a madman's world
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A DEFECT OF VISION
Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
2007
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A DEFECT OF VISION
Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri declares his right to be known as the author of this
work.
All rights related to this work are reserved by him
January 2007
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FIRST ENCOUNTER
She was a city girl. Her first memory was of television antennae, seen
through a grilled window, against a lumpy mass of cloud, so white that the glare
almost hurt the eyes. It must have been the end of the rains, just before the
feathery clouds of autumn invade the high sky.
Like all people of the city she had a love-hate relationship with it. This morning
she had expected the metropolis to relinquish hold over the scene only very
gradually, but the bus route rode across the industrial suburbs in a short cut, and
the landscape, sliding away past her window, had soon become monotonously
flat, with lush green paddy fields on both sides of the highway, parcelled into a
grid by raised pathways, continuously turning away from one through the gaps
between gnarled old trees. The monotony of the flat grid was such that even the
dusty, noisy crossroads and marketplaces, where the bus stopped every now
and then, afforded relief by offering for scrutiny the always interesting behaviour
of men and women on the roadside.
People sensed the aura of the metropolis about her, casting covert glances
or, quite often, staring frankly at her. She was dressed in jeans and a top, an
attire still not common in these parts, but, to her surprise, not entirely absent,
too, among the girls boarding the bus in twos and threes at the different stops,
their destination being, as she understood from their chatter, a degree college
farther down the road. She wore no make-up and her hair was long and black
and braided demurely, while one or two of the college goers had bobbed hair
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with traces of dye and almost all had paid more attention to their faces. Yet, the
glances of the people on the road and in the bus were for her alone, her origin
having been identified infallibly.
The smartness of the girls was not something she had expected to find.
Again, the two women who shared adjoining seats with her were dissecting their
respective workplaces, namely, a post office and a bank, and, while white collar
bread winning by females was quite an ordinary occurrence in the metropolis,
she had not known that so far in the outlier, too, women going out to white collar
work no longer invited comment or even a second glance.
Her cousins were sitting separately at windows behind her, and, as she found
out by craning her neck backwards once or twice, sleeping with abandon. They
were both much older than she was, her father having been the youngest of five
brothers and three sisters, all of whom were now dead. The six other cousins,
converging from elsewhere to the ancestral lands today, worked and lived in
suburban satellites of the metropolis. These two, who accompanied her, were
brothers, and lived in the metropolis, an hour's journey away by public transport
from the tiny one-storeyed house where she stayed with her mother. She had
been a toddler swaying unsteadily around their legs, while they were growing
up, because their fathers shared accommodation for a few years between two
bouts of quarrelling and splitting. The generation of their parents had generally
been a quarrelsome one, and it was only after they died was it found possible for
all concerned to sit together over the ancestral lands. The two brothers had
watched her grow up into a lovely and accomplished young woman with wonder,
and, though finding it difficult to adjust to the transformation, they only thought it
proper to play a protective role whenever they were out in the world with her.
During this journey, they were called upon to do this on the rather mundane
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occasion when she felt an urgent need to relieve herself. Bus stops did not
provide conveniences and the men simply stepped behind trees. She went
down the slope into the fields while the brothers stood on the road side,
screening her and discouraging inquisitive urchins.
As the bus emptied its load of people commuting to work or school, it picked
up a different type of passenger, on a shorter trip and talking of the rains or the
lack of them, fluctuations in the market prices of vegetables, the iniquity of cold
storage owners and the uppishness of hired labour. No one sat beside her. The
odd woman or two did board the bus, their clothes reeking definitely of the world
of hired labour, but they cowered at the front of the bus, minding and, when
necessary, giving suck to children, and uppish would be the last word the girl
would have thought of associating with them.. She would learn later from her
rural cousins that thirty years back such women would sit on the floor of the bus
and not dare rest their backsides on seats. So she had seen uppish behaviour
after all.
The day was turning sultry and she started to nod. This was unfortunate,
because awake her attention was engaged by the new impressions crowding
into her mind, while even twenty winks sufficiently loosened her controls to allow
the events of the morning to rerun in a flash of distaste. She not only saw herself
looking at her friend at the bedroom door and drawing the bed-clothes up to her
neck, but distinctly felt his touch, and the relived reluctance of her body shocked
her awake rather than the jerk of her nodding head.
He lived next door and his family had been there for three generations. His
father had befriended the prickly man who spent all his savings building a house
for his wife and baby girl, and the two children, the boy a year younger than the
girl, grew up together, romping about in both houses. Her mother, being a
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schoolteacher, ran short of time for much neighbourliness, but the boy's mother,
affectionate and easy-going in nature, made up the deficit, especially after the
death of the girl's father. This event brought the boy's father to extend a sort of
guardianship over her, and he perhaps knew more than her mother of what went
on inside the head of the girl of few words, as she was known to the workless
boys who dawdled about all day on their street.
What none of the parents knew of had started off almost as an academic
exploration of comparative anatomy at a very early stage of their growing up, so
much so that they discovered pleasure as a climax of touching even before they
heard and read the usual insinuations about it through the good offices of peers
and seniors. As a result they indulged themselves clinically at first and without
any guilt, until the boy started to develop a possessiveness which was his way
of falling in love, while she remained emotionally untouched in spite of deep
affection for him and a genuine concern over the indolence which was the
hallmark of his spoilt nature. Their physicality was unimpeded by their
unsuspecting parents, who had left them to play in locked rooms since they
were kids, and misinterpreted closed doors, after they had grown up, because
the boy had taken up smoking and in these households it was still not a done
thing to flaunt cigarettes before elders.
As she flowered into a beauty, smart and intelligent, earning excellent grades
and showing a flair for creative writing, she was praised and feted and wooed
and, in general, made much of by boys and men, to the intense chagrin of her
friend whose insecurity reflected itself in a fierce need for handling her and, as
he convinced himself, giving her pleasure, though the fact of the matter was that
to her the intimacy became more and more a violation as she matured into an
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understanding of pleasure as a part of lovemaking, romantic love being
something which she was definite she did not feel for the boy.
After every incident like this morning's, she decided to terminate the
relationship, but she had not succeeded in taking the final plunge yet, not
because of the tiny flicker of involuntary, clinical pleasure which she could never
hide from the boy and of which he made much in reassuring himself of his
continued possession of the body which tormented him night and day, but
because she was afraid he would let go his life completely and drift into an
indifference little short of madness. Once she had resisted him for six months,
but her very real affection for him wore her down when his sleeplessness and
loss of appetite not only shook up his parents but led to feverishness and a
cough which was treated at his mother's place in a manner sufficiently hush-
hush to convince her that it had been early consumption.
