Lozenges.

“Sir, do you want a packet of lozenges”, asked the vendor. I looked down to see a man shoving a packet of orange candies on my face. He was short, slightly hunched, had white hair and wore thick rimmed, high powered glasses. The dirt and grime from his hand, unintentionally collected from hours of travelling on local trains, covered the plastic wrapping. One could barely see inside the contents inside the packet. This train, in which my 5-year old son and I were travelling to our ancestral village, was just another stop for him. He seemed desperate to make the sale. I don’t think he was trying to sell it to me per se, but to my 5-year old son. It’s just that he knew who had the money to pay. “Sir, they come in lots of other flavours too!”, the vendor continued his sales pitch. “You see, cola and lime!”, said he, as he took out a couple of other packets with differently coloured candies. “How is that ‘lots’ of other flavours?”, I wondered amusingly. I looked away from him, not interested in buying what he had to sell.

My son despised the journey. It was evident from his face. I could understand his disgust. He was a child raised in the comforts of a big city life. Used to the comforts of travel in private transportation, here he was, pushed all of a sudden in between lower private parts of innumerable strangers which stank from sweat in the unbearable heat. He looked up to me, as if asking, how long would this torture last. I just smiled at him to reassure that it will soon be over. I was lying. The station was still two hours away. “Good child!”, I thought, “at least, he isn’t complaining about the mess”. I began to wonder if he had gotten that patience due to my parenting or was he born that way? There was no way I could tell. All I could say is that 30 years ago, when I was his age, the lozenges made this journey bearable for me.

When I was a kid, the trips to my village during the festive season were a regular affair. While I loved the peace of the countryside, I dreaded the train journey. Each time, I would end up red faced and hollering at my dad about how horrible the trip was. And he would smile at me and buy me a packet of lozenges. They seemed to have a magical effect on me. They would calm me down and I would suck the candies till the very end of the journey. My favourite flavour used to be cola, though I liked the other ones too. But, I would ask my dad buy more of cola than any other flavour. He would happily comply. Soon enough, I would look forward to these journeys, despite all the hardships, just for these lozenges. As time went by and I grew up, our trips became less frequent and the magic of these candies lost their charm and faded into distant memories. The hardships of real life took their toll and it now required something more than a coloured candy to please me. The emotional connect between my father and I weakened as I moved to another city and got busier with my appointments and targets. I would talk to him once in a while over the phone but it would mainly be about business and politics. And then one day, I learnt that he was gone…forever.

This brought me on the train to my village, where I was going to perform his last rites. Memories of childhood rushed back to my mind. I remembered him holding my hand, ensuring I don’t get lost in the melee. I remembered how we would sometimes take a walk towards the engine of some other train as we waited for ours and he would tell me about the make of the engine. I remembered how he would crane his ears at every announcement on the PA and I would wonder if that was a real woman or a recording saying it (I still don’t know the answer). I remembered how he would get his shoe polished at the station. I used to find it ridiculous. They were going to get dirty on the train anyway. I later learnt that he liked to stay well dressed all the time. I remembered how he would buy me lozenges…

“Sir, do you want a packet of lozenges?”, asked the vendor, breaking my chain of thoughts. He was still there. For some reason, I thought the guy now started to look familiar. As if, he had sold a packet of lozenges to a man who would buy them just to appease his kid. I smiled at him. My gesture was reciprocated in a similar fashion. “You know what?”, I said, “Give me 10 of those, 2 orange, 2 lime and 6 cola”. The man looked at me as if he was struck my lightening. It took him some time to react and he started to pack them as I had ordered. I paid him with a Rs. 50 note and asked him to keep the change. He tried hard not to give possibly the biggest grin of his life. I was afraid that he would have a mini heart attack here. He said what I thought was the biggest “thank you” that I had ever heard in my life and moved on. I looked at my son, who was trying to understand what I had just done. He knew that the lozenges were for him. But he couldn’t understand the rationale behind the quantity. I gave him the lozenges, but not before surreptitiously slipping a couple of packets of the cola flavour into my own pocket.