Fusion

The Indian grocery shop is one of my greatest hangouts than the metaphysical shop I love to spend most of my time. I remember the grocery store in my village. On those days my cousins and I would walk through paddy fields which have the fragrance of clay. I call it fragrance because I love the soil where my roots are still enrooted. The grocery store was near the public library. Those days people read books, both young and old. Certain love sprouted there and they just kept underlining the verses or words while exchanging books with each other, or kept perfumed love letters in them.

But the grocery store is the kingpin of that small world. Old women sat there at a corner chewing beta leaf and spoke about their great old days while men folks smoked beedi or sat there reading newspaper mostly one would be reading and the rest discussing. Being in a small village, people worried about Polland and Germany. There used to occur great arguments on Russia and other capitalistic countries. That's the world when there was no internet oh! not even electricity in most houses. The young children played. The lake just was there before the store I do remember still, where me just an on and off visitor who liked to watch the boats and barter system that existed spent time. I used to live in the city far from the warmth of my relatives to whom I still love to run but there is no village anymore. Family split into branches. But our ancestral home still sustains.

Here the grocery store is a place I find my own..who is our own...after all..yet I ask myself.

The Indian vegetables and frozen but luring snacks just are my nostalgia. I would love the songs they keep of the 80s and 90s. The people keep shopping are always immersed in their world 

Robotic movements and plain faces with no particular emotions look at you at times. I deliberately smile. I want to feel the presence of fellow beings at least in those smiles exchanged.

Of everything, I loved the jasmine flowers. I am still so passionate and feminine when it comes to my Indian womanhood. I admire the jewelry which I seldom adorn anymore. It made me the poet that I am. I also loved the hours of the ride during which I would try to take a peek at the life around me. The people of different races.The houses.The wild-looking moors.The trees and acres of land. I still loved Virginia compared to my Delaware life.

The metaphysical shop is on the south side while now I travel almost north. I loved my crystals, my magical little treasures, and my Wiccan pursuits. I made moon waters. I lighted incenses. I made my Altar East blend In the west. 

I spoke to the Irish women there. I never denied their thought of me being a psychic and different.

I have painted me and my cousin carrying the grocery on our heads in a little basket made of coir and other village fibers. The knitting of such baskets and mats was all fun and the flourishing cottage industry culture that existed then.

Chai latte or iced coffee don't excite me. I preferred the aroma of Masada Chai...I keep writing, comparing, and combining my moments.

My past interacts with my present always making an unusual fusion of my future thus.