The sun was up over one's head when they arrived and shadows were
minimal. Overnight bags were all they had as luggage, and because, as usual,
there were no conveniences for women, they set out, without loss of time, from
the marketplace, where the bus had set them down, along a broad metalled
road, lined with buildings, quite a few of which housed shops and offices. There
were two shops selling audio and video equipment with running television sets
at the display windows and stacks of cassettes and discs near the door. There
were three national banks side by side, an office complex exhibiting the
government logo, and a post office. There were two doctors, a dentist, and an
optician, the last unmistakable because his wares were generously advertised at
a window above which jutted out the model of a huge frame for glasses. Where
the buildings started to thin out, a sprawling compound enclosed a bungalow
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nestling among huge trees. She was surprised to note that this was the police
station.
The buildings petered out and the road became an embankment separating
two groups of green paddy fields with barebodied men working in them, a mass
of green darkness, where the road seemed to reach the horizon, being the
hamlet which contained the house of their ancestors. The dark stain grew in size
and resolved itself into groves and, then, individual trees; thatched cottages
began to be visible, and people moving about. The horizon receded away and a
turn in the road showed a group of brick houses. Soon they took a dirt road at a
fork, which led across pasture land, on which were feeding cows with tinkling
bells around their necks, right to a fallen down wall which must once have boxed
in the unexpectedly spacious one-storeyed house they were approaching.
The bricks of the arch which had framed the gateway were still standing and
she had a sensation of the bizarre as she followed her cousins though the
archway although she could have skirted the arch without any impediment.
Turning back once just before passing under the arch, through a gap in the trees
of the orchard surrounding the house, she saw fields stretching away to the
horizon. Noting her gaze one of the cousins said, 'Our lands are out there.' But
what had actually caught her eye was in the middle distance, the statue of a
man sitting on the ground with his back to the house. It was an odd posture for a
statue and an odd place to put it in.
The house itself showed signs of maintenance and had newly been treated
to a limewash, to impress them regarding costs, as her cousins muttered to one
another. It was built on a raised platform and young people rushed down the
steps shouting welcome. A pretty girl took her arm and led her up the steps to
where the aunt, wizened and bent with age, sat on the platform in a wicker chair,
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gently smiling at her, with the two resident cousins, shirts thrown over their
usually bare torsos in honour of the gathering guests, hovering shyly behind
their mother. She touched the feet of the old woman who looked back
triumphantly at her sons so that the act of obesiance could be properly
registered. The wife of the elder of the two brothers came out swiftly though the
doorway, and, putting an arm around her shoulders, took her inside to the
chattering welcome of the many women and children, who gathered around her
immediately with gasps of laughing admiration, quite confusing her, so that she
was relieved when the girl who had come down the steps to her, and whom she
now made out to be the daughter of the elder cousin, took her away from the
throng to her mother's room where the visitor was to stay the night.
The light was soft when she came out onto the platform where tea was
being served in delicate crockery, brought out, no doubt, for the occasion. The
bathroom had had all the usual fittings. Only the taps had been dry and one was
expected to take water from a drum. But there had been plenty of water in the
drum and she had no problem freshening herself up. Her aunt beckoned to her
to sit on the mat at her side and launched immediately into questions about her
life with her mother, inquiring about her mother's menstrual status and other
such quite private matters without qualm. The statue was directly in her line of
sight, and she thought of asking about it, but stopped at the last moment.
Light began to fail swiftly after sunset, and the fields seen through the
avenue of trees darkened. Her eyes widened as she saw the statue rise, turn
and walk straight up through the archway towards the house. She understood,
then, that the statue was actually a man who had been sitting motionless so
long. Now he walked past them with firm steps across the platform towards the
door of the house, returning shortly to sit on the ground at one corner of the
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platform. The upper part of his body was bare and he wore only the doubled
cloth which was the traditional wear in this part of the country. He was fair and
tall and without the flab which middle age confers on sedentary people. His hair
was long, rust coloured from lack of oil but not unkempt, and a salt and pepper
beard covered his face. While passing her the first time he looked intently at her,
and, when he returned, he looked at her again, and, this time, smiled. No one
took any notice of him. Lights went on inside the house. She had already noticed
the bulbs and fans. The platform remained in restful shadow.
Birdsong awakened her. It was light outside though the sun was not up.
Her sister-in-law and the pretty niece, who had slept in the same wide bed with
her, were up, no doubt, and could not be seen. The drum was a little less than
half-full now, and she could still indulge in her habit of taking an early bath
without hesitation. She came out to the platform, savouring the freshness of the
air. The sky was filled with colour and the sun came up, a red disc brightening to
dazzling yellow in a remarkably short time. The man who had been a statue was
working in the garden below the platform, the sweat glistening and running in
streams down his bare body. Finding her looking at him, he raised a hand in
salutation, but did not stop his digging.
Soon, the other cousins started to arrive, having spent the night near the
railway station at the house of a relation, who had actually been instrumental in
the brokering of the deal. There was breakfast in an inner courtyard, everyone
sitting on the floor and exchanging badinage, the sisters-in-law and nieces
running between kitchen and courtyard, distraught with serving the large party of
cousins and the numerous children of the house. She tried to have herself
included in the serving party but everyone shouted protests at her, and. of
course, the work for which they had all gathered would begin right after
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breakfast. The resident brothers had breakfast with them, but the digger in the
garden did not come in.
The buyer was a local man, a would-be property developer, now a clerk in
the land revenue office, with a bizarre anachronism of an official title which might
be translated as He-who-places-the books-for-the-perusal-of-the-representative-
of-the-regent-for-the province-on-behalf-of-the-emperor-who-is-the-only-chosen-
of-the All-powerful. The empire was dust, but the title lived on. The title-holder
was already seated with the broker in front of papers in an outer room flanked by
the platform. The multitude of papers finalising the sale were supposed to be
signed in front of the revenue officer who doubled as registrar. To save time at
the registration table they were actually signed beforehand, but the custom was
that all signatories, or their authorised agents, were to swear an affidavit in
person before the officer. In fact, it was this requirement which necessitated her
journey here. Otherwise, the negotiations with the buyer, not to speak of the
many bouts of negotiations among themselves, and even the signing of the
agreement for sale, had all taken place either at the residence of her
metropolitan cousins or at that of the suburban cousin nearest the metropolis.
