The Conundrum

She sat by the window on her wooden stool holding the iron rods that formed a protective grill. The rods were rusting. They had been rusting for the past few decades. The gap between them gave an untrammeled view of the setting sun. The sun that was setting behind the terraces of houses. On one of those terraces a little girl sat leaning over a book. "She must have just arrived from school", thought the lady as two plaits tied with red ribbon fluttered in the wind. "Those ribbons must belong to her mother" she thought and smiled. The smile would not have looked less radiant if the diffused sun rays weren't falling on her face. But they were, and the drying eyes felt the pain. She took off the shell framed spectacle and placed it on her desk. Turning her back towards the sun she looked inside the room.The inside was filled with wall hangings carved out of wood. From isolated structures of men women and animals to more complex combination of Hindu gods and goddesses in myriad postures and assemblage. Some of them hung in skewed positions for want of a hand to tilt them back to symmetry. But their curator could no more stand on her stool to reach them. Her legs shook. Neither could her shaking hands tilt them with her laathhi. So the lion kept staring directly heaven-wards while the giraffe's long neck went straight for its belly. The handiwork had stood time's test quite well, but the jute strings on which they hung were giving way after all these years. "One day they will all fall like ripe mangoes" she muttered. Or perhaps like dead leaves.

She got up from the stool and walked towards the door. Her bare feet felt the coldness of the floor. It was autumn and the floor was warning her that it would soon be cold. A few steps later her heart skipped a beat, forcing her to instinctively reach for the corner of her tiny bed. There she sat with both hands on either sides supporting her heavy frame. "It's strange how one stops fearing such anomalies once they become a regular occurrence" she thought. She could not remember the first time her heart skipped a beat, but the fear of it was still fresh. "A million beats have skipped since then, and I still live" she said almost triumphantly, looking up at the frame that hung over her bed. It was during these moments of loneliness that she remembered her parents. The woman had family but none of her own. She had friends yet was always a loner in their midst. She loved children in her house but none stayed late enough to hear her bedtime stories. She was her society's quintessential "good woman": Loved, respected, admired and lonely.

"Ones desire to be alone must triumph over ones fear of being lonely" she remembered having explained to her father during one of their many arguments, regarding marriage. She had never regretted that decision. Strong willed and determinedly she had looked after her ailing parents while knots were being tied all around and new relations blossomed in the outside world. "One need not be married to be able to give love to children" she had argued. Over the years she remained the most lovable aunt to many children, some by relation and otherwise, proving at every step that one need not be a mother to be able to love a child.

It was dusk now and the mind was tired from wandering among many a thought. The sound of the conk shells calmed the vacillating mind. The woman got up from her bed and walked out of the bedroom towards the dimly lit corridor. The left hand reached for the wall while the legs dragged slowly feeling every known crevice on the floor. On the nights when there was no power it was these cracks that she used as yardsticks to locate her coordinates. But today her trusted maid had lit the light near the staircase. Today, she could see the constant floral patterns painted all along the walls of the corridor. Those patterns were part of a trail left by her father, just like the wall hangings in the bedroom. "The good that men do live after them; The evil is interred with their bones" she mis-quoted Shakespeare.

At the end of that corridor were a flight of stairs that led to the thakur ghar. She climbed those stairs as her asthmatic breath reverberated through the walls of the attic. There she prayed and offered the customary batasha- nakul dana to the idols. Once her Gods had consumed their ambrosia they dutifully went to bed in their singhasan under an overtly ornate little blanket. Duties of the day done the woman walked out of the thakur ghar into the open terrace.

Outside, the night  was dark made darker still by the dead moss on the walls, railings and the floor. The relatives had suggested many a times to rid the place of the dead moss. But each time the lady refused. She refused to rid the house of anything that had once lived there. At times she felt this house was a living tomb in which she could talk to the departed. Strangely, she often felt alive among the dead. Tonight amidst the dead moss and the bright stars floated the disquiet of a distant quarrel. Somewhere close by a couple's domestic fight was spilling over to the street. The woman looked down at the street. There was not a vehicle or soul in sight. But, from the window across the street came a slew of allegations from the mouth of an inebriated man. He was enlightening his woman on the ways to become a "good wife". The woman was fighting back. Her voice carried a medley of emotions steeped in anger, frustration and a desperate plea for empathy. The woman looked up at the night sky and sighed. "Did you see that?" she inquired rhetorically, to her father. It had been thirty-five years since the father's last earthly quarrel with his daughter. Unlike most fathers, he had never intended to force a husband on his daughter. But he wished that she had a companion after he was gone. He wished she would not have to look for him among the stars as often. That was before the severe stroke that took away his power to argue and made him the very alibi for his daughter's logic.

The sound of a muffled sob broke her thought. As the couple fought, a little girl sat by the adjacent window with her head on the table. Her red ribbons weren't fluttering anymore. Not even from the winds of the creaking fan. "That is I" thought the lady. Her eyes moved to the other window where the mother was fighting her last round for the night. "And that is who I refused to become" said she in a strong whisper before turning away from the live soap opera.

