What flavour would you like?

A summertime soliloquy

1

I remember the days I used to work at the ice-cream shop on the beach road. The idea would come as the semester drew to a close and the dread of returning home would turn my legs all wobbly. What followed was all a blur, days and nights spent by the counter serving new faces everyday whilst trying to grasp hold of a life that was losing its flavour. When I first lost the sense of taste, I knew it was the beginning of something. My whole world started spiralling when colours started to lose their meaning, everything started to burn into ashes of grey. I did not want to succumb to this washed-out reality and it all changed when I started with my first ever job serving ice-creams. I wonder how Mr. Rupert is holding up at the shop nowadays; I should pay him a visit next Saturday.

Scheherazade never went back home during the summer breaks as he’d take a special permission from the warden to stay at the student’s lodging. No one at the time knew this was a thing, that such a permission existed. Like everyone else, I thought the campus would be empty, but little did I know there was an entire summer break community that existed here and this narrative is relatively not recorded or spoken about. Precisely what the people who stayed back was looking for; a life is seclusion, secrecy. I didn’t know Sheherazade was a name for men, until I met him.

“What’s in a name?”, he’d tell me.

He had his reasons not to go home. Both of his parents were teachers who’d taken care of so many children in their lifetime except their own, Scheherazade would mention this, not as a complaint but as a dictum by which his brothers lived by. For their parents, was their life’s mission to be of service to the society, but they choked everywhere out of the school. The brothers had grown weary of this and always found something to stay away when all of them would be at home during the long burning summers. Summer schools, Football camps, Violin lessons, Community lunches the activities on the list matured as they started to grow taller than the roof. By the time they had reached university, they’d take up odd-jobs in the city.

“My brother might be able to get you a job,” Scheherazade said. “He mentioned about some vacancies recently.”

His brother Rahim had come across a hiring advertisement for an employee at an ice-cream shop and had asked them, in case they wanted a change of air. All the three brothers had been working in a busy restaurant in the city for the past two summers. They’d tell their parents that they’ve secured an internship and would require them to stay back in the city during the holidays. As for the teaching couple, they never left their district so it would be nearly impossible for them to find out this secret. For they were lost in a whirlwind of their own, at least they were together. So, when Scheherazade pitched the idea of taking up the job, I would deploy the same set of lies at home and soon I would end up at the ice-cream shop. Looking back, I do not know how the twenty-year old me was so full of vigour and took on life as it came at me. Nowadays, I am not the same person.

My family travelled up north of the state and we’d spent the holidays at our summer home. In the tropics it gets unbearable during these months, especially inside the concrete where less fortunate city dwellers used to melt away. Our summer home however was masked from the eyes of the sun, and we all hid there until we could smell the soil brewing when the rains came pouring. At the time, house was sprawling with animals. It was my grandmother’s idea to set up dairy business, after she’d retired. Now it was being slowly passed on to my father. My sister had taken an interest to such things but I mostly lay in the hammock that I tied across the two sapodilla trees. At the dairy farm, the cows did the heavy lifting but there were also a few goats and buffaloes. Tied to their limited bounds were also some hens and ducks, whereas squirrels hopped around the place unattended. There’s hardly any place here in this small patch of land, and to think that this place housed all these animals was always a conundrum but my grandmother somehow took care of all of them. She did not romanticize about luxuries of life in the tropics, such as sitting under a tree or looking at sky. Being a woman with real purpose, she’d found a second life with this farm of hers. Years later, it felt it was fitting of me to end up in an ice-cream shop. The ice-cream shop was the subsidiary of this bigger restaurant on the side. It was like a dessert place that lured in the people who were exiting the restaurant. At times people would order ice-cream from the restaurant itself and I’d have the ice-cream passed on from here. There was this small passage that connected the ice-cream shop with the restaurant’s kitchen, with a shared cold storage and also a back room in between where most of the employees slipped in for a nap during their breaks. It was an umbilical cord that reassured that we were all one team. Yet I was separated in a way, with much lesser responsibilities.

Since I was technically, still a student, posing to spend the holidays in the labs conducting research, I couldn’t possibly wear my work clothes in the mornings. This meant I had to wear my university uniform and slowly slip past the gates. Upon reaching the city, finding a place to change was the next hurdle. All of these combined to become one massive chore, but with time it would become very mechanical. Like a superhero changing into his uniform in the alleyways, I used to find some empty spot beside the parked buses at the station. Staring into the mirror longer than usual, I comb my hair before the car owner shows up.

“Must get thinner, skinnier, bonier”, I mumble to myself.

Ever since working I’ve started working here, I’ve become more self-aware of who I am on the outside. If one were to give me a pen and a piece of paper I could my own face from memory because I’ve not just been staring at it, but also studying it. I walk around the beach road, watching light fill every nook and corner. By the time the sunlight hits the deck at full force, I’ll be at the counter, smiling and as hopeful as ever.

