Just One Smile

Posted by: Sara Bartlemay

14 hours on a train can do a lot to someone. I personally love trains, but this one was different. It travelled across a desert space, without air conditioning, and it went rather slowly with frequent stops from Agra to Varanasi. Its the kind of travel situation that makes you cringe inside - its 120 degrees outside, possibly hotter inside and inside is sweaty, and just downright grimy.
I sat across from an Indian family: Parents, Grandmother, Aunt/Uncle and four children. Grandmother and I had a rough start. She would return my smile with only a glare at first, and then when my water bottle accidentally rolled out from the top bunk and hit her arm...well, then she really hated me. But I was determined to get her to smile at me by the end of the 8 hours. Oh yes, did I mention that the ride was supposed to take 8 hours and ended up taking 14? Left that out did I? Shucks.

Anywho, I was fascinated by her wrinkled hands and decorated bare feet. Sitting across from one another, our eyes would often meet, each time with her giving me dirty looks, and I continued to smile.
When she tried to get her tattered canvas suitcase down from the top bunk, I attempted to help and she yelled so sharply in Hindi, I thought that she assumed I was trying to steal her bag instead.
Then her grand daughter sat down and she and I quickly exhausted all of her English and my Hindi and were left with nothing but warm smiles to exchange. But Sarah taught the entire family how to play GO Fish ( Grandmother refused, and looked dispassionately out the window) and we played again and again. Later, I offered the granddaughter a chocolate cookie. Her grandmother, who was sitting next to her, slapped the girl's leg and scolded her in Hindi immediately after the girl ate my cookie. (Oh no, I though, she assumes that I am now trying to poison them all) But then, Grandmother did a funny thing. She held out her patterned hand and made eye contact with me. I hesitated, and handed her a chocolate cookie too. She threw it into her toothless mouth and something happened. It started in her eyes, with srinkly lines- a warm smile that moved over her face to the cookie crumbs on the sides of her cheeks.
I looked out the window, drenched in sweat, and realized - I am in a beautiful place, and I am so lucky to be here. I woke up inside and finally I could see the beauty. I got beyond obsessing about my discomfort and opened my heart to the strange and new territory moving past my humid window space.

"We live in a beautiful world.
All that I know
Is there's nothing here to run from." -Coldplay