MOTHER CANNOT LIMIT her tremble. Her lips
trembling, her hands moving in an uncertain direction, and the eyes are burning
with anger. The anger drips from her eyelids, too. She grabs a stick and
threatens our cow with a heavy blow.
“Mama…”
“Don’t speak to me.”
I fold my argument. Surrender is the best
policy. The night is not so cold. But Papa has taken out a thick rug, wrapped
it around the body, and arranged his weight of fifty-five years on a cot that
needs repair. I know about his inability to stand on my side.
“Why… why? Why should you marry her?
There are thousand and one girls ready to marry you. Why Meena?” Mama does not
know, perhaps, but in fact, she is shouting.
******
SINCE I JOINED as a teacher in a city high
school, I knew Meena, a librarian in our school. On the first day when I asked
her whether Somerset Maugham was available, she looked at me as if I was an
abnormal human-form. On that day she opened her closed cupboard; from that day,
perhaps, we became friends.
I would be greeted in a manner a university topper deserves: that was what I expected on the first day of my career. ‘The man with college dust still on his boots is a ‘total misfit’ for a reputed school like ours’: that was how senior colleagues greeted me. They talked like that; they spoke so in front of the students, too.
Meena came to my rescue. She
helped me in managing my work and in finding a single room accommodation in her
area. This created a side-effect. Our staff tagged us, Meena and me, as
close friends. We knew what they really meant by the term ‘close friends'.
Forgetting all the odds, the ‘close
friends’ discussed fictional flowers, passing their fingers on rims of the
teacups they shared. She liked Virginia Woolf and mother Teresa but remained
noncommittal on Bertrand Russell’s carpet-bombing on religion.
I had no idea how people fall in love, and how did they crawl after the falling. What I knew was that the library hall was my favourite destination, and the table beside a window a precious place.
Meena
would found a daily reason to step in earlier and resume at the table. On
Sundays, the ‘close friends’ would sit in a theatre for classical film or would
check the quality of the food served in the city restaurants. I did not know
how happy she was before we met. But I knew how she planned her expenses, how
she kept her house neat and clean, and how affectionately she talked with the
children of her neighbours.
IT WAS THE LAST DAY of my second term.
Meena entered the library with a senior lady’s smile. Her yellow silken dress,
with big buttons, walked in with the usual rhythm. But I had executed an
unusual idea. Standing in an unoccupied corner, I observed her from a point
where she could not see me. She tried to locate me, an unfailing object. She
failed.
The woman seemed to feel like the ‘only
train’ of the day had gone and she was left on a barren platform. Library ma’am
was quick at losing hopes. She stood alone among thousands of books. Drenched
with despair she moved towards her chair. Feet forgot the speed, lips the language.
When she reached the table, her lips rediscovered a smile.
“The man will choke my heart one-day,” she
murmured perhaps. There was one rose on her table. I had put a tiny
message on the chit attached with the rose.
The tiny message was: marry me, ma’am.
*********
THE RISING SUN took its time to drive out
the embedded cold before it peeped through murky sheets of clouds and
gold-plated the earth. When the cold wind blowing in a singular direction
changed its track, we had left our territory of worries behind.
“Hay man, drive slowly. Otherwise, people
would think you’re abducting me.” We were on a motorbike, going to my
village, fifty miles away from the city. I wished to show her my farms, my
family, and the red-brick house in which I had grown up. We were still on a
narrow road.
We were yet to cruise through un-furrowed
land. The strip of tar road cut the green shawl of swinging paddy into two
halves. We were yet to look at the paddy as one sea of green ecstasy. A
sudden roar of a jet plane broke the peace.
“Do you like a plane journey?”
“Never sailed in the sky.” She replied.
******
AT HOME, MY family greeted Meena whole-heartedly, as they
always liked my friends. Meena, being a woman and my staff member, was a special
guest for them. No one seemed to have sniffed our attachment.
The next morning I showed her my real assets: my farm, the lake, the captivating views of distant hills, and the tree sitting on which I used to read bulky books.
“Meena, shall we go to that side
of the lake?” I imagined that on the distant bank of the lake I would make a
thick cushion of green leaves, sitting on which Meena would put her head on my
shoulder; and the clock would stop ticking. Copybook aspirations.
Meena, a city creature, was in a different
world. She was involved in looking at a long line of villagers walking
alongside the road. Rainbow had descended on them. Every thread they wore
emitted their own choices: marital status wise, caste wise, purse wise.
“Hey young man, where all these people are
going?” On Meena’s shout there ran in a man of a rationed height. The height
was talkative, unstable on the ground by noticeable pleasure and a farmer of
tobacco. Everything smelt around his body.
“Ma’am, there is a fair today, at Lord
Shiva’s temple.”
“Anand, we will go to the fair first.” She thumped
thrice on my back.
I folded my lake-dream and caught the
temple road. Meena was younger by ten years when we stepped on the fair spot.
