba-doo and etc.! Some of the plastic was still stuck in my tongue. I carefully tongue-kicked them away and finally took a long sip out of my pepsi. Wow, man! I can’t tell you how sweet it felt! Let’s do it again, and again, and. . . .

. . . . And disappointment. It seemed I had forgotten one important lesson about ‘plasticated pepsi’! See, it’s basically a stick of ice made from water mixed with some coloured, flavouring syrup. Now they use more of plain water than the syrup in the mixture, for economical reasons. So if you suck on the stick too forcefully too early, all the syrup just travels down your throat in one go, leaving you with a more-or-less tasteless stick of ice! And this time, I hadn’t even gone through one inch of it before I was looking back at a Mango-turned-bamboo coloured piece of ice. Ironically, not all the syrup had made it inside my mouth. Some were clinging like nail polish to my toenails, others had befriended my jeans. And a majority had coloured my palm, like they put turmeric paste on a bride before she takes a bath on the day of the marriage!

Damn it, and to hell with it! This is my first pepsicle in seven years, so “saat khoon maaf”! I was going to enjoy this in any way I could. Fortunately, I detected some syrup hanging onto the bottom of the icicle. Yaba-daba and so on! I continued walking towards the MG Road Crossing, mystifying the passing-by people about the meaning of a bespectacled bearded man, with a school-bag in the back, and a stick of bamboo-coloured ice in his hand. Ha-ha, those idiots! What do they know about a two rupee ride back to childhood?

As I sat down on a cement slab in front of the Fire Station just before the Crossing to finish my pepsicle, and put my bottom on fire on the literally ‘hot’ seat under the afternoon sun, a group of school-girls passed me by. I felt somewhat silly, with the plastic wrap sticking from my mouth. I obviously hadn’t intended to rediscover the lost child in me, you know. I had simply obeyed what my heart had ordered: to rediscover a long-forgotten joy. But I didn’t want be embarrassed about it. . . .

. . . . I gulped down the last drops of syrup that had made that plastic wrap their home since only that morning, I hoped! It was time to take an auto from in front of the MG Road Metro station and head home. As I crossed MG Road and hurried up towards the auto stands, I couldn’t help smiling. The men and women sitting in the taxis and buses might have noticed that and wondered what was so funny with the world! I wish I could have asked them: what do you know about a two rupee ride back to childhood?