Tuesday, May 19, 2009

footsteps


Blind Mrs. Mitra sat by the iron-barred window and listened to the rain. Drip, drip, it went, on the brick tiles of the roof and splash, against the aluminium frame of the window, newly installed, because the wood, a hundred years old, had been eaten away by time. She could feel the city outside – the air felt grainy, like the air in front of the grinding mills at home, a long time ago – but colder, and harsher.

The sound of the city was lulled by the rain – and the metal sounds of Pratima, her daughter-in-law, washing the dishes in the little kitchen next door. The sound of the dishes reminded her of her knitting – she felt the cold steel of the needles in her palm and sighed. Clickety-clack, they would go – with the rain – but she felt like remembering, now.

Ajay had presented her the knitting needles – Ajay, her brother’s son, orphaned as a child of four months. The same day, it was, that Ajay and Prashant, her own son, had graduated from the military academy together – two smiles, so similar, so indistinguishable – she had felt them with her old wrinkled fingers on their lips, a foot above her head. Prashant had gifted her the aluminium window frames. Pratima had laughed, but she hadn’t found it funny – cold, instead, as if Prashant didn’t know how to love.

Splash – and thump – boots in the street. Then footsteps came loudly, and slowly, up the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Mrs. Mitra turned her head towards the doorway – it was open, she knew – it was always open. She wondered who it was – those boots were heavy on the red-cemented floor – a raincoat? Or was it a jacket?

“Pratima!” she called. “Look and see – someone is here. See what they want!”

There was a clash of metal, again, from the kitchen.

“Ask them, Ma – I’ll be a minute.”

The boot stepped into the room – thud, it went, a duller, softer thud, lulled by the water it carried from the world outside. The step startled the blind woman, sitting so placidly by the window across the room.

“Ajay?” she cried, half-croaking, half-whispering – and ran across, into the man’s arms. She lifted her old worn hands up to his face – the funny lumpy cheeks and the lips – so similar, so indistinguishable.

“You’re home? From the war? Why? When? Why didn’t you write – my darling –”

She stopped suddenly. A whimper – soft and yet so unbearably loud in the room. A small wet spherical circle dropped onto her outstretched fingers. Plip – louder than the loudest whiplash of rain outside.

She tore away and looked back – “Prashant?” Her voice was steady. “Has Prashant been killed?”

The man opposite her broke into horrible heart-wrenching sobs. Pratima hurried in from the kitchen, her footsteps hard on the cold floor.

“Prashant!” she screamed – “You’re home!”

Footsteps rushed across to the man. The blind woman collapsed to the floor. A quiet thump.

“No –“ she whispered.

“What’s wrong?” Pratima was saying. “Ajay? Is he hurt?”

The man rushed blindly across to the blind woman – flaying her arms about her, searching, searching – for those cold steel needles – so full of love.

He handed them to her and hugged her, sobbing.

“I’m so sorry – Ma –”

But Mrs. Mitra raised her head, surprised. She had felt love in that embrace. The needles felt cold and distant in her fingers, like they were saying goodbye. She had felt love in those arms. In the wrong arms – but love, nevertheless – so similar, so indistinguishable.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

playing pretend


            She was a little older than I was – about twelve. Her braids hung loosely over the low garden wall as she leant over it, smiling at me with a strange pair of liquid brown eyes – which dazzled red when they caught the sun.

            “How old are you?” she asked me, and I blinked, because her lips hadn’t moved.

            “Ten,” I replied and her eyes widened.

            “I think I can read minds,” she said.

            It was a funny way to begin a friendship, but she crossed the wall and entered our garden, landing on the tulip bed. I pulled her away hurriedly: my mother was extremely sensitive about the flowers.

            We were children and it was easy to believe. She spoke to me always with her mind, and projected what she read in others’ minds into mine, so that I could share. We learnt many things about the world that way, and it was frightening sometimes.

            One night my mother came home from work crying. She pretended her eyes were dry, but we could always tell.

            “How are you today?” she smiled, before she went upstairs. That wasn’t the sort of thing she usually said. She gave me a strange look before she went, a half-hungry, yearning look of despair that lasted a second before she turned away.

            My friend looked at me. Both our eyes were brimming with tears. And both of us knew why.

            “I’m sorry,” she broke down. “I didn’t want you to know.”

            And she ran out of the room.

            I stood there, unable to move. My mother was going to die. She knew – she hadn’t wanted to tell me. But I knew. And it was terrible. Every day after that was forced. I couldn’t talk to my mother – every word I said, every look I gave her was unnatural. And this made her sad. She couldn’t tell me and she didn’t know why I wasn’t myself. Every hour of everyday went by just as before – a little strained, neither of us knowing what to do, but both knowing what shouldn’t be known.

            Sometimes not knowing can be a good thing, I told my friend. Knowledge can be terrible. And sad. She never wanted to do it again. She hated her ability. Ever time I met her, there was something in the way she talked that told me that what we had discovered had affected her so much that she’d forgotten how to live. She was older and it was my mother. There are some secrets that should not come in the way of love, she told me, sounding wiser than her years. I didn’t understand. She had grown older.

            “I have to tell you something,” she began. I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the sun, just about to be covered by a massive cloud, grey and huge – like some huge hungry monster of the future. And the sunrays were struggling. It gave me peace, somehow.

            “I can’t really,” she said again.

            “Can’t what?” I asked.

            “I can’t read minds.”

            I looked around and stared at her through my eyes. Hypnotizing apple-green eyes – my mother used to say. I just found them somehow frightening in the mirror.

            “It’s true,” she said. “I have never been able to do it alone. It’s all you. You’re the one who can read minds. I was just pretending it was me.”

            I turned back towards the sun.

            “I know,” I said.