Breakfast upset her. A pair of cousins spoke pointedly of the coconuts and
the offerings of the season visible in the orchard. The elder sister-in-law rose in
confusion and immediately sent out two of the boys, who fished out a servant
with plucking rods and knives and ran down to the orchard. Even before they
finished breakfast, to the intense embarrassment of the girl, luscious slices of
seasonal fruit were set before them on plates and coconut water in tumblers. It
was an obsession with these two cousins that the residents were enjoying all the
fruits of the land and everyone else was missing out. That this basic sentiment
was supported by the others was clear at the time of the negotiations. The point
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that the residents had so long been enjoying sole possession was brought up
again and again, and the proposal of the resident cousins to allow them to buy
the entire house out of their share of the proceeds of the sale was repeatedly
blocked with an eye to raising the price to be paid for the house. The assignment
of the house to the occupiers was cleared only after the girl pointed out, during
one of the absences of the resident cousins, that it had been possible to keep
possession of the property intact, without the encroachment and even
usurpation which often attended the fate of the landed property of absentees,
precisely because of the residency of the occupiers, . In fact, she was
surprised, she said, that they were agreeing meekly to equitable division, when
they could have used their de facto possession as a bargaining counter for
forcing out a disproportionate share for themselves. 'They wouldn't dare,' said
the others on the face of it, but her argument actually impressed them into a
more accommodating mode.
During the signing of the papers, she was seated by a window which gave
on the platform, and so she saw the digger when he came in, flushed with the
exercise and covered in sweat. After the signing was over, they all trooped out to
go to the office which was on the main street they had walked down the previous
afternoon. There had been a shower in the night and the dirt lanes across the
paddy fields, connecting the house to the paved way leading to the street, were
muddy and the mud sucked at her shoes. She took them off, taking her cue from
the cousins and the buyer, all of whom had their shoes dangling from their
hands. The mud was washed off at a clear puddle when they stepped onto the
paved way, and shoes were put on once more.
In the office itself she was made much of and whisked into the chamber of
the officer who promptly made seating arrangements for her, and, ruling out her
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protests, ordered tea. A young woman signing for property was clearly still a
rarity in these parts. Despite the welcome, however, annoyance soon overcame
her when she learnt that after a month or so she would have to make the
journey again. This day, they were consummating the sale and applying for
registration of this fact, along with payment of the requisite fees, and the
registration itself would follow in time after the application was checked and the
details of the land, in question, verified.
The actual payment in cash of two-thirds of the sale price, a third having
already been paid at the time of agreement, took place in the outer office, most
of the time, she found, being taken up in the counting of each one's share.
Nobody was interested in payment by cheque, not only because of the delay in
knowing whether the cheques would be honoured ; nobody would be paying
capital gains tax. She had tried to object to the arrangement as it was risky for
her to move about with so much cash on her, and she would, in any case, be
paying all her taxes, but the metropolitan brothers protested that they would see
her right to her house when they came back, and she did not persist with her
objection, shrinking from adopting what might be construed as a holier-than-thou
attitude.
She felt drained when she returned and would have liked to lie alone in
bed for some time, but her nephews and nieces pounced upon her. They were
excited to see this city-bred aunt, breathtakingly lovely, and young enough to be
included in their generation rather than their parents', though they were also
somewhat disconcerted by her self-possession and confidence. The eldest
nephew, about to take his school-leaving examinations, was visibly smitten, and
pestered her continually for her cellphone number. She had realised last evening
that she should have brought little presents for them, but the ancestral lands and
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their occupants were shadowy concepts to her, and her mother did not know
how many children she would find and what their ages would be like. This
morning she had remedied the oversight by buying loads of candy, and she was
content now to see them swarming all around her on the platform, happily
munching away. She looked out through the gap in the foliage and there he was
sitting at his post in the shade of the ancient tree where the meadow began, a
statue gazing out to the horizon, seemingly timeless.
After the mid-day meal, at which, this time, fruits were conspicuous by their
presence, she felt definitely sleepy. But the sun was obscured by light cloud and
there was a pleasant breeze, and the younger set wanted her to undertake a
tour of the lands. When she tried to wriggle out of it, the elder niece laughed and
said, 'You never came to see your ancestral lands once, and now will you just
sell them off and go, without even taking a look?'
The complaint was tailored for a laugh, but it was too true not to cut her to the
quick, and she was about to give in, when the gazer at the horizon, who had
eaten his meal with them, though at a separate corner of his own, came and
stood beside them. He smiled at her, and, calling the elder niece by name, said,
'Look at her. She is falling asleep in her chair. Let her rest an hour or two, and
then I shall also accompany you.' He had a soft, firm voice, and clearly enjoyed
good rapport with the children, who quietly dispersed, all except the elder niece,
who seemed quite contrite not to have noticed her tiredness and now took her to
her room to rest. Before entering the house she turned her head. He was
moving towards the gap in the avenue, through which he would, no doubt, walk
to his tree.
He showed her the lands while the children chattered on, a riot of laughter
and colour wandering through the staid countryside. He taught her which was
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He was standing near the solitary gate, smiling at her. She was touched by the
fact that he had broken his routine to bid her good-bye. 'Come again,' he said.
The entire junior troop, neighbouring children having further swelled its
number, accompanied her to where the car was waiting, and sent her off. The
eldest nephew, crestfallen, waved his hands with a mournful slowness, which
made her want to giggle, and then with a swish they were on the highway. She
started nodding right away, and her return journey was made up mostly of torn
fragments of sleep, with a succession of vivid dreams: the house as it first
looked from the gate, her sisters-in-law fanning the deity during evening prayers,
the meadow with grazing cattle, a circle of children chanting 'She will sell off and
run away', the ringing laugh of the elder niece on being asked about boy-
friends, and, again and again, a tree which was many and a statue which stood
up and smiled to say, 'Come again'. As they approached the metropolis, her
cellphone rang. It was the person her mother wanted her to marry, and though
she did not usually dislike the attention he showered on her, her half asleep
reveries were jarred by the call, and she was quite short with the poor man, who,
however, thought that her irascible response was the result of tiredness, and
rang off soon. But, already, as the massive bridge vibrated under them, the
present caught her in its toils, and her visit quickly dissolved into shadows at the
back of her mind. Her phone rang again. Her mother was anxious to know
where she was. There had been a smart shower and the roads glistened under
the streetlights.
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THE MAN WHO SAW COLOURS
Her mother was at a loss, at first, when her daughter described what she had
seen of the man whom she had mistaken for a statue. Then, suddenly, the
unhappy times she had spent in the inhospitable house, and which she had
thought she had set behind her for good, caught up with her, and, out of the host
of memories which flooded her mind, a quiet face with brooding eyes came to
the foreground, and she exclaimed, 'Oh, you are talking of the stepson.'
