A Silhouette of an Invisible Woman

The east- Indian dusk is descending placidly over the coastal city suburbs.

During the long summer days, the sun has blazed through its course till it has settled into a rose-colored, warm but breezy repose, putting the wide-open window panes and the interior of the house aglitter. The odd angular room is jutting out insolently over the open car–shed below, peeping into the small fishponds down the slight understated flight of stairs leading to the front door. The assembly of many exotic plants exhales their individual odors to the soft–breathing air. Any newcomer will wonder at the bulk of weird vegetation clasping, overflowing every possible corner and plane of the house, imagining the extent of care they demand and apparently receive.

The woman, sitting stretched on a wicker-armchair near the rose-illuminated window, is listening to the heart–winning clamor drifting from the dining hall below. The family of her husband has gathered there to provide her company in her recent widowhood. She has just lost a battle against cancer, and she is exhausted. The tint of the sub–continental dusk is in her skin; the tired eyelids are closed on the unlovely eyes, hiding the lost look in the usually patient, clear and steady eyes. The pucker in the mouth is distinctly visible. Deep trenches of profound weariness have cleaved her otherwise regular features. Her small frame is tidy in a pale blue bordered sari, a single thin bangle gleams sharply on her dusky childlike hand, her hair is tamed in a tight bun at the back of her neck.

The sleeper was dreaming of her early childhood. It was colorful, but not easy. With three big brothers, and she herself being the tomboy, the widowed mother had a very trying time. She liked to read in the trees. She remembered the shades, the rich seclusion they provided to savor the magic world of her favorite author. The lazy noonday wafted in comfort, alive with buzzing thoughts. She remembered the feeling of let-down when she was taunted for her plain features and her duskiness by even her family members. It’s a crime in this country to be born a woman without looks. She felt a warm surge of a forgotten childish anger throb through her memory. Love walked her cool youthful bowers as a welcome friend, all her views and visions shared and reinforced by her new companion.

But he never posed with her for a snap.

      She knew why.

      Her man had an intent expression on his fresh boyish looks, it was quite sure to attribute a definite sharp character to any background framed around him. The nondescript, slight, dusky figure would cast a sombre shadow. This could render him into a very awkward presence.

Intellect was an abstract noun; no one can take a snap of one's inside. The wild thought of those olden days gnawed her again - did she have a different kind of visibility? Tears were warm, but there she was, all alone, standing alone in all her pictures. It’s a skill to be a perfect part of the background, but she had group photos snapped with her friends. She blended so well with all the faces. They will be unrecognizable to everybody else after she is gone, and she too will be so, one day.

      The shouts of laughter in the children’s voices resound in the sitting room below.

      Her window looks askance at the entrance. Two jeans-and-top girls are exulting in rough-and-tumble games at the small clearing near the fishponds. The gate lights quiver in the pond, the glint of the fishes' eyes is visible for a split second in the dark water. The sky in the west is still glowing with a warm light, but the shadows have trickled down to the purple horizon, gathering in inky pools under the weird trees.

      The nephews steal in and sit down near her. They are scared to talk. They love her enough to understand her mute suffering, as if a chord has been severed, segregating her from her world. She cares for them too. Only it seemed bizarre to know that she can live as an entity so estranged from them. It is so strange to stand really, essentially.....alone.  Now they have only her to look up to, she will have to extend her support, advice, decision for them now, as their uncle is not there any more. She talks to them gently, asks them about people at home. But.. all the time, her bruised self throbs at the touch of further human pain and anxiety. Her inner entity shrinks from the familiar cold sensation of the steel blade - real life snarls again around these young heads, and they are helpless at her knee. She speaks a few gentle words of comfort. The boys look up at the soft glowing purple window and the reclining contour of the gleaming white cloth and leave quietly, assured of the presence.

      She had no child. She sought medical remedies, but the reluctance of her partner left her empty, like wrinkled, parched earth in summer. She recalled the emptiness, while surrounded by scores of children in the stuffy classrooms. The clouds rained somewhere else when the horrible sultriness consumed the teacher and the pupils.

      There they had brought her the news of her husband's car accident. He had collided with a tree while driving and received a bad injury in the head. She fought back, as though against a terrible gust of wind, gasping. Anyway, he survived the operation. She watched like a spectre - dogged, wasting, and silent over the sickbed. Eventually he came round, but fumbled like a confused schoolboy over simple everyday tasks. Another struggle ensued against this dismal clouding of a brilliant mind. He surfaced again. He was there, shining in the full power of his intellect. His ability to administer a highly important department roared back to life. She watched him at work from her desk strewn with answer scripts to be checked, basking in the warmth of her tropical days.
   
Her days went by, the deep soulful monsoons with distant rumbles of the thunderbolt and the brief cheery winters rich with the colors of her exotic flowers decking the house.

        Emptiness resides in the house now, it permeates the air, the rooms, and the frail body breathes it in and out. The transient liveliness in the house sounded brittle like a glass precariously set at the edge of the table. She remembered the days vividly when he suffered from cancer. She thought of the terrible struggle he put up to maintain his dignity right to the end, and when at times he was overpowered, she fought it for him. How she struggled to back him up against the inevitable slow decay, the sapping of life-force day by day! She remained composed, committed to his wishes till the end. She knew it was also draining herself along with him. And now, it is an impossible existence, when the soul is in a strange stupor.

        The last rays of the dying sun gleamed on the white mountain ranges in the picture on the wall. She could not take her eyes off it. A cool mountain air blew on her from the days beyond her present. She Shivered. They had trekked to these majestic landscapes time and again. They still gleam in the golden sunlight at every dawn. The mighty waters surge down the gorges of the Ganges to the vast waters, not only of the oceans, they now seem to flow into the eternity. Her own memories will contain them for ever till she passes into that eternal moment too!

        She left the chair and moved to the window. The endless stardust sparkling against the dark sky hides the distant stars invisible, wrapped in immeasurable distance. The truth invisible in her, the beauty permeated in her, the joy residing in her will one day mingle with the crystalline air for ever. Before her eyes, the inscrutable nectar of existence shone in joyous silence in countless eyes of incandescent stars in the nocturnal sky. The painful burdens of duties, of love, her self-inflicted slow poisoning of acceptance of a life that judged against an irrational apartheid of skin color were leaving her like dry leaves in winter. She felt alone, unjudged, unfettered, all her duties awaiting her own choice.

She saw herself as an entity of freedom in the cool young night. Let be.