A Valentine's Day (aka Aam Pappad day) tale

I wrote this about five or six years ago...Aam Pappad still works its charm with bharya priyaa...shall get her some today ...

On Sunday I was driving in the Niagara area where I saw all these billboards advertising fantastic getaway deals with one’s loved and beloved one, for Valentine’s Day, on Monday. They talked of jacuzzis, saunas, candlelight dinners and all that. Looking at those advertisements I remembered what a hotelier friend of mine told me once. He said, ‘What we do not advertise so blatantly are the afternoon lunches and afternoon getaways for those who cannot come out openly with their beloved and be seen eating out dinners or checking into hotel rooms…’ ‘Interesting,’ I told myself, ‘there is an underground market in everything…even love…’ Perhaps there is a fast check-in counter at these hotels where you do not have to wait in line and risk being seen checking in on Valentine’s Day afternoon after you have told your boss that you have a cold and do not want to pass the germs around, and, will be working from home.

 

I returned home and had just settled in my arm-chair to read a book, when my daughter walked in and said, ‘Dad. You should give Mum a Valentine’s day gift…’ ‘Uh…um’ I said continuing to read the book. ‘Dad, I said, you should be more romantic with Mum…give her a gift for Valentine’s Day’ this came through with the customary vehemence of a twenty something woman with ideas on life, and, had the necessary impact of making me put the book away.

 

Now, my only experience of being romantic and giving a gift to a woman I fancied had been in Grade 8, when I spent my entire week’s allowance on buying a bar of orange-coated candy (that was what I thought the then love of my life fancied). After keeping the candy for three days I had mustered up the courage to present my deep desire coated in orange flavour to the 12 year old woman of my dreams who was then in Grade 6.

 

I had imagined that she would have taken me in her arms like Jane taking Tarzan after he had coaxed a particularly ugly looking orang-utan away from her, and, smothered me with kisses and words like, ‘I Jane, you my man…’ et al in appreciation of my choice of a gift. That was not to be. My dreams were dashed to the earth when the said femme fatale informed me as she disdainfully crushed my orange-coated feelings that her boy friend from England had got her Smarties, and, that she loved Smarties. With this ‘Summer of ‘42’ trauma I had never again ventured into the field of romance and buying gifts for women. In fact, often times I would wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat imagining men coming off the plane from London Heathrow carrying boxes and boxes of Smarties to take away the women I fancied.

 

My daughter had just suggested something romantic. Notwithstanding my teenage trauma, I pursued the matter, totally strange to me, asking her, ‘What do you think is romantic ?’ ‘Let’s see what the younger generation has to suggest…’ I told myself in a moment of braggadacio, ‘maybe she will suggest some gold jewellery or a night at the revolving tower on top of the CN Tower…’

 

Little did I expect it when the daughter quietly, in a calm manner suggested, ‘Lingerie…’ as if it were the sort of thing that my life’s experiences had trained me to buy.

Ooh, did that send me reeling... Of course, right from the age of ten or so I had been a great connoiseur of magazines advertising women’s lingerie, and, I could have well written a thesis on the development of women’s lingerie over the last half century, based on my surreptitious examination of lingerie advertisements. But, catch me walking into a store and actually buying the contraband stuff.

‘Dad, that’s what everyone gets for their sweetheart…’ the daughter continued.

As I heard my child tell me this, my mind went back to the only occasion I had come close to lingerie shopping. On Toronto ’s Spadina Avenue there is a Chinatown where there are several bargain shops. One day my wife and I had gone shopping there and she had seen some stockings priced at a giveaway price. The shopowner, like all good commercially minded shopowners from Asia did not take, VISA or Mastercard, let alone AMEX. Such things result in your having to pay GST, PST (Canadian Sales taxes) and are to be avoided like the plague. And, on that day, we did not have enough cash on us to buy the stockings.