My days at the ice-cream shop had me yearning for a beach life. Working during the morning shift meant that rarely, you had anyone coming in before noon. Even then, it would mostly be young adults, much like myself from the nearby universities, who would come in during the earlier weeks of summer. As summer sets in, the shop would be deserted for most of the day. Most of the afternoon hours, I’d spent watching the ocean boil. There would always be however, some solitary figures who would be lurking around. I wonder what they did, like which job has the liberty of these little breaks to the beach, I wondered. Some of them wandered in house clothes, they must have houses nearby and that made me jealous of them. There’s a couple of high-rise buildings in the area that faced the seas. To wake up, and stumble across the rooms and to finally glance the sea would be some daily ritual that I would gladly accept. But for now, I am left with dire alternatives.

2

My grandfather used to visit the beach nearby very often. In late afternoons he’d go missing. Slowly, he’ll drift off whilst everyone was still occupied with their siestas. Late during the evening, an autorickshaw would appear at the front gate with him getting out of it. He’d hand me a bag of seashells. Shells of different shapes and sizes, that he collected as he walked through the entire stretch of the beach. Over the years we would have these stacked in old empty chests that we had put away in the backyard shed. We’d keep the bigger ones on display, even then it was slowly becoming one shell too many. Growing up, I used to think this was a normal thing for adults - it must be their leisure time adventure. Later on, I realized this wasn’t so, and I’d come to conclusion that he’d done it for his grandchildren. He loved us. We grandchildren never went along with him to the beach ever, since we were too small at the time. By the time we’d grown up, Grandfather had left us. To this day, I’m not really sure what drove that man to the seashore to collect these shells. Unlike grandmother who surrounded herself with life, my grandfather spoke to the lifeless. It was something personal, an exercise in life that was secret and sacred to him.

I look around the ice-cream shop. I couldn’t possibly change a thing here though I was in-charge of running the place. But I do think of the walls and how they could do with a different shade of paint. I didn’t think the colours of the steel chairs went with the pastel theme of the shop, nor did I like the flooring that particularly well. Whilst I nit-pick on these subtle inadequacies, I was an exemplar employee. I greeted everyone with joy that I squeezed out from my insides despite my otherwise seemingly lukewarm existence.

“What flavour would you like?”, I’d ask them if they seem lost.

Most of them had their minds set on what to get, the moment they left their houses. You can never have a dilemma with ice-cream, unless you are in a mood to surprise yourself. On any other day, everyone ordered the very same flavour and I would see it coming from a mile away after they take their time scanning the entire menu. Though the manager had asked me to promote the new flavour, I would almost never pull up that trick.

“Would you like to try our Red Velvet Berry Boba Sundae Blast?”

That’s three totally unrelated things cramped into one, topped off with an unnecessary blast. I rather wait for ten minutes and finally hear them pick one among Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate. If someone feels adventurous, they’d ask for Pista.

When you work in a small place such as mine, it is almost impossible not to overhear the conversations around you. I try to divert my hearing to the sounds of the waves but it is of no use. I pretend to be typing something on the computer but it’s just the third customer of the day, but they don’t know that. Within time I realize that though choosing the type of ice-cream is a very well thought out process, executed with so much care and finesse, it eventually drains people out. People have no taste in anything else beyond this. I hear the same stories, but in different versions, through different voices. A wife complains how she’s having trouble at home with her husband the same way a student described her flat mates. The accountant sleeping with the boss trope came from employees from two different companies. I see six people watching the same reel, and two of them watched it thrice, almost triggering me to go up to them and show them the door. People despite being so different, can end up being the same. For they are all being fed the same thing. At times like this, I understood the sick desperation behind the new flavours our company came up with every other month. At least they’re trying something. Why was I caught up in all this? This was my laboratory, this was my research.

The ice-cream shop is located at one end of the beach, a small standalone structure. The restaurant takes up the majority of the space but I guess they left out the best part for our shop. Right at the edge that connected the building and the beach, the shop provided a leeway into the beach from the main road. It was also one of the calmest parts of the beach where the water wasn’t too close, neither too far. There was a stream too, that ran to the ocean where you see the waters of different currents collide to cancel out each other and almost made the water still as it were dead. Some kids would try their hand at fishing at this stream, a little more upfront and they’d drop by the ice-cream shop showcasing their day’s achievements. They call me the ‘Ice-cream Man’. I liked my alter ego, it fitted the superhero-esque double life I was living, even though there wasn’t much heroism from my side. Some of them dug up holes around the beach, I never understood why, it seemed as if they were preparing to build sand castles but they, on most days, just dug holes and left the it as such. I remember a friend who lived near the coast who used to have sand on this porch. His father and his siblings together used to dig up the fine sands from the beach nearby and toss it on their front yard. Whenever we visited his home, it was as if we were entering a beach.

