Running in Circles

It’s the Festival season. A happy, lively time. The time when everyone is busy buzzing around making grand purchases. The road’s sides are filled more with pedestrians than parked vehicles, carrying huge plastic bags full of clothes and sweets and a million dollar smile on their face while their credit and debit cards are half worn out from swiping that it looks more like a fancy double shade visiting card. Nevertheless, one season when people really don’t mind spending. Well, really?

My dad is a renowned doctor in the city. And a doctor, in general, gets a compliment from time to time from medical companies as a sign of gratitude or loyalty for prescribing a medicine made by the particular company. I’d be delighted every time my dad brings home a compliment, even though it may sometimes be a small simple gift, it still remains a symbol of gratitude. The only thing about these compliments is that, they come with the companies names embedded or printed on them. Sometimes obviously visible and some other times not. During festive seasons, we basically amass sweet boxes that, I can simply say, our expenditures are being taken care of, except for our personal purchases. I happened to notice that some of the sweet boxes had the name straves* printed in a small font underneath the boxes. I tried to take care of it but I couldn’t.

It’s customary in India during the festival season that people visit their friends’ places and give away sweets as an age old celebration for the defeat of the asura(troll/ogre) Narahasura by Krishna. So, one day, we packed a few boxes of sweets to give to our neighbors and friends. It was fun, going around, meeting people, exchanging greetings. Deep inside our hearts we were also content that the sweets mound at home was rapidly decreasing.

A few days later, our neighbors, the good people that they are, visited us. As the custom goes, they too gave us a box of sweets that we could enjoy followed by a warm greeting. After a leisurely chat they departed. I took the box of sweets that they had given and went to place it in a nearby shelf. As I was about to push it into the top shelf, I spotted that the box bore a small red engraving at the bottom. I looked closer only to read the name straves*on it. With a wry smile on my face, I just pushed the box inside knowing I’ll enjoy the sweets at a later time of the year.

Happy Holidays everybody!

*the name has been modified from the original