Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

(Gabriel García Márquez: 100 Years of Solitude)

he said it in spanish...and then i caught my tummy, yelped and fell off the chair...nope not magical realism my style...

the man who cured me of all ailments was talking to me in a language i understood and loved and he was all of four feet tall....and there he was yelling for some assistance to pull up this piece of lard off the floor and get her onto a stretcher....

funny how one meets like-minded souls...and surely not among sterilised white savlon smelling walls....

but there he was and then i didnt mind if i died on the table...this man could not fuck around with me....

his eyebrows perked...he said no smoking....your ulcer is glaring at me and i dont like the way it looks...

anything for you doc i said and almost saluted...

i knew from now on i would not see another medical practitioner as long as this man was alive and within arms reach....

me...a closet writer, poet and novelist....i had heard this line a few years back and memorised it even before i read the book...something in those little lines and the discovery of ice touched me...

me in less dramatic conditions, stood in my snow boots, in shimla staring at small icicles falling down on my face...watching by in the falling dusk as the white carpet around me became real and cold making me shiver and spew smoke from my mouth and a non-smoker then i carved that moment and then called everyone i loved and knew to tell them about ice...not what i had played with in the refrigerator..but the real soft thing i wanted to hold close to my face, yet made me feel this slight heat that was radiant and loving yet would leave an unwanted mark....

did gabo know me....

i read Love in the time of Cholera and knew i wanted a love story like that...and then i read this book...a birthday gift...one of the most cherished...on the train back to trivandrum...finished it on the first day...by dinner...and i stared at the many around me...college mates..playing rummy...(is that how that game is spelt? who cares...but for the lay man a version of cards....takes off on what i dont know) and wondered about a woman in white flying past on a magical carpet and i wanted to be a witch...a writer, a poet, gabo's muse and what not....

yes he tells me a story and i love listening to him...

and now you guys understand him....