Joberg.. Another story unfolded…..

All that time i was trying to realize if she was a good salesgirl or a good human being. I ended up buying couple of skin products apparently originating from the dead sea in Israel from her, even though i knew i was paying more money then i should. I think i figured out her to be a good human being in the end.

It was almost a small story unfolded there in that busy Sandton city mall in Johannesburg(S.Africa) where the big smiling statue of Mandela gives hope to all humanity. I was in Joberg on business and found few hours before the flight to buy some last minute gifts for the family, and that’s where i saw her.

She got my attention asking if i have a special lady in my life. I was intimidated. I wanted to say yes but just to play the game i said no. She was smart or was it a textbook response for the people appearing to be flirting when she replied, if i had a mother and sisters, and if they are special to me. And there started the whole sales game and a whole new learning for me. I was intimidated and intrigued more and more of her way of establishing her presence.

God-dam it She was beautiful but more than her beauty she had that right compassion and humility and that inner glow which can make weary souls like me feel hopeful of life. She had beautiful grey eyes, not the ones that pierces you like the first rays of the sun but the ones that tempts you to look more and more deep down inside to understand the mystery  inside a living being. She told me she is from a small town in Ukraine. She asked if i believe in magic. I asked myself… do i?? .. and i still felt hearing Yes from some corners of my self. She said she learned skin therapy from Israel and she travels sometimes to do sales.I asked her in the end if she believed in magic and she said Yes and that it has happened to her, and i left her wishing her more magic. On my part I was already mesmerized, for what is magic, if not a feeling of discrete sudden changes against all laws of natural physics, be it in body, spirit or just moods and emotions.

Long after, sitting on the plane back, I was thinking, what strange times I am living in. Coming from the Indian sub-continent, and living in Africa for so many years  and now Europe, and being attracted to a girl in this far south corner of Africa, who for god knows what reasons of economic survival or intellectual curiosity or perhaps the love of her life happens to be there in that part of the world… away from her cold Ukraine and selling the sands of the holy land…. I wonder what stories she had inside her. I wonder what stories she sees or creates while talking to strangers like me in these strange far off lands. I wonder if i will ever meet her, though there is little hope and probability…. I wonder if magic still exists in my life…… I wonder….

And the mysterious Rodriguez started singing on the back of my mind… I wonder…..
Weblink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6bjqdll7DI (I wonder by Sixto Rodriguez)