St. Xavier's.
Saturday afternoon. Class cancelled.
First year of college so every tiny segment of free time was lush with either ennui or enthusiasm.
This Friday it was enthusiasm.
Br, a guy in my class asked a bunch of us to go for a movie.
Where?
Sterling, of course.
Gorgeous Sterling. In that teeny strip of tree-lined Avenue near VT. Near the beautiful, white, so pristine that pigeons got polite and didn't poop building of Deutsche Bank.
Sterling with curved stairs, large areas for balcony seatings, little alcoves for Dress Circle, a massive square for the general junta that clapped and hooted and threw pennies...that space called 'Stalls'. And everything pointed to that large swathe of magic that took you away for a spell...the silver screen.
But Sterling was expensive.
Which movie? Speed. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. (It's the movie that got me to watch films by myself. But will write about the movie another day.)
But Br told me that it wasn't about the film at Sterling. It was about something else. Since I had given him Pol. Science notes, he would treat me to something special.
He had said that aloud and for no real reason I blushed. Mainly because the fools around me went, "Ooooh! Something special?! What? What?'
Br said nothing. I don't think he registered the joke. But ten of us went trooping to Sterling.
And inside while we waited with a bunch of others, we smelled it...a bouquet of warmth, sweetness, candy, butter...we smelled caramel popcorn.
"It's sweet and salted", Br said. "I'll get you some."
It was really expensive. At least three times the price of the regular salted ones.
"You don't need to share", he said. But I did anyway. I offered. But the reaction from the group was that if they had to spend that much cash on taste they couldn't understand, they may as well have the chilli ice-cream at Bachelor's.
I held that small tub. The grease soaked through the thin paper. It smelled even more decadent every passing minute.
We went in and you could almost see the halo of caramel popcorn around the few people who had them. It was that distinctive at the time.
It tasted so lovely. It tasted like perfection one didn't know was possible. Each kernel reminded me of every perfect sweet and crisp combination I had had...vanilla ice-cream cones, bread butter toast with sugar, crisp dosas with ghee and honey...this was so good.
I remember I came home and told Ma and Papa about it. I wrote about it to my grandfather. When my cousin called from Delhi, I cited caramel popcorn as the definitive clincher that Bombay was a better city than Delhi. (It was quite a raging debate back then.)
Sterling used to be the only place that sold it for a while. And for that reason alone, I loved going there. We build our sanctuaries young. One of mine was going to the movies by myself, getting coffee and a packet of caramel popcorn and going away wherever the moving lights on the screen took me.
It has easily been a year since I have had caramel popcorn.
Maybe it took this long for my palate to get cleansed so that I remember what it tasted like for the very first time.
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