unearthed a couple of writings from my 2011 exchange days. they were mildly entertaining so i'm sharing them here!
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Mr Tramp, that was what they called him. His presence was always felt whenever we saw
him around the neighborhood, and by that I didn’t mean it in a good way. He had
this swagger. Stumpy, almost troll-like. He had a thick, bushy shrub which overwhelmed
his entire face, and only his eyes and nose peeked out from his Amazonian
forest. I never really knew how he looked like, but I imagined his face was
covered with warts and pimples, just like how they speckled his (also very
bushy, but to a lesser degree) arms and legs.
His head of hair was greasy, a poor attempt at taming his frizzy mane
with bottles of petroleum. He was the kind who sat on buses and left greasy
hair prints on the windowpanes. The kind whom people kept a radius of 5 metres
from. Have you ever read The Twits by Roald Dahl? I imagined Mr Tramp took his
breakfast just like the Twits- by scouring his Amazonian forest for scraps of
food from 3 weeks back. He would smack his lips and grunt heartily feeding on decomposing
blueberry pancakes. Ew.
No one wanted to be near Mr Tramp. There was one occasion I happened to
when I was a little girl on my way to school. I had swung around the corner and
bashed right into his belly and boy, did his breath stink of rotting rats and manholes
on a New York summer day. “Ohhh girl, don’t go bouncin’ around, be..” I had
scooted off in the opposite direction before he completed his sentence, mom’s
warning about not speaking to weird strangers ringing at the back of my head.
Like his name suggested, Mr Tramp didn’t have a home. He was always
seen wandering around the neighborhood, draped in his brown, holey patched up
coat, sleeping in parks and sieving for scraps in the trash. Mom said that Mr
Tramp used to be wealthy, and then he got into the wrong dealings at work, lost
his job and house and become slightly bonkers. Well, I didn’t know how far that
was true, but he was always mumbling to himself.
About 6 months back, I was stuck outside my house waiting for someone
to come home as I had forgotten my keys. I saw Mr Tramp 2 blocks away, buying a
bagel from a makeshift cart, only to tear it into half and offering it to a
shoeless boy.
And then 4 months back, I was at the café alfresco waiting for my date
to turn up, when I saw him across the street, offering a quarter to someone
fumbling in her purse to make a call on the public phone.
2 months back, I was on my way home late at night on a winter night,
when I heard feet shuffling, and then huffing and puffing behind me. I pulled
my coat closer and walked faster, afraid to turn around. The sounds grew
heavier and it wasn’t long before I broke into a run. That was when I heard
“Hey Missy, your purse!” I stopped in my tracks and turned around. Mr Tramp! He
drew out his grubby hand and dropped the purse into my hands. Still in shock, I
looked up at him. Oh yes, there it was, the 2 eyes hiding in the familiar
Amazon forest. They winked.
And today, Sunday morning, I am out on the park bench in the
neighborhood having my coffee and sandwich and reading the papers. The
headlines read “Our 10 Million Lottery Jackpot Winner”! Ooh, lucky chap, I
thought as I checked out the photograph of the Brad Pitt look-a-like.
Just then, someone swaggers by and does a double take like he
recognizes me. I look up from my papers, and.. .It’s.. Him?
“Hey Missy, remember me?” He winks, this time his beautiful face in
full glory.
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