There’s a forbidden area north of the beach where fishermen used to go missing. It was still something dismissed as a myth until bodies started washing up on the beach along with the starfishes. One lucky soul who was lucky enough to be marooned on one of the scattered islands nearby would later describe the ungodly nature of the waves that swallowed his boat and crew in a whirlpool that seemed to have claimed all those lives till then. Years later, a mole was built, rocks rolled in towards the sea almost a kilometer inward. It felt like the world was ending there, standing at the edge of the rocks as there was no mainland visible and there lay only the haunting blues of the vast ocean before you. While I see the vast ocean carrying ships that light like little stars floating in its horizon as dusk sets in, on the opposite side the city lights up. There are always some fairs visiting the city, and the glow from all the rides, especially the giant Ferris wheel, lights up these sands. I’ve grown accustomed to the mechanical whirring and the laughter that compliments it. Away from all this chatter, there still lies of fleet of abandoned fishing boats that lay docked in the darkness, rotting away.

While it’s not always me just staring into oblivion and making sense of it all with my episode at the beach, once in a blue moon someone interesting walks in. One afternoon, while the shop was melting with me inside it, a customer walks in. A young man, in his mid-twenties wearing a cowboy hat. He ordered a scoop of Blackcurrant. He barely takes a glance at any of the ice-creams on display, pointing straight at the ice-cream of his choice. Only a psychopath would order Blackcurrant, that was my deduction. He makes very less eye-contact, much to my joy since I don’t have to pull up my academy award persona. After I hand him his ice-cream, he walks across to the seat by the window, facing the street. I felt it was odd since most people chose the seats by the rear, since it opened up to the beach. I was still, stealing glances at this ominous figure, all clad in black. The man took notes in his small pocket sketchbook whilst he let the ice-cream melt. Whenever someone did that it grew on my nerves, I did not like them ignoring the ice-cream like that. It was then I noticed, that there was a kitten inside his tote bag, and it was mewing at the lowest of frequencies. Now I wondered whether all that subdued movement was due to the fact that he’d brought his pet inside, and that was him trying not to give this secret away. I didn’t think of bringing it up, since there wasn’t anyone around. However, I did hope he’d leave soon enough before someone entered, and worse, made a ruckus on the spot once they’ve seen the little creature.

The man ate the ice cream in the sloppiest of ways. The purple liquid dripping everywhere after he was finished. After working here, dining outside would become a forbidden practice for me. I would refuse to take a bite, or even take a sip from a bottle in public, for it had become an extremely private matter for I feared if someone would be silently judging me. I even became more conscious of how I dressed at work, and later on, how I dressed up in general. I had never taken an interest to such things but nowadays I am careful, too careful in fact. Perhaps, it is silly from my side, but I’ve picked up weirder habits in life. I steal a glance at my reflection on the glass.

“Must get thinner, skinnier, bonier”, I repeat my mantra.

As I reach out for the cleaning liquid and the sponge for the mess the man had made, he’d come up to me instead of reaching for the door.

3

My shift ends around 5 pm, that is when the guy for the night shift comes in. I cannot ask for a more perfect job than this, as it leaves me the right time to catch the sunset. Years later, I’d yearn for this as I never see the sun after catching a glimpse of it during the lunch breaks. Time would be gone, but still, I reminisce my days at the ice-cream shop. Years later whenever I jumped between jobs, I’d hope it leaves me free by 5pm. On paper every job I took subsequently was from 9 to 5, but that never materialized. I often thought of extreme examples to juxtapose my situation in order to feel better. My friend tells me how he is devoid of sunlight since he works in a bank. Suddenly, I find an instant solace at this thought though I shouldn’t have. At the beach, the evenings draw in a lot of people, and this is actually more people flock to the ice-cream shop, but luckily, I don’t have to deal with them.

At the mornings I get to stroll by the beach as I head to the shop. I walk on the pathway hugging the beach, across the lined-up trees. I see the waves get bigger and bigger. Nobody is seen in these empty sands during the chilly hours of dawn. While I get out after work, the crowds are overwhelming however. The beaches fill up so fast, and to find a spot of tranquility to see the sun go down in peace, is no easy task. I see kites fly over me; I am reminded how kites have been a recurring motif throughout my life, though I haven’t flown any. Before I anchor myself somewhere I get a cup of ice orathi. I keep telling myself not to eat this, since it’s the most random thing to exist. I wonder whose idea was to eat shaved ice, with sugar syrup, dal, pickles and tutti fruity-all together mixed in a cup. I see vendors with huge blocks of ice, scrape off bits and pieces into a cup as people flocked around their carts. I gulp down the ice; it keeps me awake much like coffee does for people. I add more and more faces of strangers to my already tiring day, now and again I’d find passport size photographs, ID cards, newspaper clippings and even an obituary once in these sands. Again, lost faces, but unlike the ones who scroll past me, I pick them up. I have been building a strange catalogue of bookmarks of the dead and lost this way. Soon, sitting on the bus at night, travelling back to my lodging, I see the beach blend into the dark skies, and the sound of crashing waves remain. If you listen really carefully, you can hear the dead humming across from the other end of the horizon.

