Taking Candy From A Near-Stranger

Sometimes, it feels like the right thing to do

Uma —

When R and I entered the breakfast area of our hotel in Alabama, I spotted the bespectacled, middle-aged Indian woman right away. She sat hunched up at a table in a booth near the wall. Her right foot hovered slightly off the side of the booth as if she were poised to leave.

We went up to her, and R introduced us. Her name was *Uma, and she was currently R’s co-consultant on his data integration project.

R had given me a basic idea about his co-worker’s background. We exchanged greetings, and Uma’s face lit up when I addressed her in her mother tongue, Marathi. (Marathi is one of the languages spoken in Mumbai where I grew up.)

We spoke briefly, before R and I moved away to one of the tables in the center of the small restaurant.

About ten minutes later, I was trying to catch the server’s eye when I saw Uma standing by her booth. She was looking at us, head tilted, a frown wrinkling her forehead.

I read her expression as: Should I go over and join them?

I beckoned to her.

She straightened and smiled awkwardly as if embarrassed to be caught staring. Still, she approached our table and pulled up the chair next to mine.

Breaking the ice —

“Which part of India are you from?” I asked — an icebreaker of a question when you meet someone from back home.

It turned out she came from the small town where R’s younger sister lived with her family. She had also worked in the same prominent multinational in that town as two of my friends did.

We exchanged notes about the people we both knew.

Then we moved on to the broad strokes of our own lives. Our families, the places we had lived and worked. How often we visited India. How COVID had affected our lives.

We met every day for the next four days. When R and I came down in the mornings, Uma was usually in the middle of breakfast. She joined us when we were halfway through our meal. We left the restaurant together.

Flying home —

On Friday, day five, Uma told me she was flying home after work.

“It’s been five weeks now… one more to go.” She sighed. “It’s Monday through Friday in Alabama, weekends home in Detroit.”

“Do you travel every week?” I asked.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “I work from home. But I have to be onsite for four or five weeks during the project implementation.” She added, “I would quit if I had to travel every week.”

It gets lonely —

She waited with me in the hotel lobby while R went up to our room to pick up his earphones.

I suggested we take a selfie.

“Masta idea!” Uma said, punchily mixing Marathi and English. She took a couple of expert selfies and texted them to me.

“I’ll WhatsApp these to our friends,” I said, “with the caption, ‘Guess whom I met in Alabama!’”

She laughed, then briefly touched my arm. “I just wanted to say, ‘Thank you!’ for giving me company this past week.”

“That’s all right,” I replied, “My pleasure.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. It can get lonely in here.”

“You don’t have friends on the project team?”

She shrugged. “The guys get together for beers after work — ”

“And the women?”

“Just two from New York, early thirties.” Her grimace was self-deprecating. “I… don’t fit in — ”

“Yes, it can be — ”

“But all of this week, it felt so, so good,” she rolled on, “to talk to someone who knows the same people. Who can talk about stuff back home. And in Marathi! I — ” she broke off, then paused. “I’ll be back.”

KitKat bar —

I watched her walk away and disappear into the small room behind the reception desk. The room held two vending machines. She might have gone in to pick up a beverage or energy bar.

She joined me a minute later. In her hand was a KitKat bar.

“This is for you,” she said holding out the candy.

“For me?”

“Yes… just to say ‘Thank you!’”

I blinked down at the chocolate bar.

You don’t usually give an adult a single candy bar — unless it’s one of those specialty chocolates. It is more customary to present a box of candies.

On the other hand, Uma wasn’t gifting me a KitKat bar. She was offering a gesture of thanks — sweet, simple, and spontaneous. And her gesture was — it seemed to me — worth more than gourmet chocolates or a box of elaborately-wrapped candies.

I reached out and took the KitKat bar from Uma’s hand. “Thank you,” I said.

I enjoyed this morning stroll with Kelley Murphy:

And this story by Randy Runtsch about cats and humans — really about affection:

And here’s some of my stuff:

Thank you, Sahil Patel and Reciprocal for publishing my story!