Winter

Sitting at my door step, i look at the woman in front of me squatting on her knees busy chopping vegetables. She makes a beautiful picture in her white sari dotted with pink flowers, with a great mountain in the background, lush green, fed by the early monsoons.

She is narrating her childhood story with a twinkle in her eyes, about how she used to climb trees and bring kafal home and how her grandfather used to give her a dhela as a gift sometimes. I just get lost in the twinkle of her eyes and her smile, a rare eruption on her once beautiful face now hidden behind the criss cross lines of age.  I give out a sigh, as I am not used to handling so much love inside me, and i release it to mingle with the cool breeze around, thanking someone, that sometimes I have something to share. She notices the sigh and curses me, which pierces the warmth that encircled me and shattering it into pieces and throwing me back into reality. I notice her cursing her fate to have such an ungrateful, ill mannered daughter who cannot even sit and talk to her mother, who cannot be happy with their mothers happy memories.

She starts fussing around the house, over things that I find immaterial, that no one notices and take up to be their right. When her husband wipes his unclean hands on the curtain, or her son puts his shoes close to her Pooja which she hates, she ends up washing everything again again. She washes even when the snow mercilessly keeps telling us that the winter inside us can also be felt outside. Just that I have given up and she has not, she is constantly scrubbing and cleaning, washing away the dirt, holding her ground fiercely against the arrogant and violating winter. I look at her sometimes awe inspired with her grit and sometimes pitying her, what is she washing, she will never be able to wash the rusted half century old bondages, or the shackles of her birth.

 Today the sun had shone after a long time, giving hope but went away too soon, making me aware of the chill even more bitterly.The ominous mountain roars suddenly struck with lightening, laughing at the captives.

I dream of two shadows, not distinct from each other, runing, over kafal trees, over the mountain, floating with the clouds and experiencing bliss, with the music of ones own laughter. One of the shadow puts a hand in the pocket finds an old coin, it seems to be fake, she throws it away with all her force, it hits something strong but it seems to crackle due to the force.

I open my eyes, I see her with her face shining in the dim light of the home made chimin. She smiles at me sharing with me the bliss, anand.