Broken Hug

Food and Fun

The bus turned and followed the direction.

Rohan’s finger trailed over the straight and casual curve of the road map. Soon the bus stopped outside Wat Pho, The Temple of the Reclining Buddha, with the statue being one hundred and sixty feet long. Rohan and his friends stepped out of the bus and the November weather, slightly humid and the sun less than moderately strong fell on their shoulders. Tourists in hats and shorts, tourists in skirts and tees with camera slung around their necks and nursing them more than they would have done to  their own babies, stood in pockets. A group of high school Thai students, dressed in navy black trousers and the girls in skirts and all in white shirts made Rohan’s heart loudly thump against his ribs. Supposing Fai was among them. He moved ahead of Max and Raj and gave the students a casual look. But, no, she was not among them. Perhaps she had called him and by the music inside the bus he hadn’t felt his cell ringing. He took his phone out. No, there was no missed call.

From here the next spots were Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Arun, a few more and shopping centres. After about three hours of touring in the bus, Rohan and his friends decided to leave the vehicle and proceed to the vicinity of Chinatown.

They hailed a tuk-tuk, Bangkok’s auto rickshaw. Rohan craned out his neck. He tired to read the names of the roads written in English below the names in Thai but could only make out his eyes falling on women. There, that’s Fai, in jeans and tee. No, no. my bad. The vehicle zoomed through side streets, its engine throbbing all the way. A group of school girls entered a*****e with glass doors. But the tuk-tuk rode past. Max looked at the driver. “Hey what was that,” and turned his head, pointing at the shop. “Seven Eleven,” the driver said, in broken English.”

Rohan was sure one of them was Fai.

Very soon the vehicle took a turn to the left, and Rohan read the name – Charoen Krung.

“Chinatown?” he questioned the driver and gestured with his hand.

“Throng pai,’ the driver commented, gesturing with his hands straight ahead.

Very soon the tuk-tuk entered a road and stopped at the corner. In an instant Rohan and his friends were transported to a different zone. Flavours of food hung fresh and pure in the air. The assault of people’s voices floated all around as they moved about with their daily activities. The three got down and looked around them.

Shops selling gold lined up both sides of the street. And spilling out from the pavements into the street were vendors with makeshift shops. Fruit stalls. Food stalls. 

Shoppers moved about. There were women with bags talking in Thai, possibly haggling over barbequed pork hanging from hooks. At one corner of their stalls, some of the salesladies and salesmen had placed little ovens. Heat from a slow fire roasted the little strips of pork pieces which lay on a small iron grill. And noises of men’s voices mingled with those of the females and the sales ladies and men filled the air.

The three friends moved through a narrow strip of the market alley with stalls with spices displayed over them. They crossed a group of young Mongoloids laughing among themselves and stopped on seeing food stalls. Sea food, shrimps and mollusk lay in heaps in aluminium containers. Fresh smell of spices lingered in the air. People were sitting on red plastic stools and eating away in full merriment among them. Flat noodles stared at you as they peeped out from green bamboo shoots and other forms of vegetables that some of them were eating.

From his spot Rohan made a gentle sweep of his head from one side to the other. And as he did that, his veins tingled. A rush of blood invaded his mind as well as his heart. I was born to experience this. Yes, this lovely market scene.

He was in Fai’s land. He looked up somewhere he didn’t know where, but was content his mind’s eye led him wherever it wanted. A place where he and Fai stood. A place filled with moving clouds, on the edge of a Nowhere Land. And that land stood somewhere he couldn’t find anywhere other than deep inside his heart. At that point of time, his mind raced. Yes, Fai is mine. She is the one I’ve been born for. To live this life, and the one beyond it. He pictured her at the BACC, her smiles prominent in his mind. And the conversation both of them had exchanged. He was surprised to find his eyes turning misty. He looked at his watch. It was just past three.

The three friends sat on red stools. And only then Max realized the colour red dominating Chinatown. The shops had more red than they had ever seen. On the table lay a laminated menu card. There were pictures of food below which their names appeared in English and Thai.

