Munayem Mayenin
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Novels
SHE
Introduction
The wind blows the white saree of the old lady as white a flag of clouds and
it forms a hanging white kite being blown by the hot wind of a sunny day.
She-the lady in her eighties walks with great stride of affection; however,
she feels a strong pull backwards of the age. She looks up in the sunny blue
sky with cotton white clouds milling about purposelessly like her little life
except that it is alone, very very alone. She has been all her life a black
sun: lived in darkness, scared to death for being alone and now facing the
last sun sets of her life she is shrunk in her soul of the vast and
bewildering emptiness that threatens her existence. However, today, she was
happy. She was happy that she was going to bid good bye to her young made up
grand son at the river ghaat. She had no grand son! This young man came from
the city for few weeks and some how She became a grandma in her mind. She very
much fell in love with this young man from the city. Got up that morning and
realised that her city naati was leaving for the city. She had terrible back
ache and had horrible knee and yet she could not stay at her little hut
standing apologetically near the banana bushes away from the clutters of
thatched houses. Her hut, stood just about five feet tall and six by seven
feet space as if to say how poverty stricken the universe has been of space!
She had been living there since the War! How long ago was that! It seemed to
her a million years ago. The War that was supposed get things changed. Well,
it did change things, she must confess! Yet she had been living in her
thatched five feet tall six feet by seven feet hut on her own, scared to death
at night, she was scared of many things. She was scared of wolves that wore
faces of people and came out at night. She was scared of a lot of things but
now she had no more scare as she had nothing to lose! Suddenly, tears flows
down her cheeks! Why was these tears coming to her eyes that had gone stone
over these years! She did not want to think about it.
Walking by her, her city Naati, noticed the tears. The tears seemed so heavy
to him and he felt as though he could not breath anymore! He stopped and
looked at her. Her fragile, pale and almost soil like ginger coloured skin
seemed to him like dried land of plane that had no rain for many a years and
suddenly there are a few drops of rain and the little water seemed misplaced,
dried up as soon as it touched the hungry dry soil. Naati could smell the
little wet soil. He felt inside his heart something had gone as dry as this
soil on the aged skin of her. He felt a stone like hurt in his heart. It hurt
him really badly. For no apparent reason he realised that he had tears on his
eyes. He wiped the tears quickly as if he had committed a crime and
deliberately tried to cover his crime.
She looked at him and smile. He stood still! He felt he could not literally
walk! He felt as though he was stabbed with a huge but sharp knife! He stared
at her intently and tried to fathom the smile! That smile! He could never
forget. If a smile could be an autobiography of someone than this one would
definitely the autobiography of this lady whose face had become an old much
used map that had been put in a bottle and let out in the open for days and
suddenly a tourist found and open it and then tried to read it for his
destination. The smile, he tried with all his modern education and study, to
explain or understand! What does it mean! Is it sadness! Is it complaint! Is
it anger! Or is it affection! Or could it be a little of everything that made
a self portrait of the lady he called Naani and had made her a Naati without
knowing who he really was, where he had come from, whether he was a Muslim or
Hindu or Christian!
He looked at her. He got his white handkerchief out of his pocket and went
forward to wipe the tears out and yet he found himself hesitating to wipe the
tears as if to him it seemed a crime.
She stopped him
Avenues Infinite Infinite Avenues
Novel
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