The tip!

I drove into the air checking bay after I had refuelled our red skoda rapid family car. I lowered my windows and felt the hot afternoon air rushing in through it. I had taken a whole 15 minutes to cool the interior of the car with the temperature I desired in this fusing heat. A familiar face appeared with a warm smile on the face. The face had that respect for the person driving the car and more than respect there was this love that said memories!

My very first memories of that man flashed right in front of my eyes like a huge LED screen was playing the flashback. I saw two children running around the petrol bunk with all the staff watching them play. The 7 year old girl was chasing the whole gloom out of the place when traffic in the fuel station was light. There was a 4 year old boy trying to match his sister’s steps. The onlookers in this case were all young men in their early twenties who were determined to take up working there as a full time job. The children rushed inside the office of their family business. There were loads of things they could pick and choose to play from. Rows of engine oil bottles neatly displayed, the cash receipt books(those days everything was without the prefix ‘e-‘ which meant it wasn’t pretty much e-less world), pen stands with used, tattered stationery overflowing, those red and green coloured pens the accountant used to write in the tally books. Then there was the most sought after – scraps of all kinds: boxes, broken pencils, used billing papers, old books etc. While they dug out everything the staff patiently watched over them.

That girl was me. The man in his twenties was now still here, in his late forties. His face was still the same for me, they still had the same eyes and the same smile. I had changed for him: I was driving a car and not tracing the path with little feet. I pulled a INR 50 tip (normal standard being INR 10-20 in the region) but it felt weird to hand him that. I wished I could tip him more but didn’t want to make it weirder and he might have wished that he wasn’t in spot to receive a tip from me.

I looked him in the eye and thanked him for his services. My car pulled out of the space and out of his sight. I saw him disappear in the rear view mirror.

Do you have any such memories that are awakened when you see something or someone? Or that familiar smell that reminds you of past?

P.C. Photo by Wayne Lee-Sing on Unsplash