The years played out like repetitive waves that lash the shores. The dreamer in her kept wandering from one magical world to another at the onset of every dawn only to return to more earthly self-centered thoughts as the sun set. After a million human feet had crossed the road beneath and the horizon had been raised by the multitude of burgeoning new buildings to engulf the sun to its premature death, came the day. The incessant knock on the wooden door downstairs heralded the opening of the last act. The lady slowly walked down the steep stairs as the sun rays fell through the skylight on the iron railings. She opened the main door. Through a cascade of shining black hair peeped a face of a young woman. Beside the woman stood her parents. The father respectfully greeted the lady with clasped hands. "Charity must begin at home dear sir" thought the lady sardonically, but she greeted the man and ushered the family in.

The family sat on the old woman's bed while she took her customary spot on the stool by the window. "We have come to you in the hope that a 'lady' teacher of your repute will succeed in knocking some good sense in our little girl's head", she said. My daughter does not want to marry even after we have fulfilled all her wishes to be a free soul. We beseech you to convince her how lonely and difficult life can be without a partner. This world can be cruel to unmarried women, Can it not? The callous words failed to jolt the old woman. Society had served many such volleys at her. Most of them have either failed to cross the net or have been smashed down the line by virtue of strong logic. "But this isn't a tennis match" thought the lady. It is rather a test match where one must leave and leave till the half volley is delivered. Right above where the family sat was that photograph of her parents. She could see her mother seethe in rage as her daughter was being humiliated. Her father though was ignoring the base remark from yet another ignorant stranger. He had a pipe dangling from the right side of his mouth. His intent glare fixed at his daughter. He recalled the many battles they had fought. Their thoughts were often orthogonal and the clawing at each other's beliefs often bared hidden prejudices that ashamed them both. "To marry or not to marry, the eternal question from which none can escape, least of them the woman" he sighed. Death now allowed him the luxury to play referee. The old lady envied him as she politely poured tea into the cups of her guests. She started with asking the young girl about her opinion. The girl blurted her thoughts about the low significance of marriage among her list of priorities. She wished to travel the world. Being a student of comparative history she wished to trot the globe tracing the footsteps of Ibn Batuta and Marco Polo. "Ah the perils of being a dreamer" sighed the lady, as the girl explained how she had often traveled the world in her mind through her books and imagined the shores of different countries while she stood day after day witnessing the sun set from her terrace. Marriage she explained is a natural bond between two minds that need no external force to coalesce. The old lady listened intently. There were now only two people in the room. She and her younger self. This was not a new act in the play. Just a repetition of an older one. For years there had been a dialogue between a father and his daughter in this house. That  performance had taken the shape of a soliloquy in the old man's absence. Now the dialogue was back with the daughter picking up the father's scepter while the frail voice of the young girl took hers.

"There comes a time when a woman feels lonely". When all the duties are done and the desire to be unfettered becomes tired of flying too long, the wish to rest on a branch with a loved one becomes strong. It happens to the best of us, she explained. "We are not all Ulysses my dear, no matter how much we envision ourselves to be" she gravely said, even as the ghost of her father choked on his pipe listen to his own words come out of his daughter's mouth. The parents sat sipping tea as the two women fenced with their verbal cutlasses. The girl refused to relent and the old woman was growing increasingly irritable. In rage she even called the young girl a spoil brat who hadn't learnt to obey elders. However she quickly calmed herself. Why was she not able to give an impartial opinion? What did her life have to do with a young girl's decision, she asked herself ? There was no answer from within; for her alter ego now sat across the table in a mauve silk saree.

The empty cups lay on the bedside table as collateral from the raw fight. The family had left and the lady had fallen asleep on her stool with her head resting on the rusting rods. The young girl sat in her room, thinking. She had grown up idolizing the woman by the window. In this small town with a dearth of idols she had found hers from a tender age. To her the woman was Liberty, Strength and Compassion bundled in one. She had shown that to give love one need not have a lover. To be strong one needn't have a husband's support. One can stay liberated without going astray as society predicts. The old woman was who she wanted to become one day. But the words that she heard today had shaken that foundation. While the facade still stood, the bulwark was crumbling slowly yet surely. "Marriage is not a bad thought after all; Even Mary Curie was married!" she said to herself. It was ironic that Curie's unhappy marriage was an example she had often cited to convince her friends that the institution of marriage was a perpetual hindrance in the path of personal development. The source of that anecdote had not been a reliable one and she knew it well.

A few weeks later the old woman was sitting by her window. It was night but the street below was bright as day. Rows of tube-lights wired to bamboo staffs lit up the road. The tarpaulin-clad scaffold along the terrace obstructed her view. But through the side she could see a large congregation of people. At one corner of the terrace was a make-shift shamiana where the marriage was being held. The fire burnt bright in the middle and leapt from time to time with the pouring of ghee. The girl was getting married. The purohit's recitals floated in the autumn breeze. She heard the chatter of the guests. Some praised the handsome couple while others commented on the food, the decoration, the bride's attire. the groom's complexion and a sundry other topics. The girl sat amidst it all staring at the fire, and the lady sat on her stool staring at her. For a split moment she thought their eyes met. In that moment they understood each other's struggle, pain, apprehension and the hope that all of that was untrue. "Life is that conundrum that one keeps solving till the end" thought the lady. While one searches the path to reach that end, another turns back to warn that it isn't the right one. "The truth is, there isn't a correct end, is there?" she whispered looking up at the man chewing his pipe. A faint smile crossed her lips.