Walking back from the grocery store with a bag in my hand early in the morning, I had a few throwbacks to the days of growing up in India. I instinctively knew then that just like my dad, I would someday be walking to a grocery shop to do the shopping too. I had just not bargained it to be in America and certainly not me in shorts!

The picture down the street reminded me of those days in India too. There were many other folks going to and fro from the grocery shop and a few people out for their morning walks. Admittedly, if my dad did what many of them were doing, the neighborly kids would have walked up and asked “kaku, aapnar kaaney oi saada comma duto ki?” (“Uncle, what are those two white comma-looking things in your ears?”). For, everybody seemed to be walking and talking – and flailing their arms in what seemed, from a distance, like an animated discussion with nobody in particular. Even the homeless guy in front of the grocery shop was going “Stop doing that! THAT IS MY ACT!!”

The reason I had gone to the grocery shop this early was to grab a carton of barista milk. I was running low on my stock for the morning cappuccino. I came home and Sharmila, measuring me up from top to down, quickly asked

“Did you get the eggs?”

“No. You did not ask me to.”

“Yes, I told you last night.”

Those days, no sooner would have my dad come home than my mom would start pointing out he had missed some items from the list she had made for him. That list, as it turns out, did go with him to the market but never came out his pockets there. He worked from his memory and he ad libbed a few items.

Back to market he would go.

Life, I feel this morning, has gone one full cycle for me.

If only I had a cycle like my dad used to have to go to the market.

Oh! Wait!!