 

So, the next day I was given cash and asked to go and pick up the stockings. A distant cousin of the shopowner was in the shop when I went in, not the same person who had turned down with disdain, the VISA card we had offered. This man was of sterner upbringing, and, had been taught by his ancestors to beware of the different sexual proclivities of people in the sinful West. So, when I went in asked for the said stockings (flesh coloured) he looked me at if I were the very moral ogre his grandmother had warned him about as he boarded the boat that brought him to the West. To add to his fears, I asked him if they were free size. ‘Oh, my God, a cross dresser, here in my store…’ the distant cousin of the shopowner told himself and wanted to summon his ancestors to throw me out by moral force. However, his commercial sense had the better of him, and, refrained from that and accepted the cash, saying, ‘Yes, yes. They fit all size…’ He said a quiet prayer to his ancestors, particularly his grand-mother and her grand-mother for having taken me away from the store and protected his soul from eternal damnation.

 

Nevertheless, my sense of courage and adventure, made me accept this challenge the child had thrown. After a basic 101 course in cup size and other details, which I shall not repeat given the family readership of this tale, from my daughter, I donned my balaclava not to keep out the Toronto cold, but, to protect anyone from seeing me and identifying me. Looking like a terrorist who had just successfully stepped past the border post with criminal intent in my mind, I walked into the mall. Jacobs, La Senza all of them glittered and I made a preliminary round walking around, casing the joint. Surprisingly there were not many shoppers at that time, and, I thought I would be able to make a quick dash, choose the item and quickly dash out. I made two more rounds, mentally trying to pick the stuff, and, was just about to enter La Senza when I heard a voice, ‘Uncle…naughty man, walking into a lingerie store…are you buying something for aunty ?...can I help you ?’ it was my daughter’s friend, Neeta, playfully accosting me outside the shop. She worked there.

 

I quickly turned around and said, ‘Oh, I did not realize it was a lingerie store…’ and started slipping away. Neeta looked at my somewhat quizzically. ‘Strange, old man, dirty old man…’ she must have said. Visions of my name going down in the community, temples, and, being put back on the plane to India stormed my mind. At the Immigration hearing to deport me I had visions of the shopowner in Spadina coming and telling the judge how I had shopped for women’s stockings, on the sixth day of July, 1998, at about 3.40 pm…’Yes. This man is of criminal intent,’ I visualized the judge saying, ‘put him on the next plane to Guduvancheri…’ And as the plane landed at London Heathrow en route to Guduvancheri I saw all those men with boxes of smarties laughing, ‘So you wanted to buy lingerie, eh ? Here take these Smarties…’ they were saying.

I made a quick retreat from the mall. I had to save my reputation, my name, my everything. The only way I could do so would be if I could have a samosa, from Golden Grocers, the cleanest Indian store in town. So, I drove to Golden Grocers, and, entered the store. I saw the samosas and made a bee-line for them. As I did so, a bottle containing something wrapped in colours of the tricolour caught my eye. I went closer to the bottle, and, saw that they were Aam Pappads (dried mango strips sugared into small strips) candy. Little chunks of Aam Pappad wrapped in tricolour paper. I remembered soon after our marriage my wife telling me that her family retainer, the venerable Gaya Prasad Dubey would make Aam Pappad, and, how as a ten year old she absolutely adored them. I forgot the samosas, here was what would make the wife happy. I paid a dollar, picked up half a dozen candy, and, drove home ignoring the traffic, red lights, right of way and all that nonsense intended to stop a man in love. Imagine Romeo stopping to give way to a Capulet on his way to the balcony scene with Juliet, just because the said Capulet had right of way…naw ! the he-men don’t work that way.

 

‘Sweetie,’ I said, as I entered the home, ‘see what I have got you…a Valentine’s Day gift…’ She came down slowly, and, as I held out the candy, saying, ‘Aam Pappad…’ the wife’s expression changed. ‘My God, I haven’t had Aam Pappad for years…Where did you get it ? How lovely the Aam Pappad looks wrapped in the tricolour wrapper…’ The wife of thirty three years, popped an Aam Pappad candy, put her hand around my growing waist, ruffled the fast receding hairline, looked at me in the eye like the earlier mentioned Jane looking at Tarzan on the occasion of his having coaxed away the ugly looking orang-utan and said, ‘…Aam Pappad is exactly what I want for Valentine’s Day…’

 

From that day onwards I have never been scared of men coming off the London Heathrow flight with boxes of Smarties…

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