I had been searching for sandal incense sticks for a long time now. It wasn’t that they are tough to find but I was looking for locally produced sandal incense sticks, not the one from big brands such as Moksh, Cycle Pure, or Mangaldeep. I had told some of my friends here to get me good locally produced sandal incense sticks and they would give me a call during weekends, when they were out on family shopping, to tell me about big brand incense sticks. I would respond with thank you for trying. In search, I had gone to the shops adjoining temples, which are in plenty in Bangalore, I had talked to bicycle or moped incense vendors, and I had cut short my journey the moment many a times I saw a shop which looked promising.
I would often go to shops. The owner would show me Mogra, Rose, Lavender, Chameli incense sticks and tell me they smell even better than what you asked for. “What you asked for by the way?” I had told them both in English and Hindi. But when such suggestion and this question became frequent, I googled Kannada words for Sandalwood. I would even use those tongue-twisting words such as Ekkada, Kera, Padarakse, Mettu, and Srigandhada, at every chance I got to explain what I am looking for. Not many owners appreciated my hard work. I got two types of responses: some owner and people felt that I was making fun of their languages and would give me a hard stare (whenever this happened, I didn’t stay there a minute longer) while other people would ask me repeatedly what you want and urge me to speak in Kannada and then would giggle and not only that I had increased the sale of those shops, as they would call passersby to listen to me (I could be a sport for a short time but with repetition I felt humiliated). I don’t call this discrimination. I would have behaved the same to anyone from other state had I not gone out of my state to live or work. Other strange behaviors I had observed are: Some people would ask to me, “Why are you throwing your waste here?” I didn’t have any idea where to throw my waste, until I saw them throwing their waste there. Sometime, I would stand in a dosa place and working people would ignore me until I am the last one in front of them. How much more fun one can get in search of incense sticks?
One would wonder that how tough was it to find out locally produced sandal incense stick in the Bangalore but I couldn’t. I might be possible that I hadn’t gone to the right place or hadn’t found the right place in my wanderings. I wasn’t always unsuccessful. I didn’t find some locally produced sandal incense stick. One I found smelled great. I bought it and lit it. It generated so much of smoke that I thought it would work better as an insect repellent. After some tries, I had almost given up on the idea of finding a good locally produced sandal incense sticks.
I stepped down from the bus in Jayanagar, where I had come to get some clothes. I crossed the road and reached to other side. The moment I stepped on the sidewalk, I got the whiff of fragrance. Next moment, I found myself standing in front of a vast stacks of incense sticks. There, to my surprise, was the box of sandal incense sticks. As I took a box of the sticks to check where these words produced, I noticed a laminated sheet on the left of the sandal incense sticks. In the laminated sheet, there was a black and white photo of a guy who remotely looked like him. Underneath the picture, Shivalingu M. was written. This seller was a differently abled person. There was white stick next to him and he looked away from me. Next to him, sat a guy in ICICI ATM bank uniform. Since I picked the box, I felt that his blind eyes had been shifted toward me, as if he judged a new customer by a smell of which incense stick he had picked it up or smelled the difference in the smell of that particular incense. Something was there but I just couldn’t be sure. One thing I was sure that this was a locally, as well as hand rolled, sandal incense stick.
Even before I would be overcome by pity, he asked me in Kannada, “What do you want?” Until now, I had gotten used to questions in Kannada but I had felt that people here had gotten used to get answers in Hindi or English (I asked him in Hindi, thinking that he wouldn’t know English) “How much for this sandal incense pack?” He replied, “170 Rs, sir.” I said, “Okay.” I took out two 100 Rs notes and passed it him. I told him that I have given him two notes of 100. At this time, I thought that the ATM guy, who sat next to him, was his friend and might help him out in dealing with currency. He took the two notes from me, took out a 100 note from his top shirt pocket, judged my notes with length and width of his 100 Rs note and then he said, “200 Rs, sir.”
Then, put these notes in the top shirt pocket, pulled out changes from his pant pocket. There were notes of Rs. 50, 20, and 10. He straighten them out on his palm once again and once again he assessed their dimensions. He gave me a smallest one and then middle sized one notes.
It took him less than a minute doing this.
“Thank you!” It came out of my mouth automatically.
He said, “You are welcome!”
All the pity, I had after this sentence, was I had for myself.