The three decided on Thai style fried noodles and another called red curry with morsels of chicken. A young lady with a white head cover and an apron came up smiling. Raj pointed at the pictures of the food and lifted his hand and showed three fingers.

   “Okhay, sam,” and she smiled. She turned, took a few steps then faced them again. “Nam pao, nam yen?” She had a questionable tone. The three friends gave her a blank look. “Okhay, you no Thai speak,” and her face filled with a smile. “Water? Cold, warm?”

   “Ah…” Max said and he and his friends smiled at the lady. “Cold,” and Max put his arm around his body and acted as if he was shivering. “I mean chilled, you know.”

   The lady raised her thumb, pouted her lips and smiling, retraced her footsteps to the other end of the restaurant.

   The food arrived in no time, sizzling warm. The curries looked tempting. The three friends began munching and attacking the food.

   Max paused in between his mouthful. “Hey Rohan, don’t eat all. Keep some for Fai.” A naughty gleam shone in his eyes.

   Raj laughed. And Rohan smiled.

*

Fai and some of her friends sat behind the post which held the basket of the basketball court. Their co-curricular activities were over. The bell had already rung. She leant against one of the posts as she dug her hand into her school skirt pocket and fished out her cell phone. She scrolled at the contacts list. Rohan.

   His Thailand number. An Indian in Bangkok. And her thoughts went to the BACC. Meesook, sitting beside her couldn’t exactly read what was playing in Fai’s mind, but one glance at her friend and she knew her mind was far away.

   The girls got up, picked up their bags and proceeded from the vacant basket ball court towards the school gate. Fai took out the cell phone once again. Scrolling down to Rohan’s number, she paused. Her heart beat a little fast. Should I? Should I not? As a child she had once held a wounded sparrow in her hand. It lay in there, quiet and unmoving. The bird’s beak was open. And Fai’s fingers, wrapped gently around the bird’s chest could feel the thump-thump of its little heart. She now concentrated into her heart beats. Yes, they were moving faster than normal.

   She placed her thumb just above the green button. After a pause she removed her thumb, locked the cell and put it back in her pocket.

   The school bus cruised through busy roads and clear side roads. It stopped at traffic lights. It passed the Grand Palace and Wat Arun. These are the tourist spots that a tourist would want to visit. She was surprised at this thought coming into her mind. She had been crossing this area everyday of her school days, but never had this thought come to her.

   She told the driver to stop the bus at the crossing of Charoen Krung and Yaowarat Street.

   Meesook was surprised. “Why here?”

   “Father needs Ginseng medicine. And he had told me to buy it from the chemist in Chinatown.” 

She got down at the crossing and stepped into the road. She crossed the stalls with spices displayed in bottles. She inhaled the flavour of the warm food being cooked. A woman held the handle of the pan, and lifting it from the oven, tossed the noodles. Next to her was a young girl, more or less of her age, slicing baby shrimps and placing them in a container. She crossed the alley with fruits in heaps. The medicine shop was the second last one near the street food vendor. She looked at the street food stall as she crossed it. Some tourists were standing around the oven where a lady stood with her head covered. Fai heard her telling the elderly lady at the oven to prepare Thai style noodles and red curry, all for three customers. The flavour emanating from the food lingered in her nostrils even after she had crossed it.

   There it was, several yards away, the medicine shop where her father was a regular customer to. After purchasing the medicines and keeping them in her bag, Fai retraced her footsteps, crossing the street food vendors, the fruit stalls and the spice stalls. On reaching the crossing, she hailed a cab. “Ladprao,” she told the driver. As the cab began to move, she thought of Rohan. Raw-han.    

   The cab cruised its way, stopping at traffic signals and moving ahead. After plying through for a while she sat up straight. “Please go to Siam Square,” she told the driver.

   “And from there to Ladprao?” the driver asked in Thai.

   “No. I’ll get down there.”