The best place to hide magic is in plain sight. This is what I would delightfully discover every time I laid hands on a Sunday supplement newspaper, oysters with little stories of grand lives lived and survived.

My memories are lined with such stories told from the sidelines. Once a week, when the newspaper boy flicks his hand in grace and manifests a brittle newspaper bunch on our front yard, the little bit of magic hidden in the supplement would rejoice and try to fly away. I would hold the main paper and request the supplement to tag along. The former would wear a Bandhgala and shout from its podium – tales of war and crime; skepticism and trivia; sports and news from across the seven seas – but the latter is an old man, sitting on a red bricked verandah, shaded by wavering Peepal trees, telling stories of life – his voice rocking along its waves.

‘News’ is alive only for a day, but the stories from the Sunday supplement are those that survived for over hundreds of years, slithering in and out of lives, both big and small, to end up in the hands of an editor who satiates her quench for romanticizing life by sharing it through the little paper she carefully curates. When the papers reach my hands, I notice the old man telling tales, and rather than wait for politics and crime, I rush to the verandah, waiting for him to share magical stories from Bengal and Kashmir, roads he traveled, and adventures he lived.

And thus, when I’m often stumped by the question of where do I see myself decades down the lane, the only truthful answer seems to be – on a verandah, shaded by a Peepal tree, telling stories of the Bengal and Kashmir I saw and felt, while magic brims in my wrinkled eyes. I’d smile mischievously if a kid sets aside the big fat paper and opens the little Sunday supplement to accompany me. That’s how magic travels, hidden in plain sight.

<Originally published on Muffled>