The Girl from Nowhere

continued from: http://abiral-novel.blogspot.in/2013/04/the-girl-from-nowhere.html

II.

Over a plate of sizzling steamed momos, I came upon her face. It was a small one with skin the complexion of honey, a shade darker. Her nose, though small, stood prominently defining her sharp features. That’s all I could notice in the first glance. She turned around rushed back into the kitchen. Her dark, thick hair swinging on her back. she was a small girl

I turned my gaze back to the Momos in question. This hadn't been my first visit to Bodh Gaya. I went there almost every year. But I had never come across a restaurant that offered Momos this far from the place. I must have already traveled no less than a hundred kilometers from my destination. It was this sudden sight of flimsy steaming momos painted on the board that caught my attention. The curiosity did rest of the job.

Just as I was wondering how to gulp them down without anything to go with, she called out from the kitchen,

“Stop, bhaiya! I’m almost done with the chutney!”

That distinct tone of her accented Hindi brought a smile to my face. With a nod of my head I put down the momo and gave in to her request. In a few moments she came out with the promised delicacy. I looked up at her for a moment too long. And for a small fraction of that moment our eyes met. I wouldn't say there were flairs and flames and sparks flying all over. She had already addressed me as ‘bhaiya’, and we Indians take it more seriously than it is meant most of the times. She was like a little girl whose innocence had taken away her freedom. She was a lost child with no home to go back to. She was a lone mother who could show her motherland to her daughter only through stories and fairy tales while the world marked her out as the girl from nowhere.

She must have been around thirty five years old. The wrinkles on her forehead suggested more, but I didn't believe them to be that revealing. There are many things that leave a mark on our faces. If the lines on our hand say what we all go through, the mark on our foreheads tell what we've been through. And I was sure she had been through a lot. What could bring a lone Tibetan refugee to the middle of this unheeding, unthinking place of scarecrows? It was a reason better left unknown. There were plenty of reasons rather, but none of them pretty. Only those eyes knew the truth, and even they were afraid to spell it out.

I guess I stared at her too long. Her lips turned up in a slight smile and then she turned around and disappeared in to the kitchen. I meant to thank her for her service, but I never got the chance to.    The people on the counter had fallen on some other topic, more local in nature. But their words from the previous conversation still rang loud in my head. I had just met the one they had been talking about. I imagined plastering their view on the figure I had just encountered. If nothing, i felt pity for them all. the tainted and the pure. the 'us' and the 'other'. 

To my relief, the momos still held their distinct flavor and were not so far removed from their originals way up into the mountains. They had managed to retain their essence in this strange land. Unlike that woman who was talked of disgracefully, these momos sold. And nobody had a trouble finding out their cost.