I remember hugging my grandmother across her legs, as we stood and watched the big ball of fire consume what was once our summer home. We didn’t have any neighbours, so it was just the house burning down in the midst of a withering jungle. A part of us died that day, and I would only realize this years later. Soon we couldn’t survive summers and despite being crammed together in our apartment, we were distant as ever. I would lose the capability of looking my family in the eyes while talking, and with time I spoke less and less. There was nothing much to be spoken of, for people always talked about topics they had no control on however it affected them more than so- the weather, on love, regarding politics, a weakening body and so on. It was better to stay mum. I’d soon skip meals and refrain from playing music on the stereo. Nobody lived next door and only a bald eagle would come visiting, crouching by the iron rod that was left hanging from a beam above. My cousin told me on the phone that the ruins of the home was now covered in moss and orange flowers bloomed over and it was quite the sight. The sun came down on the garden that grew on the dead remains of our infinite summers. I couldn’t stop thinking about the chests with all those sea shells buried deep under all that moss waiting to be discovered.

I walk along the beachside with Mr. Rupert in my tote. I’d made some modifications with the help of a tailor nearby to the very old black bag in which he’d arrived in. We made a pouch that would fit him in perfectly on the side of the tote, leaving him with enough space to poke his head out to catch the sunset with me. That fateful day, the stranger clad in all blacks had approached me with a request.

“Could you take care of my cat, I’m being followed right now, I swear I’ll come pick him up before sundown”, the stranger’s face had undergone a drastic turn as he begged me.

“Sure, why not”, I replied without hesitating. It was a small courtesy towards a fellow customer and a pet owner.

He seemed to fit into the typical cat dad persona despite him bringing about a chilly air into whichever room he walked into. But that night, he didn’t return. Nor did he return the next or the day after. I was taking care of the little kitten during the days, whereas my co-worker who covered the night shifts tucked him into bed. We would wait for our mystery man for a week, before we came to the realization that Mr. Rupert would be staying at the ice-cream shop from now on. I gave him the name Rupert, my co-worker told me it sounded very British. I thought all cats, in comparison to rest of the animals, were aristocrats. Hence, the name had to be very English. My co-worker gave the ‘Mr.’ prefix and the name stuck. Mr. Rupert perhaps is the luckiest cat since he would have an unlimited supply of milk since he was living at the ice-cream shop now. The kids, whenever they happened to come by brought fish to him too. My manager would eventually find out, but then he too found a soft spot for Mr. Rupert and he let him stay as long as sticks to the back room. To which Mr. Rupert agreed because he had found his spot already, and took his slumbers when the amber sun and the salty winds enveloped him. We all took care of the little animal, it was in-fact the first time any of us took care of a soul other than ourselves. I remember even though our summer home was a zoo of sorts, we never had a cat there.

I wasn’t just successful in coercing the manager to let Mr. Rupert stay, rather I was able to shake up a few things around the place. After months of pleading, I was able to get a new sapodilla flavoured ice-cream on the menu. We now had music playing, as mellow as it could get, so not to disturb the sound of the waves. We’d hang paintings, mostly replicas of Hopper since my manager was obsessed with him now. I thought if one were to begin a shop at a place where it seemed as if the world were ending there, it should be Hopper on the walls. During one of my walks, I’d noticed how each cart on the sands used to glow in the dark horizon with the waves thrashing behind them as violently as ever. Seeing this, I reckoned we had to fix the lights at our place. We decided to go for yellow, since all the carts on the beach where bright white. The ice-cream shop was now like the lunar yellow, a giant yellow moon rising, that surrounded the scattered stars in the night sky when viewed from the Ferris wheel that hovered above.

Watching the waves at sundown, I write a haiku:

i traverse the sands

a lost memory i seek

buried deep in me

The sea would be the proper setback for all genres, I thought to myself. I see families, couples, loners, beggars, alcoholics, perverts, lawmen, drifters, runaways, widows, orphans, hustlers, addicts, preachers, deserters, lovers, voyeurs, migrants, outcasts, saints and sinners. All of them fit together in this beach and nobody feels out of place. Everyone seemed to be at peace with one lesser day from their life slowly seep away into the ocean as darkness start to set into their eyes. Thank god for beaches.