It transpired that the crafty old usurer had, in his dotage, fallen for the
daughter of an indigent tenant, a pale, insignificant girl with a pretty face. He
married her, in the face of understandably intense opposition from his wife of fifty
years, a formidable harridan in whose quite tyrannical running of the household
even he dared not interfere, and a quiet resentment on the part of their grown-up
son, who was already married and blessed with children. The young wife was
mercilessly ill-treated by her senior in a thousand unobtrusive ways and soon
died, but not before leaving behind an issue, the stepson. It was a quirk of fate
that the old matriarch took the motherless infant to her bosom and with fierce
possessiveness brought him up just like her own grandsons. She shooed away
her husband whenever he came near him, complaining to the skies that the
satyr had killed the poor innocent (for, after death, she had promptly been
canonised by her erstwhile rival), and would kill the poor boy given half a
chance.
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She would, no doubt, have spoilt him irrevocably had she lived, but both the
older people passed away soon after the boy started to walk and talk. His half-
brother's wife was a good soul and he grew up without special attention but also
without any neglect.
He grew up to be a hard-working farmer, quiet and taciturn, his only
expression of insecurity being a quite excessive interest in gods and goddesses.
At every village fair he bought icons and earthen images and placed them in
alcoves at the heads of the doors opening into the various rooms. He had no
confidant or special friend and no-one knew what went on in his mind. The first
outburst which signalled the occurrence of some catastrophe in his mental life
took place shortly after his twenty-first birthday.
His brother's wife would get up at first light, take a bath and perform a ritual of
worship at the temple, which, though so styled, was just a room housing the
image of the family deity, a statue carved from an alloy of eight metals. As the
statue was valuable, the temple room was locked up at night, but all family
members and the older servants knew the niche where the key was concealed.
This morning, as the mistress of the house walked towards the temple room,
after taking her bath of purification, she noticed the door to be open. She
thought it was another sign of the declining faculties of her husband with age,
his being the task of locking the house up at night. Making a mental note of
remembering to have this duty transferred to her son, she went serenely on, till
she could see into the room, when she found that the idol was not there. A hue
and cry ensued, and, during the search of the premises, it was found that each
little niche housing an idol gaped emptily. The mistress who was the only one
who had or cared to have even an inkling of the thought processes of the
collector of idols, approached him where he was sitting on the platform looking
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out to the land beyond. On being asked about the mystery, he calmly replied, ' I
have thrown the b........s and b.......s into the water.'
On casting fishing nets into the pond, the eight-metal statue and those of
the larger statuettes which were made of stone were recovered. The earthen
idols had been disfigured irrevocably by the water. The family priest re-installed
the guardian deity in the temple room with the appropriate incantations and also
placed the smaller idols there. When the miscreant was asked by his much older
half-brother about the affair, he remained silent. As the master of the house
persisted in the queries, he began to display signs of excitement, and the
mistress stepped in to stop the inquisition which was attended by all the
members of the family and the full complement of servants. On taking him aside,
he beckoned her to come closer, and whispered in her ear, 'They are of no use'.
The mistress sighed. She had no intention of going into the theological fray with,
as was now apparent, her demented half-brother-in-law, and adopted the easier
option of recommending religious tolerance. She told him that, sometimes, she
felt the same about them, but even so, he should not prevent those who thought
them to be of use from exercising their right of persisting in their deluded
worship. He thought for a while, and agreed to her proposition.
"So, there won't be a repetition of today's act?'
He shook his head. For some time after this, he remained a recluse. He wouldn't
shave, washed minimally, ate little, and slept for only an hour or two at dawn.
Children saw his unkempt hair and shrank away. This mood passed off after a
few months and he fell into the routine she had seen.
'Didn't people find out what had really happened ?'
'He never talked about the incident again. Shortly afterwards, your grandfather
and grandmother passed away, one after the other.'
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She stared pensively at the skyline of the city and wondered what he
thought about all day as he stared at the horizon bounding the field before him.
Her reverie was broken by her mother asking her to return the phone-call of the
person she had styled in her own mind as the Suitor. Apparently, he had
expected her to call from the 'village', as he called it, signalling her safe
passage.
'You should have called,' complained her mother.
'Mother, don't be tedious,' was the reply. 'My cell-phone couldn't send signals
from there. There is no tower nearby. Otherwise, I would have called you.'
Her mother went on grumbling but resolute silence finally won the day, and they
went off to sleep talking about the family and the deal which would allow them to
repair and refurnish this house and change the leaky plumbing and scotch-taped
electrical wiring.
Next morning she was ready for her troublesome friend, but he showed up
much later, just as she was leaving for work. He was a rock music buff, and,
while accompanying her to the stairway to the underground, went on chattering
about a concert he had attended the previous evening while she was away. She
liked to talk to him, they had similar interests, and she wished he was always
like this. He spoilt it all just before she stepped down below, by asking her to tea
in his room in the evening, an invitation which carried the connotation of all that
she had grown to shun. She shook her head and averted her face but not before
she had seen disappointment and a resentful sullenness wipe out from his eyes
the flushed brightness of just the previous moment. With a sigh she went down
to the trains.
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As she stepped out onto the sidewalk her spirits lifted. Nattily dressed men
and smart young women were all bustling to work. The boy who opened the
shutters of the tiny confectionery shop, wedged in beside the entrance to the
high-rise beanstalk which housed her workplace on its fifth floor, gave her a
saucy grin and fielded her repartee with aplomb. The lift attendant gave her a
'You are the top' sign, and, then, she parted the tall glass doors, and, in a trice,
bright faces were all about her, chattering and laughing. Suddenly, she felt a
momentary return of the happiness she had known at times as a child. Even the
Suitor, standing in the middle distance and holding a well-rehearsed pose of
feigned disinterest, appeared merely ridiculous instead of exasperating. She
even gave him a 'You are transparent' look, which was a mistake, for, as she
settled into her cubicle and lifted the first file of the day, he poked in his head
and asked her to join him for lunch at the refectory, a simple request which
would gain in seriousness if refused. Resigned, she nodded acceptance.
The Suitor was, in fact, quite presentable. Personable, soft-spoken and
polite, nobody would take him to be a son of the major partner of the business, a
raucous rogue who treated with contempt the cultured diffidence of this his
younger son, the elder being a tyrant after his own heart, the boss in this office.
When his younger son began to show a flair for painting, the father scolded his
wife for spoiling his character, and, riding roughshod over his unwillingness,
booted him into this office in a junior post, not for the dubious prospect of
learning the business from bottom upwards so beloved of romantic writers, but
because he sincerely, and bitterly, believed that his son could do no better. In the
office, the son, on his part, was perennially apologetic for the behaviour of his
father and his elder sibling.
