Again in Leon. And using the opportunity to brush up my rusty Spanish as we roam the ancient city.
A woman on the airport bus correctly guessed that my mother and I were Indians - and promptly announced that she loved Indian culture and Bollywood and that she would love to visit someday. Another woman listening to our conversation jumped in to say she had visited India once and found it to be a country of contrasts. That was an apt description, I said.
My mother, after a few unsuccessful attempts to respond to our fellow travellers in English fell silent after she realized they didn't understood much beyond 'Please' and 'Thank you'.
One of the women was mildly surprised to hear of our upcoming five-hour bus journey to Leon, an unusual choice for tourists from South Asia, and advised me to take care of my mother. She seemed to get emotional seeing this mother-son duo visiting Spain and I didn't quite understand till she explained her mother died just a few months earlier. Little did she know my family was still healing after my father's sudden death. It's a blow that only time - and perhaps a change of pace in the sun and siestas of Spain - can help soften.
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