It was a spacious ground, not matching with any known outline of geometry. The
air was sweltering with the people of all genres: farmers, hawkers, snake
charmers, beggars, and politicians.
Suddenly she smelt a cloud of fume running out of frying pans, and her legs stopped. “Get me that fried. Chilli-chilli hot,” she shouted. I submitted; procured two plates of hot materials with an extra sprinkle of chilli powder.
The lady engulfed the stuff along with two glasses
of water. Then she hopped up to an ice-cream parlour. “Ice-cream balances
the fire of chilli,” she spoke as if quoting Isaac Newton. Once the cold stuff
melted through her throat, she caught my hand, as tightly as she could, and
dragged me among the dancing couples.
I felt I was drowning.
Swirling with sweating bodies around, she
danced wildly. One tight turban with a big drum and two singing girls were the
causes, which made the library ma’am so flowering. Her hair was a fan and
clothes drenched with sweat. I failed to participate, as I was a novice in that
part of the world: the dancing. But I secured her one hand to save the fresh
edition of library ma’am from falling on the ground. After a full session of
the circular dance, she left the concert.
“I…I was never…never so happy.”
“Sit down dear, you’re exhausted.“
“Let… let me feel the joy… Let me live it
out…” The joy was stronger than her fatigue. She had inhaled a sufficient
supply of pleasure and oxygen. “Anand, I’ve tasted life after a long…long
period.”
The temple God was next on her agenda. To
ring a bronze bell, she jumped like a schoolgirl. Bowing before temple idols
and the lingam, she placed offerings: a coconut, one packet of incense sticks,
sugar cubes, and a good-length currency note. She walked four times around the
temple, uttered verses in Sanskrit, which I could not translate.
Scorching heat was at its peak. We were coming down the temple hill.
“Anand, I wish I had wings. I want to swim over
the green lands. See, the clouds are brushing each other like lovers… see
there, green trees are raising their branches like welcoming hands… like this.”
She stood up on footrests, freed her hands wide, and closed her eyes as if she
wanted to embrace the whole world. Then she signed a trumpet with her
hands and looking at the sky she shouted, “Anand…Anand...”
I felt like skating on the curve of a
rainbow.
******
MAMA LIKED HER new guest much, the guest who could cook
tasty food for a big family like ours—even if residing in a city. I thought the
time was ripe. At night we set on the veranda. It was time for cool air to
breeze; for me, it was the climate I needed for my purpose.
The cool breeze stopped for a while. No one
looked displeased.
“We should meet her parents.” Papa was
watchful since we came.
“Papa, Meena has no near relatives. She…
she had a family. She was married, too. But unfortunately, her husband died in
a riot. Before five years. And yes, she is four years older than me.”
All the faces sitting around started
shaking their heads. Each one found a reason to quit the scene: elder brother
suddenly found out work at his friend’s home; his wife opted to join him. The
younger sister, though reluctantly, went into the kitchen. Besides Meena and
me, there was one person still on the floor. He was Papa, wanting to tell us
something, perhaps.
“I can’t see my son marrying a widow. You
all understand? And what are you doing there?” Mama raised her eyebrows at Papa. “Come
here, and help me to pull out these cushions.”
The night abruptly turned cold and dumb.
* * *
MAMA AND HER ready-to-blow stick do not
pass more time to jump in again. The anger has melted. Now it flows from her
eyes. The words are silent, but coming out with incessant sobbing. Her red
eyes look at no one. She sits on a stone step, keeping her trembling legs on
another.
“But… my child, why should you marry a
widow?” She has restored her motherhood. She does not look hating Meena,
as she stands up and sits beside Meena. “I believe she is a good woman.
But No. No, no, no. I would not allow you to marry her.”
“Mama, I like her. And other things
are not important to me.”
*******
WHILE RETURNING to the city, I stop at the village gate.
It is an arched entrance standing on weak pillars. For reading the word ‘W
E L C O M E’ engraved on the stony ark, I have to tilt my head.
The distance between WE… and ME… looks unbridgeable. The
line running under the letters looks like a barbed-wire fence. From a distant
hilltop, I again look at the village. It is full of houses, small houses,
looking like rat holes. These abodes are perhaps unable to keep bigger things
inside. They have built up their walls too strong to see the faces of
others.
“Meena, do you think I am still as good as
your life partner?”
Her tearful eyes: she is a deep thought.
Reconsidering something?
But there is no reconsideration on my part.
My terms of the relationship are clear. Next Monday I would be going to
the house of a lawyer, one of my friends, and get the papers ready. Meena and I
would sign the papers in front of The Registrar of Marriages.
It would wipe out Meena’s designation, ‘a
widow’.
“Mama, I have something to tell you.” Everyone’s eyes were fixed on me. Meena seemed anxious. All others waited eagerly for my next words.
“Mama, I... I mean Meena and I have decided to
marry.”
THE END