Just now, he was telling her why he could not attend art school.
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'My father, you see,' he earnestly explained, 'is a Philistine.' He was not
speaking pejoratively, and was only concerned that she should understand the
attitude of his father exactly. The men in the office were protective towards him
and the girls thought him sweet. He was loved by everybody like a kid brother,
and she could never make her mother understand that, in spite of the presence
of undeniable affection, you don't marry the likes of your kid brother. Her mother
was interested in the match, not only, as her daughter believed cynically,
because he was his father's son, but also because she sensed responsibility
and fairness behind his somewhat fatuous exterior, qualities, which, along with
loyalty, she prized as essential foundations for a lasting marriage, having seen
their durability in her own case, although she would ruefully admit to herself that
these and all other qualities of her husband had been masked by his
ungovernable temper.
Having successfully brought the meal to an end just as he bravely
suppressed a sigh, a clear signal that he was again preparing to bare his soul,
she jumped up perkily, and started to walk briskly towards the cash counter. He
rushed to overtake her at the counter to pick up the tabs, and another session
was over.
Her mother had enlisted the help of her uncle next door. She called him to
have tea with them on a few occasions when the Suitor was also present.
Having sized up the subject, he opened talks with her.
"Don't you like him?'
'Of course I like him. Otherwise he wouldn't be here, would he now?'
'So, then, why do you reject his proposal?'
This question would come between them again and again.
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'Uncle!' she would exclaim, ' marriage is entirely different.' An awkward silence
would ensue, broken by the plea, 'He bores me. I can't imagine living with him
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.'
'Look, he paints. He must have ideas in his head.'
'If he had any artistic temperament to speak of, he wouldn't have submitted
docilely to his father in forgoing art school.'
But the exchanges tired her, every time.
This time she pooled resources with the metropolitan cousins to hire a car
on rent for the day. The nearest cousin from the suburbs would also go with
them. The car would start from the house of the cousins, and she woke up with
first light only to see her mother already up and about, packing dry lunch for her
and cookies to share with everybody during the journey. She gave her a hug,
bathed quickly, had a cup of tea, and ran out into a clear morning. Their
neighbourhood, set off quite some distance from the main thoroughfare, was just
stirring, but when she reached the bus stop she found the city wide awake.
She wanted to start quickly, because, this time, they were not to stay the
night, and the city roads and footways were growing increasingly inhospitable for
women in the late hours. But her aunt would not think of letting them start
without proper breakfast, and, although everything was at hand, a meal meant
conversation and time was consumed. In fact, the cousin whom they were to
pick up had been standing on the roadside at the appointed place for half an
hour when they arrived, and the sun was no longer mild. However, the car did
not follow the principal highway and sped along chords. The discomfort they felt
on account of dust and bumps, was adequately compensated by the time they
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gained. More-over, the cousins were careful to include a railway station on the
way, where they washed and relieved themselves.
She entered the house before noon, looking back as before at the gate,
and a glow of satisfaction suffused her mind when she saw the statue
motionless under the tree. The family again gathered around her, and after she
extricated herself from the excitement and chatter, and had greeted her aunt,
she learnt from the resident cousins that the buyer had sent word that the
registrar would be a little late, and, they would go to the office after the midday
meal. Of course, this time there would not be any payment, and, without the
chore of counting, the business of the day should not take up much time. Every
one had arrived.
Plates of fruits and home-made sweetmeats were placed before them
after they had freshened themselves up, and she promptly rose with her plate
and sought permission to go out to the tree under which sat "Step-greatuncle,"
as she styled him. There was a general raising of eyebrows as it were, but no-
one objected. Her aunt insisted that the eldest niece should accompany her, and
as the niece seemed quite pleased with her charge, she made no demur, apart
from a scuffle when the niece tried to wrest the plate from her hands to carry it
for her.
On the way, the niece confided shyly to her that she found school work
boring and liked to design dresses for herself and the other girls of the family.
The tailor at the market was impressed by the cuts, and, locating her as the
designer, offered her seasonal work, an offer, which, of course, had to be turned
down as the family erupted with incredulity at the cheek of the tailor. Her father
had told her that if she did not get a first at the school-leaving examinations he
would start looking at matches for her. Her eyes lit up when her city cousin
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talked about fashion designing courses and schools in the metropolis, but the
gleam died. "Father would never agree."
He turned around at the sound of their approach and looked genuinely
pleased to see her. There were polished stones under the tree and he waved to
them to sit down on stones of their choice.
'So, you have come for the signing,' he said. It was a statement as well as a
question, and she was mildly surprised to note his awareness of the world.
'Yes,' she said, and sat for some time in contented silence, gazing out to the
meadow and beyond, to the horizon, trying to see what he saw here hour after
hour, day after day.
She said finally, 'Last time, too, I saw you sitting here. What do you see?'
He looked doubtfully at the eldest niece and looked back at her. The frown
slowly left his face and he started to answer her question.
'The colours,' he said in a low voice, 'so many of them, merging and separating,
trembling in a haze as the sun rises.'
He stopped and searched her eyes. "Do you see them?'
She did see the steel grey sky above, pale blue near the horizon, white clouds,
and green grass and foliage, serenely beautiful, no doubt, but they were all parts
of a still picture, not alive as he saw them, colours residing within outlines, not
existing per se, independent of objects, flowing and shimmering, as they
presented themselves to him.
But he was already away.
'Mango leaves are bright green clumps on a deep green background. The green
of the tamarind is different, fresh and airy. Lime leaves are dark and succulent. I
see the greens and I know the leaves are there, though I don't see them.
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Leaves are not green always. But this you know. Mango leaves turn red. Red on
green is a sight to remember. Death for most leaves is coloured brown and
when mango leaves start to turn brown one knows their time has come.'
His discourse was about the world, but it was not the world they saw, it was a
world within the world, and he peeled off the cover as he talked. Even her niece
fell under the spell and stopped fidgeting, initial impatience giving way to a
wonderment and a peacefulness.
'The colours change with the light. They are deep and dark before sunrise, the
leaves barely distinguishable from the stems, darknesses against a barely
lighter background. Then, the starpoints fade as light washes the sky with grey
and rose, the sun rises, huge and red, colours flow down to the meadow and the
trees as the sky pales through progressively lighter shades of blue, the tints and
hues on the land changing fast all the time, but soft till the gold spreading over
the sun from the top contracts it to a yellow disc with a dazzle in the middle,
when softness gives over to brightness, with shades of colour flaunting their
individuality. The evening again is a play of colour, this time in pastel, blue
deepening to indigo from the horizon upwards, flecked by clouds with red and
orange underbellies, deepening to crimson and velvet, the sky draining back the
colours it gave to the trees and the meadow, darkening till a silver moon rises if
it does, and a haze of electric blue covers leaf and grass.
