Under the shade of a tree with branches cropped like a mushroom, Nirmala flipped the frail pale yellow pages of an old book. She had found it in her father’s attic that morning while rummaging for a knitting needle. Its page numbers were smudged and the pages themselves flaking so much so that she had to close it shut. ‘Perhaps another time’ she thought, spreading the sari folds neatly on her lap. It had to be the lookalike of the two peacocks’ design as she had seen on the counterpane of her friend’s; now she fitted the garment in the frame and began knitting. The afternoon sun tinselled the garment before her through the reflection of her shiny gilt pendants. Then as if seized by an imaginary hand, she rose up, collected her things and issued a steady gait towards the hall door. Unbuckled, her suede sandals swept in their wake, dry leaves and crumpled papers strewn all around the compound.
Seated behind the dark mahogany table, with her legs spread under it, she arched her back on the scarlet red velvet bolster. That was ten years ago, back in those days, she attended college. She was an ambitious woman; but the death of father and impending debts left the family packing with barely clothes to cover their modesty. She entered into an unhappy marriage, and tried, with all her might, to correct the faults and right the wrongs.
Nirmala was in her thirties; she was reminded of her age twenty times a day - when she mopped her brow, powdered her cheeks, giggled before the mirror, drew her hair tight into a braid over the head. Presently, her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Replacing the shiny mango shaped pendants with a sedate stud, she rushed to grab the door. Her husband, Venkat, lowered a rice bag from the auto rickshaw, dusted it with a cleaning cloth, issued a command to make room, and dragged the bag along the lumpy floor. The interior of the house was so dark that Venkat’s arm brushed a pillar on the way; the exposed wood nipped a thread from the fabric of his shirt, and tore open the shoulder sleeve joint.
“Let me quickly” scooping rice out with a spoon, squatting on the floor before his plate, she continued “make a tailor stitch on your shirt”.
With a sidelong glance, he whisked the shirt open to expose a hairy chest that slobbered like a wet door mat. A short man with shaven whiskers and balding head, Venkat hardly spoke at home. He drove his auto rickshaw around the city for his livelihood, supplied for the wife and two daughters, and spent the nights rather uncomfortably. He longed for the day; if he could, he would do away with the nights. At night, his wife ran through his belongings and stole every last penny from his pockets. Recently, he attempted to dig a hole in the wooden beam of the roof; his preposterously crafty wife stole the savings from the rafters of the roof that sloped on either side of the central beam.
“It is nearly complete” holding the peach coloured blouse, Nirmala fingered the flounces on the sleeves and chaffed “come tomorrow, will you! I promise”.
The woman stood under Nirmala’s portico, stamped her feet in the ground. “My wedding is tomorrow” pinching the pleats of her skirt, she dug her heel into the ground harmoniously, hither and thither. “our new house will have curtains” here she paused as if to wonder if it was a bit premature to muse about, nevertheless, she decided to pursue. Pouting her lips, and looping her plaited hair around the index finger, she enquired “will you be able to knit festoon art on the curtains?”
To this, Nirmala reflected “in that case, drop by this evening”. The attractive young lady’s skirt billowed as she quickly turned around; marks of her pointed heels frequented the dusty road that stretched between the oblong slabs of both houses – Nirmala’s and the attractive young lady’s. Venkat had finished his lunch; their daughter Anita was yet to come back from school. Slipping a grey furred kitten into his lap, Venkat tickled under its ears. It meowed, pawed the trousers and laid his nose on master’s knees; stately, it beat its eyelids hurriedly and rapped the ears fitfully.
Sound of sewing machine’s incessant flutter ran through the walls of the house; every now and then, a pause followed by a quick swish of the scissors dragged along the laminated wooden roof of the machine. Nirmala ensured that the family ran on the meagre income of her husband’s; she saved her earning for a future event - their daughter’s marriage. Thoughts of last night’s quarrel brimmed to the surface of her mind as the machine whirred melodiously and the cat purred silently. A shadow crept in silently from behind her; it climbed the bend of her shoulders and fell on the needle, distracting her momentarily. The blouse had to be delivered that evening; the hemline of the flounced blouse now dripped blood; a supressed squeal escaped Nirmala as she found her index finger under the needle, stitched into the blouse’s back.
“You have denied me; all these years, you have denied me” Venkat broke into a fiery laughter. Nirmala clutched the stitched finger; with cries that quivered his flaming ears, she slowly released her feet from the pedal and began spinning the wheel away from her. Meanwhile, the demented husband dragged the scissors and beamed in his serpentine head, a cacophonous laughter. Slipping his fingers into the trouser pocket, priced out a small bottle; in a flash, he jabbed the pointed ends of the scissors into the bottle’s mouth and emptied the viscous fluid into his mouth.
“Wife, we bickered over my need to wet my throat with alcohol.” Suppressing a frothing rat poison, he explained “now you are skewered to the sewing machine and I have fumigated my innards. Good bye to you”
Cries of despair ricocheted through the mud walls; Nirmala unpinned her finger with a shriek that emanated from the pit of her stomach, and ran after the suicidal husband. Neighbours watched in horror, women clung to their little ones, shoved them inside and shut the doors. Venkat bowed before every neighbour, he desperately pursued to pour out his last feelings for one and all, but only blue visceral concoction escaped his burnt lips. In the narrow lane, neighbours rallied along as if to witness a procession. Nirmala thumped her bosom and sank her head into a sidewall and dropped to the floor; the unconscious woman was quickly parcelled into a neighbour’s house by some of the women. The initial confusion stunned all the men, but as the shock subdued, they grabbed venkat and hurriedly transported him to the government hospital.
Today, their daughter Anita is married. Venkat occasionally absconds, renounces Nirmala to display his masochist side; but returns home to popper his kittens with a petting hand and pepper his wife with a perturbed pat.
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