The sun was shining. The radiant light bouncing off the white petals almost glistened the ground. A waiter, understandably frustrated, was sweeping the white petals off the outside seating section of a slightly upscale restaurant in downtown. Snow on this warm day as the trees slowly bid farewell to spring with the release of their petals and coated themselves with green buds.
The lone customer of this restaurant was sitting with his sunglasses on, watching the waiter fussing over the futile attempt to clear the area of the white, glistening petals. He wondered why the man should bother. The trees above, like some formidable god, would continue, with the help of the Wind God, to rain the petals down. The waiter is a stocky Hispanic man in his late thirties, his only emotion the frustration of finding the spot he had just cleaned repopulated with petals. The customer is slightly amused, then took another sip of his Malbec, the favorite wine of this South American Nuevo Latin Fusion restaurant. He wasn't planning on getting food. He just wanted to be in the sun and watch the petals fall gracefully and carpet this corner that was quiet now but would turn into a mad house when the clubbing people come and do their superficial things. He wasn't one of those; he had walked down this street during clubbing time, but never joined the scene.
He was now here just for the sun and the wine. He had just returned from a place far away, far from here, far from where that Malbec had come from, far from where this stocky, frustrated man had come from, and wherever he had come from, despite the certainty of drama and hardship, was nothing compared to what he had witnessed and got involved in. He tried not to think about it. That was why he was here, drinking wine, which he hadn't touched in the past two years, watching races of people he hadn't seen in equal amount of time, except in reflection pools every now and then. He saw himself in the reflection on one of the large window panes; funny, he thought, how he had to do so much to even get a mirror. The late morning breeze brought down a few more petals onto his metallic, shiny, clean little table. One fell into his wine, and the whiteness instantly suffused with the crimson tone of the foreign wine. He looked at it and lost in thoughts. He remembered being by the Ganges the first of many times. He wasn't there for holy reasons that many of people of his race and cultural background had come. He had seen none of those at that segment of the Ganges. He remembered the funeral pyres, the corpses covered in white, the people, the mourning as well a the spiritual, walking along the river, and sometimes the white covered float of the dead returning to Mother Ganges. He saw the white petal in the blood red wine, and he was no longer there at the corner in this North American city in front of a South American Nuevo Latin Fusion restaurant.
His phone rang, startling him. He was back. He took it out and saw a familiar name. People's names feel even more familiar when you haven't been connected to them for a while. A smile as radiant as the sun shining above grew on his face and he slid the phone open and started talking. It was a longish conversation, one of many about his return, about making plans to talk further, and after he hung up, sliding the phone back to its compact position, he looked at the phone. He remembered trying to get a phone for his washerwoman. She had no residency permit in the city where he lived, and living in a hut meant no permanent address to obtain such permit that would not only allowed her to get a phone but also send her children to public school. On the other hand, she was able to steal electricity without anyone knowing because she was more or less invisible. The purchasing of the phone was a strange drama. He couldn't even now, even having thought about it more in the long flight back, if she was trying to manipulate him, to take advantage of his good will. His thoughts about the poor had been shaken immensely. His understanding of human beings now became the murkiest in memory. His perception of his status in this world were thrown into the center of a hot but ambiguous debate. In the end he bought a phone for a woman who had shown him immense hospitality but also showed no qualms in exacting the best phone he, not she, could afford.
He realized now that his wine was over. He waved at the waiter who was by now standing with his broom leaning next to him on the wall. He was taking a break. The waiter was to get him the check while he was to take out his wallet with a credit card. The social hierarchy here, which he had been so used to that he hadn't even noticed, became so obvious to him now. He had gone through a life of extremes in too many levels to even think about now, and now he found himself very sensitized.