I see all this every day, but the colours are never the same from one day to
the next. The clouds, too, are never the same. The dance of the trees and the
trembling of leaves in the wind never repeat themselves. The colour of the
young leaves of spring deepens through the summer. The rains darken the
shade and, then, yellow flecks appear. Some are discoloured rapidly and fall
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before winter comes. Those that survive the winter yellow out, and, as the sun
becomes stronger, they grow brown and drop.'
He stopped for a while and tears filled her eyes. The afternoon stillness
hovered like a sentient presence. He sighed and went on.
'If you clear your mind and learn to listen you will also hear the sounds. Brown
ants and weevils and earwigs bustling below the rotting leaves, red ants
scurrying under the bark, this is the background which you will hear only when
the birds suddenly fall silent and the crickets. Otherwise, the chirruping of
crickets is what you will hear most of the time. At first, you will hear a constant
whirr, and, then, as you learn to listen, you will catch the variations from morning
to night, and, finally, from moment to moment.
Mornings and evenings you will hear birdtalk and nothing else, especially
evenings. As light softens they start returning to the tree and start chattering.
Soon, their talk drowns all other sounds till night shuts them up.
Sometimes a bird breaks into a tune late in the morning. But they sing best in
the afternoon, those that do. The most interesting calls are also reserved for the
afternoon. When the afternoons first start becoming warm after the winter you
will wait for the cuckoo's call, although I have heard him clearly at midnight, too.
In summer you will hear the keening of the hawk, faint because of the height, but
sharp, incisive, cutting down through the afternoon air like a tiny bolt.'
Who knows how long he would have gone on, but the niece had kept half
an eye on the house, and saw her mother the moment she emerged on the
platform beckoning them back. She rose and the spell broke.
'Go, little cousin, you must be hungry,' he said.
'I have never heard him talk so much and for such a long time,' the niece told
her as they walked towards the house.
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The dinner and then the signing of the deeds, the horseplay of the cousins,
the bustle at the office, the short, sharp shower which delayed them and forced
her to take tea with the frankly admiring registrar, the careful walk back over
muddy ways, all appeared a dream to her, part of unreal, puerile games played
with grave seriousness by men and women because these were all they had
been taught to have solidity and importance or social grace, though actually they
were nothing but artifacts of a make-believe show, worthless and meaningless.
They were the emperor's clothes, she thought in a flash and burst out laughing,
drawing startled glances from her relations. They were having tea before
departing, and while all the cousins were in high spirits at the conclusion of the
sale and were settling the date for a final, grand get-together and feast, she
wondered whether the stepson would come to see her off, and a warmth stole
over her when she saw the statue rise and the man set off towards the house in
the deliberate way he had of walking.
She sauntered to the edge of the platform to meet him, and, before he
could say anything, said, ' There will be a feast and we will come back next
month', and was rewarded by the radiance in his eyes.
It was a tight fit in the car in the beginning of the return journey because
four more cousins were taken in, to be set down at the railway station. Again,
she started dozing right away, her head nodding on to the shoulder of one or the
other of the cousins flanking her. Soon the railway station arrived, there were
hasty farewells, and she sank into one corner at the rear of the car, her mind
returning to the tree and the meadow. It was then that the thought hit her like a
physical blow : the sale was over, the tree and the meadow no longer theirs, the
buyer a property developer. What would happen to the meadow and would the
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tree be cut down? Where would he sit and what would he see? She felt guilt
seize her chest in a vice. Did he know what was going to happen?
The Suitor had been invited to tea mainly at the insistence of her mother
who said that it was a long time since he last came. He was asking about her
last visit "to the village", and she hesitated to speak of the man who saw colours.
She had told her friend and was disappointed at his response. He always
evaluated any male acquaintance of hers from the point of view of how big a
threat he was to his claim on her. That the man was not a possible rival was
clear to him, but he was upset by the depth of the impression made by him on
her.
Devoid of philosophy, he was never intrigued by the meaning or worth of
what he did or would like to do. He was driven by unreasoning acceptance or
rejection of the myths and opinions of his milieu, and would be contemptuous of
the foolishness of anyone who might ask him why he accepted something and
rejected something else. The man's talk sounded high-falutin nonsense to him
and he thought that the manner of living of the man bore out the general view
that he was touched in the head. He tore to bits all men she met, and this
amused her as she knew why he was doing it and also because he had a
penchant for caricature and lampoon. So, he was genuinely surprised to see her
disapproval of his usual bantering tone in this case and it made him even more
offensive in his effort to strip him down. He observed that she steered clear of a
quarrel, which was the usual outcome of their disagreements, and withdrew her
mind from what he was saying. In fact, he was a little afraid for the first time.
But the Suitor was diffident and tongue-tied as usual and she started to
tell him all that the man said and did. He heard everything in silence and made
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quite an unexpected comment. He said that Van Gogh had astigmatic vision,
and the world was blurred to him. Some art experts have tried to say that a point
of light was a blob to him, and this had led to the characteristic blurring of
contours, and representation by colours without outlines, observed in his
painting.
"I think your relative suffers from a similar ailment of the eye," he concluded
prosaically.
Trust the Suitor to wash all the romance off any circumstance however out of the
ordinary, she thought. But she could not just laugh it away, for she knew that
such a benign defect would have remained undetected in that household.
Nobody cared, and he himself would just accept it as a condition of life and
adapt to it.
The tea party ended badly. Her friend arrived, and, after he had had tea, the
three young people went to her room as was expected of them. Right away, he
began to behave badly with the Suitor, interrupting him, and making pointed
remarks about people who never understood when they had outstayed their
welcome. The Suitor had encountered such barracking on earlier occasions, too,
and, at first, did not rise to the bait. He even withstood comments about his
appearance and abilities and sneers about fathers arranging sinecures for sons.
She remained a helpless spectator because she knew that the slightest protest
would invite worse barbs. But the Suitor was shaken when he started to touch
her deliberately, as if showing off his claim, and, after a few minutes of acute
embarrassment, left the room to take leave of her mother. She followed,
because her mother would be upset if she did not show him out, but returned to
her room directly he had left.
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Her friend followed her back to the room, excited at the prospect of a quarrel,
because that always meant a reconciliation, which often paved the way for him
to force his attentions on her because she would not want the stress of fresh
altercation. But she did not say anything about what had just happened.
