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When the kindness of strangers make you smile

Sunday morning. First day of the workweek. I was in the elevator of my building, leaving for office. The elevator stopped a few floors down. I looked up from my phone, from the flurry of messages on largely family groups. We hadn't yet descended to G for ground. Ting. Elevator stopped at a floor. A disheveled neighbour walked in. I had never seen him before in the building. "Hey", he said. (Or was it a "hi"?). "Hell-oo!", I sang out, somewhat exaggerated, a result of multi-tasking. "Wow. That sounds really cheerful for a Sunday morning."
"Yea, just psyching myself that only five days left for the weekend," I said, eyes still on my phone screen.
"Five days?! Haha. Yea. Good thought," he said, and almost mumbling: "I'm going to go for a haircut now."
"Thanks," I said, acknowledging the chivalry, "Have a good week". "Bye!" Conversation done.
It doesn't take much, does it, to keep up with people in the building? Every now and then, I am reminded of how I enjoy random exchanges about nothing in particular. It leaves you feeling nice, a whiff of pleasantness in the air.
Over the weekend, I made a trip to Dubai Festival City mall. I never usually visit that place because there are malls closer to me. But the malls closer to me don't have the Pakistani clothes stores I wanted to check out and maybe buy something from. An advantage of this strategy is that when you buy one or two of those outfits, people back home in Delhi wouldn't have similar stuff from Fabindia or Anokhi or whichever handspun, handcrafted, handspun joint in vogue that season. And there's always intrigue and you might receive a backhanded compliment. A straight compliment is more generous but less fun, perhaps.
The last time I was at a branch of the same store (in Oasis Centre), some two weeks ago, I bored a colleague trying on three or four outfits and asking her, what do you think? She thought everything was fine, if a bit loose. The store manager at the Oasis Centre shop told me I had a better chance of finding the right size if I went to their store in Festival City. They have the largest collection, I was told; more variety, more sizes, more reasons. Fine. I was sold. And I was now at Festival City.
When I walked into this shop, the salesgirl was dealing with a pair of women: possibly a mother and her daughter, maybe in her late 30s, early 40s. Peripheral note: I wasn't a fan of what the daughter was wearing; too much bling in an attempt to glam up a pair of jeans and a top, heels too high, too white, too impractical for a jaunt at the mall. The mother figure was giving her opinion on the clothes the daughter figure was picking - I'm wary of concluding whether they were mother or daughter or shared another relationship because, well, for one, fairly recently, I was at a store in Delhi with mum-in-law, and salesgirls kept making it evident that they thought I was with my mother: "Aapki mummy bula rahin hain" (your mum's calling), and so on.
I went about my business, checking out what I wanted to, picking out things I wanted to try on, asked for my size, got it, and headed to the trial room. In a few moments, I had paraded out in trial clothes examining my reflection in the large mirror outside, asking the salesgirl if there was a different size in the lowers. No luck. I went back to trial room to change out. When I re-emerged in my own clothes, I saw a flattering sight: the daughter figure was wearing the exact same clothes that I picked out and tried, and I overheard her say "but she's thin and tall". I tried not to appear too triumphant. (These incidents are always a kick, most flattering, and I was very amused). She smiled at me. I smiled back. "Oh, what a pretty top! The combination really works - mustard and pink." "Yes, it looked good on you so I thought I must try it," she said - and I gave her 10 points in my head for vocalising a generous thought. "It's just that their fits aren't the best." We agreed. I walked out of the store to my next shopping destination. I wish I had lingered back though. I really wanted to see if the lady had bought it.
- nivriti@khaleejtimes.com