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A chorus of claps erupted from the adjacent table - piercing the blanket of silence on what was usually a slow Sunday morning. It was an odd distraction from my weekend coffee routine. A middle-aged man at the said table was reading out an essay on a topic that seemed to be about his childhood experiences growing up in the favelas of São Paulo. It was a reading that I could only assume was an excerpt from a book he wrote - owing to how his captive audience comprising ten well-dressed individuals, remained transfixed to every word, acknowledging each clever turn of phrase with hearty applause. His thick accent seemed to appreciably add to the authenticity of his anecdotes, taking his listeners along a cultural voyage.
Our man of the moment however didn’t seem to be enjoying the attention. It felt like he was enduring it. Perhaps this impromptu reading was a necessary literary rite-of-passage, or maybe it was a dare culminating from a lost bet or part of an irrepressible craving to belong. But beyond his likely motivations for succumbing to this public reading, I was struck by his show of vulnerability and the obvious stomach-churning discomfort his sweaty countenance gave away.
Yet it all made sense.
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