'I want to rest,' she said, ' Please come back later.'
Nonplussed, he retired in some confusion. She put off the light, buried her face
in her pillow and wept. She had to regain her freedom.
'What a fool I was to have lost it in the first place.'
She did not know that her friend was, that minute, hitting his head against a
wall in his room anticipating this emancipation. Previously he would do things
like this in front of her with telling effect, but today he had been afraid she would
view the flagellation quite calmly and would not lift a finger to stop him.
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THE GIFT
It had been decided that all progeny of the sibship to which her father
belonged would be invited to the final feast. Some of the suburban cousins
wanted the resident brothers to bear the expenses, but she was vehemently
against such ungracious behaviour, and was supported this time by quite a few
others, and, finally, everyone sent some contribution to the kitty.
Her mother was going with her and this had encouraged her aunt, the mother
of the metropolitan brothers, to do likewise, and, this time, they made an early
start in the rented vehicle. Her mother was on medication which required a
watch on fluid intake and possible dehydration, and she had packed adequate
water and fruit juice apart from the sandwiches her mother had made for
everyone. But age, the constant enemy, was against the older women, and,
midway through the journey, they complained of leg cramps. The car had to be
stopped thrice to let them stretch their legs and sip juice. But it was a long time
since either had travelled far and their enthusiasm overruled bodily discomfort,
and they arrived at the house in high spirits.
Both had been young wives here decades back, till their husbands had left
for the metropolis, and it was the first time they were returning to the house.
Having, no doubt, to catch up with a lot of memories, they spoke little on the
way, and, in the last lap, she fell asleep, her head resting on one shoulder of her
mother. It made a pretty picture and her aunt whispered to her mother, 'O had
she been mine.' The sibilation woke her up for a moment, but she went off again,
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and, when she next opened her eyes, they were churning up dust on the
pathway to the house.
Having satisfied herself that the familiar figure was at his post, she
concentrated her attention on the reception of her mother by the families of the
house. Her aunt was the orthodox widow, all white borderless dress and strictly
vegetarian meals, but she and their neighbours had forced her mother not to
indulge in either of these abstentions. Her mother wore normal dresses, with
colouring and prints in accordance with her view of herself as an elderly matron,
and ate with her daughter.
At first, there were problems at family gatherings, where widows were served
separately, and people were confused as to where she should be seated.
Glances askance were not a rarity, too, and, for a time, her mother stopped
going out to marriages and other such social ceremonies. She never spoke of it,
but there must have been some barbed talk within the school community, too,
teachers being notoriously fond of dividing themselves into sectarian groups on
the basis of quite mild likes and dislikes. Time bred acceptance, and, in any
case, her mother's was the generation which overflowed out of professions like
school-teaching and nursing, where the presence of women had been accepted
for long, to invade male preserves in mercantile offices, banks, courts, and
doctors' chambers. But, she had been worried about her mother's first
appearance as a widow in this backwater.
To her relief she found that there were no startled looks or pursed lips. Either
the families here knew everything already from the grapevine and had decided
to accept with grace things over which they had no control, or they were well-
bred and good-natured enough to conceal any surprise they might have felt.
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What she saw, in fact, was the three wives holding hands in tears, memories
of their long dead husbands, companions of the youth they spent here, rising
like the vapours of a mist from the stones of the house which bore them and
raised them to manhood. The strange mystery enveloping siblings reached out
across the spent decades to touch her with awe, confronting her with time's
ghostly residue of feelings which she could never know at first hand. Then her
niece came and took her hand, and peals from the children brought them all
back to the present.
Her previous visits had made her sisters-in-law and nieces easy with her and
she had no difficulty in making them waive the formalities of welcome and allow
her to start off for the meadow directly she had finished washing. She had a plan
which required quick action before the lazy noon-break fell like a cloak on all
activity here.
She stopped a little behind the man, and, although she had tried to be
soundless, he sensed her presence and turned to her with that smile which she
had grown to regard as her real welcome to the house of their fathers.
She got to the point immediately and spread out the day's news-sheet, which
had come with them from the metropolis, on the ground in front of him.
'Read it', she commanded.
Obediently, he read out the headlines and the sub-headings, and, confirming the
suspicion of the Suitor, began to falter more and more as the print grew finer,
and had to bring the sheet closer and closer to his eyes.
'You are going to get a pair of glasses,' she announced. He pondered over her
statement, and, during that interval, she was on edge. How would he react?
He sighed finally. 'It cannot do any harm,' was, to her great relief, his considered
opinion. She gave a shout of laughter and pulled him up by the arm, and the two
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started off for the house. Her sisters-in-law were taken aback by the reason for
the stepson's initiation of an untimely toilet and a change into outdoor apparel,
but the mistress of the house, her aunt, set seal on the venture by expressing
the same opinion as the man himself. 'It cannot do any harm', she said, adding,
however, the rider, 'provided he doesn't break them and cut himself.' She
nodded to her two sisters-in-law darkly, 'I once knew some-one who blinded
himself on his glasses.'
'These will be unbreakable, not really made of glass,' she said. Her cousins were
doubtful whether the optician here would have such lenses, and, on this
tentative note, they started their little enterprise.
His outdoor dress was also robe-like, and, with his finely-chiselled features,
pepper and salt beard, and russet mane of hair, he looked distinguished, a
Roman senator, she thought, and a note of surprise flicked though her mind. He
must have been a handsome man in his youth.
The optician, she found, stocked all the latest materials and designs. The
resident refractionist had, however, started packing up for the day, and she had
to expend much charm to make him reopen the case of test lenses. She was
helped by the shopowner who was keen to sell a pair of the expensive
unbreakable lenses which did not find ready buyers in this community
dominated by thrifty farmers. He detained the technical hand also, because he
understood that the deal would only go through if there was quick action.
He was found to have high myopia and substantial astigmatism, the latter
making his vision blurred at all distances. The Suitor had been right. His age
had also affected his near vision, and he would need reading glasses, too.
'Two pairs are indicated,' the shopowner declared gleefully. 'My artisan cannot
make up bifocal lenses in such a short time.'
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"But I don't read,' he interjected.
'Not even the newspapers?,' she asked.
He replied diffidently, 'I used to read the daily paper, but I didn't like the news.'
'But won't you read a letter if I write you one?'
'You will write to me?' She saw again the inner radiance and was sad because
she knew it was unlikely that she would come again.
The man took child-like pleasure in choosing a frame, looking again and again at
his face from different angles in the triplet of mirrors handed to him. But, she
thought his choice was inappropriate, and he readily accepted the frame pointed
out by her.
