The miles bygone

Seventy nine years is a pretty long time. Now I only seem to remember whatever happened long ago!

At twenty I was the pick of the town among the eligible girls. I knew it as much as my neighborhood. So when the handsome young engineer proposed I carefully weighed my options. My widowed mother was on pins while I dithered. My elder brother was quite convinced that I was too pretty and smart for my own good and would end up doing something foolish. My uncle, the male caretaker of the family cunningly appealed to my reason by talking of pros and cons, subtly magnifying the pros.

But what clinched the issue was the fact that my suitor was totally free of malice and he not only loved the food cooked by me but kept challenging me to greater culinary heights by his dares. I loved the man for eating bellyfull!

Since my husband worked for the government building highways, as soon as we got married, we had to live in places away from towns and cities. In no time I was pregnant. Elders decided to move me to the protective custody of my mother. Despite all the doting care the child was still born.

I returned to loving care of my husband. He was really a balm in my distress. He went the extra mile in surprising me with his novel ways of expressing love. Despite my sorrow, I noticed some changes in him. Most of the days, he was returning late from work. While he claimed his workload had gone up, I could sense, that was not the case. I gently grilled the servants and talked to his colleagues. Then the shocking truth was known to me. My husband was a gambler.

For a while, I did believe that I could cure him of his disease. Years passed. Four children were born to us. I persisted with my belief that my loving husband would see the folly of his ways. What shattered that belief was the incident when he admitted our son into a hospital with raging fever and proceeded to his card play. I had to go there and pull him out in the early hours of next morning.

My visits to his dens became a way of life with me. During my days, for a woman to visit such places was unthinkable. But I did not care. Often times, if you care you cannot survive. I had decided somewhere along the line, that survive I will for my children.

My grandchildren ask me why I did not consider divorcing the man. I just laugh. How can I explain to them that I still loved the man! He still ate bellyfull when I cooked and passionately lift me off the ground, right in front of my children

The fight for survival had begun for me. I started exaggerating the domestic expenses and the educational out gos for the children. Guileless as he was he would never cross check my claims. My heart bled as I extracted money out of him. But it quickly turned to stone, as he discovered my hiding spots and decamped with the money meant for my children. Once he insisted on my handing over the gold earrings he had given me on our wedding day. Of course he did promise to get them back to me the next day with his big win! I was so livid with his demand that I pulled out one of them and resolved to wear just the other until such a day that he would get it back for me. Well! even today I wear a ring on one of my ears.

Now my children have made it big. I live with them in the US of A. I have learned to punctuate each of my sentences with 'great', 'good' and 'nice' in the typical American way. All in all, it has been a great life. I still love that incurable rascal. May his soul rest in peace.