Book Fair Shenanigans- part 2 :)

         Back to paying on mobile again- that which started everything here 🙈. After paying my phone screen reverts to home and the elderly man squints trying to recognize the man in my wallpaper. Beyond Flustered, i timidly let him know that the man is in fact, a south korean , NOT JAPANESE!!- Kim Namjoon, the BTS leader to be exact. "I love their music!" i declare emphatically which is met with good natured smiles all around. I don't know when my life got to the point that Im telling a japanese man about a korean man in a random book stall in chennai. Then i hear my sisters voice "we are sisters!"  and i'm surprised to find her there. Later i learnt that while she was looking around the sweet lady invited her in. Im saved by the belle (pun intended) The Stall gets lively again.

snap from my sis :)

     As she selects a book and talks with the lady, i ask the black T shirt man about the best shrines , Jinja, i clarify, to visit in Japan. He recommends Meiji jingu, a shrine near tokyo. Finally we leave saying "arigatou" (thank you)  all around with replies in the same vein , also with origami cranes as freebies. A few steps away , we find the renewed courage to try asking for a picture. so we circle back to them and request the same, to which they agree at once. The Tamil man jokes around asking us to pay and volunteers to take the photos. Then one of them hands out their phone saying "mo ichido kure" (one more time) and i translate the same to my sis. The lady seemed visibly impressed and now we leave with Ja ane (bye). This was overall my third time meeting Japanese people by chance and i don't know what to make of it. 😎

         After resting for a bit we headed to the snack stalls. We tried the paruthipaal, a generous helping of payasam like concoction, comforting in the cold evening. The "Sukku coffee" from another stall tasted like hot water with a barely there whiff of spice and was handed out in a tiny paper cup?! debatable as it was more like a shot glass. oh well. By the time we went back to bumblebee the ground was mostly vacant. And so we comfortably set out on our return home. The drive back home was largely without incident except for an inconsiderate motorist who zoomed across us from the wrong side of the road when the traffic had just started to move from a stop, close to our home. Sis braked immediately as to not knock him down. His bike still hit the car bumper on its left and he just sped off again, without so much a word or a glance. On reaching home we found the cladding  cracked from the impact , a part of it  hanging off a little. Our Parents'  "We told you so" certainly didn't help. Honestly,  we can take every precaution in the world and yet sometimes we do end up paying for someone else's stupidity. C' est la vie. (that's life.)

pls ignore my horrendous attempt at privacy :P

                     overall the day was great despite minor hiccups. Message of the day? Revisit places which brought you joy as a child if you're able to. Chances are that, they'll still make you happy. Amidst the daily grind of making our living, we need a bit of joy once in a while to remind us to live in the moment, however transient it might be. C' est la vie. :)