Anna loved going to that place; she would go there every day. Day after day, when coming back from her school, she would take that slightly long route to her home just to make sure that she would be able to go there. That was what she would do every day—she would walk in; her eyes wide open, and look around as if she were seeing all of it for the first time. Those colours would perplex her, hold her attention and entice her into believing that the world within those walls—the world that existed inside that place was a different world; perhaps a much better world.
If anyone asked her, “What colour is the store?”, she would reply saying, “Every colour.” Every colour because the store did have every colour—the jelly beans, the lollypops, the candy bars—from browns to whites, from reds to pinks, from yellows to oranges, from greens to blacks to blues. The tore sure did have every colour.
Anna would let all those colours weave a world only for her. The store smelled of so much of cocoa-butter, of vanilla, of berries; above all, it smelled of happiness to her and perhaps to others as well—the children who ran like crazy inside the store wanting to devour all of it, the parents who loved seeing their smiling children (and probably liked munching on a few delights themselves), the love-smitten teenagers who thought chocolates made the perfect gift, everyone perhaps!
In the midst it all, Anna could not feel the presence of all those other kids and their parents as they went about tasting the candies, putting handfuls of them in the little trolleys that seemed to have come out of a fantasy land. She could not feel the presence of the helpers in the store or even the plump, old shopkeeper who sat behind the counter measuring ounces of chocolates and wrapping each purchase neatly into snow-white paper bags that read ‘The Candy Store’. She was a kid who lost herself every single day in the charms of the candy store. There, looking with wide eyes at shelf after shelf of candies and chocolate bars (of which she knew she could never have enough), she could feel emotions tug at her—on the one hand, she was a happy child in the store; (after all, what kid would not be happy in a candy store) and on the other, she was afraid of all that was before her.
A fear that one day it would all be gone and perhaps amount to nothing always lurked in the shadows of the solemn self that she was. “So, what does Anna want today?” the lady behind the counter would ask with a smile and Anna would scream back, “Everything Aunty, everything” and deep down within her a voice would say, “Perhaps I want nothing for today”.
Her father used to sell candies too. He used to be the candy store’s shop keeper before the plump, old lady took over. Her father would sit at the same counter, and he too would wrap ounces of candies in snow-white paper bags that read ‘The Candy Store’. From a distance he looked like an angel giving away wrapped happiness to kids like her and to the rest of the world who walked into the store. She was proud of him, and not just because he owned a candy store.
It was her father who used to bring her to the candy store, every day after her school. She would willingly come along and spend hours in the store—it was her homework room and her evening playground. The store used to be possibly every place that mattered in her existence back then. She was the envy of every kid in the neighborhood who knew that her father owned the store. She would have her lunch boxes adorned with so much; it would be heaven munching down on the delights, licking her fingers clean of melted chocolate, letting the chocolate syrup drip from her face, letting the jelly stick to her teeth. For hours, she would go on nibbling at the jelly stuck between her teeth—it really was some pleasure, being able to do all that. And so even when her father no longer sat behind the counter, she would walk into the store and try and feel the same. At times, she could still feel him behind that counter taking time from his engagement to see what she was doing and most of the times saying in a whisper, “Oh! I love my daughter!”
•••
She can feel those memories call out to her every time she walks past the store these days. She isn’t a kid anymore and after all those years, walking by the candy store feels so different. The memories tug at her and she lets them for she knows there is no escaping them. Her father looks like a different man these days. Ever since he let go of that store, he let go of a whole lot. He doesn’t look like an angel any more, he looks like a man who has given up on life, he looks like a man who has been losing all the way, he looks like a man who has given up on the idea of happiness; he’s no more the cheerful man who took his daughter to the store; who made candies of her favorite colours; who painted his child’s lunch box with butterflies, clouds, the sun, the moon, the stars and all that she loved; who told tales of fairies, princesses and princes, of hungry ogres and scary witches.
As a grown up Anna is still overwhelmed by all that life has in store for her—on the one hand, she is awestruck by life’s pleasures and then again, on the other she is fearful; afraid that one day it will all be gone. Like the happy man behind the counter, everything in life just passes by and perhaps she’ll never be able to comprehend life—with its smiles and its tears, with the rainbows and the storms, with friends and foes, with its completeness and its nothingness.
After all these years she still feels like a kid in the candy store—lost in the charms of the world outside the walls of the store with its own colours and smells—enticing and yet so frightening at times that reaching out makes her shudder.
- Anita Krishnan
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