The shopowner, of course, knew all about him and, for that matter, all about her,
and sent them home after payment was over. He would send the glasses over
later in the afternoon to the House with the Gate, this being the name by which
their house was known to the local populace.
While returning, he was in an uncharacteristic state of fidget, and she waited
patiently until, when the gate was first sighted, he blurted out his unrest. 'I do
have money, you know.'
'I do know,' she said. 'But I want you to have something from me which will not
allow you to forget me at any time.'
He laughed. 'It matters to you if people remember you or not?'
'Indeed it does. Won't it matter to you if I don't remember you day after day?'
He fell into silence. As they passed through the gate, he said, 'No.'
He saw that she was badly wounded by his answer. He took her hand and said,
'But I shall not forget you.'
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Her hand lay limp in his huge paw, and it was only when they were at the steps
to the platform that she managed to give a little answering pressure as she
withdrew the hand.
The dinner, which was the central point of the day's programme, lasted for a
long time. There were interminable jokes aimed at people, one arising from the
other. The three elders had numerous anecdotes about the cousins in their
childhood, none of them too complimentary, all lapped up with great glee by the
children, who circled about the diners, themselves having already been fed. The
light-hearted shuttling between the past and the present, and the ambience of
carefree closeness slowly infected her, and her early reticence, which was on
the point of being remarked upon, gave way to participation in the general
merriment.
For once, the pretty niece was not serving, and had been allowed to dine with
her. She found an opportunity to whisper to the girl that, if she so wished, she
could stay at their house in the city if she found a place in some school of
fashion designing. The niece brightened and pressed her hand joyfully, but,
soon, her eyes dropped, reminded, no doubt, of the formidable struggle which
would ensue if she ever took up the offer.
The stepson ate separately as was the rule and said nothing, though he
couldn't but have heard everything. He finished long before they did, and, when
she finally came out, she saw the technician from the optician's shop fitting him
with his glasses.
He waved away the man, who was fussing about, trying to make him read
something, and, taking the pairs of glasses in one hand, beckoned to her to
accompany him. He put on the glasses for distant vision after he sat down under
the tree, and, for a long time, looked at the meadow. She sat, apprehensive at
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what would happen, now that his view of the world was changing radically.
Finally, he turned and looked at her.
'I can see you more clearly, too.'
'What about the meadow?'
"Yes, I can see each individual leaf with curl and turn and serration. The world is
sharp, and not only are there colours but shapes and form and outline.'
'Is it still beautiful?,' she asked fearfully.
'O my dear, even more beautiful. Look at this tree. No two leaves are the same.
The trees lining the meadow, their trunks and branches standing against the sky,
the stems and leaves swaying gently in the wind, the weird shapes made by the
clouds, I could see none of this earlier.'
'And the colours, they are still there?'
'Yes, yes, I can make out shades I never imagined existed. The smallest
change, each nuance of tint and hue will now be revealed to me as it emerges
or fades.' Precious radiance filled his face.
'You have presented to me a whole new world.'
Tears filled her eyes. He looked gravely into them.
'If you look, you will also see.'
'What! Television antennae?'
He was surprised at her response, and said, ' Everywhere, all is made of colour
and sound,' and, after a pause, added, 'and form. Also, the beauty changes with
time.'
'But your world is lonesome. There are no people.'
He meditated on her comment for a time. Finally, he nodded, 'I am not good with
people.' His face darkened. 'They look only in the mirror at themselves and like
to hear only their own voices.'
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She realised she was probing his vulnerability and promptly changed the
subject, chattering away about inconsequential facets of city life.
And then her voice broke.
'We have sold away all this. What will you do, what will you see?'
'But the orchards remain, I understand,' he looked enquiringly at her.
She nodded.
'I shall sit in the orchards.'
He gazed at his new world for some time, and asked, 'How long do you stay this
time?'
'We start at sundown.'
'At sundown we will visit the farther end of the orchards. It will take just a few
minutes.'
She inclined her head and the two of them sat looking at the forms and colours,
the latter now changing fast as the shadows of the trees lengthened on the
meadow. When the meadow was fully in shadow, he rose, and they walked into
the orchards, waving reassuringly at the clan gathering on the platform for the
farewells.
They were walking towards an arbour with a canopy of overhanging
branches and leaves. Birdtalk grew louder and louder as they neared the arbour,
and, when they were enclosed under the natural canopy, the sound took on a
three-dimensional quality, the cross-talk of numerous birds pervading the arbour,
overlapping to form a pulsating fog of sound. The loudness assailed the mind,
making normal thought impossible, attention imprisoned in the furious
conference. She found that her mind was being drained of conscious processes,
awareness monopolised by the not unpleasant pulsing of shrill talk like the
unending chatter of a machine gun. She was drifting into another world where
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her friend and the Suitor, her disappointments and ambitions, her dream of
becoming an author, fast receded into puny elements of little importance. She
rose and turned about. Her hold on her world was starting to slip, and she fought
back to keep her grip. Slowly, as she walked away from the cocoon of sound,
the profound emptiness which was entering her soul receded.
They came out of the orchards to find the metropolis party nearing the gate.
She ran up the platform to bid good-bye to her aunt. Everyone else, she had
seen, was moving together with the departing guests.
The stepson was outside the gate, standing a little away from the others as
was his wont, the glasses gleaming on his face in the last light. When she turned
her head at the point where the gate went out of view, she saw him still, gazing
at her across the empty space between them. The nephew, who was smitten by
her, chattered on by her side, and, for once, she was grateful to him because his
chatter obviated any need for her to make conversation. Then, suddenly almost,
the rented van was before them, it was evening and there was hurry in their
departure. The last thing she remembered seeing was a huge cloud overhead
with a bright centre of many colours, a patch of rainbow in fact. She never again
saw such a shapeless rainbow in the sky.
A wave of tiredness assailed her and she sank back against her mother.
He had gifted her a secret world, and, at first, she kept it shut tightly inside
her. Slowly, from time to time, she would dare to peep in. But she could never
stay there for any length of time. The emptying of the mind, with the draining
away of all questions of worth and meaning and purpose from life, made her
uneasy. It was frightening, almost, and, then, she always had so much to do.
When the news of his death came, she was afraid that his gift too would
disappear. But it was not a thing which could decay, nor a thought whose
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memory could fade. It was there always, another world, waiting for her, only she
was never quite ready for it. But she enjoyed secretly a detachment and calm
just knowing it was there: a madman's world, but as real and tangible as the
daily whirligig all around her.
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