snapshot

“Nice color.”

That was the first thing I have said when I spotted the fruit cart right around the corner of the street, when I moved into my new house in New Delhi. Crimson red apples, sunrise yellow bananas, pale green pears: all mixture of colors like double rainbows got me dazed for a few seconds. I have never thought about buying anything there, though. Why bother, when we had a better, cleaner market nearby? The fruit cart was the stars in Seoul where they got all drowned by the blaze of lights from the skyscrapers. But right that moment, I had to admit that those fruits seemed to be the freshest from the ones that I've ever seen in my life.

I had taught my brother how to say ‘orange’ one day. He became so obsessed with that word that he pointed practically at everything and screamed, “OH-RANGE!” At first, I was impressed at how fast he learned the word. I clapped several times and complimented, “Aw, you’re so smart!” I guess he was not as smart as I thought he would be. Eventually, I grew tired of him shouting oh-range at every possible object that I ignored him whenever he blurted out the word.

My brother, my mom and I were heading for a mall one day, when my brother subsided from his obsession with oranges, thank god. We passed the fruit cart like every other day, then my brother shouted all of a sudden, “OH-RANGE!” He then started craving that orange so badly that my mom had no choice but to buy some for him.

Popping a piece in, I was surprised to find out, it was as amazing as it looked! From that day on, we started purchasing the fruits from that cart every morning, and each and every one of them did not disappoint us even once. Every morning, our maid carried a bag of fruits, containing an extra piece almost every other day.

One morning, I was passing the usual fruit cart on my way to school. The fruit seller was talking with a woman, who seemed like a customer. The seller handed the women a bag full of papayas with a smile – the kind you don’t see everyday. It was the one of the rarest kinds of smiles, like the ones that make you smile together. His smile seemed truly, truly happy. The way he dressed, my thoughts about how he would live… He certainly was not a happy guy. I knew how those people lived- in squalid living conditions, sometimes in slum areas. I wondered what made him so happy to smile like that.

As I passed the fruit cart after on, I wondered when I might see the smile once again, and that if I would ever be able to find the answer of his happy smiles.