By Nirmala Pillai
The street lay wet and shimmering after the afternoon rains. I stood at the window sipping tea, enjoying the cool breeze for a moment entranced by the glitter of the raindrops falling off the potted plants, on window sills and ledges, down electric poles and wires by the street crossings where crows and pigeons preened and shivered like musical notes. In the sudden burst of sun warmed air, the rainbow hued petrol drips trembled in the puddles. It was a single moment of evanescence and peace, as in Robert Browning’s poem,‘Pippa Passes’ in ‘God’s in his Heaven/All’s right with the world!’
The mood gave way when I suddenly noticed the gait of a woman on the street. She turned into the street bent down with the weight of the bags on her shoulders and trudged slowly with the open black umbrella even though the rains had stopped. I could not see her face but I recognised her.
Staring at her, my heart thumped with sudden anxiety as I turned away and tried to quell the panic inside me. I knew her. I had seen her since my childhood following the same set routine as a young woman. Now as an old lady without changing her daily habit for more than fifty years, she continued doing the same thing, a creature of habit.
I felt the need to sit down. On the way to the sofa the ornamental mirror on the wall caught my reflection.
I could not stop staring at it in fear and fascination. That person was me now. Where had I gone? Alone with myself ! Age! Time! The sinuous whisper of crawling fear made me tremble. Age is just a number! I am as young as I feel — love is ageless.
All those self-assertions were hopeless. I could feel the sweat break out of my pores.
I sat down and gripped the poetry book I had been reading. He had insisted I read it when he gave it as a surprise gift — a good friend and colleague who had kept in touch. Why did he still remain kind and nice. Was he like or unlike others with whom I had been on good terms? Did he expect anything from me. Have I missed the signals all my life?
I was now a middle-aged single woman and fear gripped me as the thought that sprung to my mind was, I would also end up like her. My calm was tattered to pieces, fluttering away in confusion. I was caught in a whirl of emotions and thoughts. Why did she disturb me so much?
I had definitely traversed a very different path from her. There were no parallels in our lives. But now at this moment, suddenly when I was enjoying my ‘me’ time, the splintering truth struck out of the blue. I am alone. The sprawling apartment spoke of comfort, care and luxury with a live-in maid, with all the gizmos and art and cultural ambience of a successful life and career, a single woman could achieve; I suddenly felt like a cipher. Raw, exposed and empty. Why did I feel like that?
The demon called loneliness mocked my aloneness. It had no shape or size or smell. It was like a vapour, like air that sometimes crept silently or jumped up terrorising my very breath. Those moments of sheer emptiness and choking sensations that I had thought were over, seized me again.
Who are you.? What have you achieved. Have you made any one happy? Does anyone wait for you, ask about you ? Such were the dark numbing thoughts that gathered inside me and gave way to spontaneous outflow of tears. My sighs cradled unknown sorrows I could not fathom. Melancholy and depressed, moody and restless all the shine was tarnished and lost meaning. I thought I was beyond it and a very stable person. But I knew now that I was deluding myself.
My eyes fell on the page I had been reading, Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart.
Am I lonely? Am I old ? Why am I still single? The looping thoughts suffocated me in its coils.
The naked bulbs of truth has a harsh way to call attention in the most make-believe moment of tranquillity. The mirror held me in its snare but it did not crack my image — vanity, pride, self-delusions shatter inside me.
I look at the degrees framed on the wall; the decorative pieces brought from the different countries during my world-wide travels, and wander into a mental fog .
What use are these papers to me now? In my loneliness, do I crave aloneness? However high I go, I must come down to earth among people, to get applause; hear it, share it to have meaning.
My mind was filled with her image. I knew without looking she would stop under the old banyan tree, pause for breath and turn into the narrow lane where the cluster of chawls[1] with the rows of common toilets and bathrooms existed since I could remember. They were all built more than eighty years ago and opened into the central courtyard. The multi-storied building and high-end gated communities I occupied came later and had gates, gardens and lifts with bathrooms and toilets inside our homes.
Her name was Kokilaben. All knew her as she was well known in the locality called Gaiwadi, for singing and dancing during the nine day garba festival[2] during Navaratri. She would decorate others homes with beautiful rangoli designs if requested. Whether it was her nickname or her real one, whether her dark complexion contributed to her remaining single, no one knew and no one confirmed. Since I could remember, she was a slim young woman who wore her saree in the traditional Gujarati style, taught in the primary Muncipal school and looked after her ailing mother after her father passed away.
I remember the ladies in our old building talking about her in whispers sometimes, and at other times, praise her spirit and dedication to her mother for taking care of her.
Growing up, the difference I perceived in my teenage mind, was that she was single, unmarried and had a job unlike the married women who looked after their husbands, children and ran a budgeted households. They cooked, cleaned, argued with the vegetable and fruit vendors, hung clothes and gossiped across their balconies and windows . They fought with other women for water and at the ration shop, women who looked dishevelled and pulled up their sarees tight, and knotted its end as if ready to fight and take on the world. After 4 O’clock they became ladies and dressed up in the evening to await their husbands return.
Kokilaben was a permanent subject of gossip ; no one spoke to her but about her. Her immediate neighbours kept watch on who visited her. They watched out to see if she spoke to men of the locality – whether strange men visited her. They wondered why she showed no interest in marriage.
Everyone kept an eye on her while they gossiped about the new couples, which boy made eyes at which girl. Inquisitiveness and curiosity was a virtue here. They spoke of not giving dowries and cursed the burden of daughters, but secretly took it for their sons on the pretext of marrying their daughters. They gossiped about , mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and good husbands, saintly husbands and philandering ones, of shame and cruelty and all that happened in their lives, but the worst was kept for the working single girl and she was suspected of committing the worst crimes. They praised their children, told lied about them too. Behind the closed doors, they beat them and abused them and took out their frustrations in secret silence. All wore masks.
One common topic for a long time I remember was the marriage of Kokilaben, as she was the one who chose to live alone after her mother passed away. She used to go missing for a week every three months and no one knew where she went . After some years, she did not disappear. Once her hair turned grey she ceased to exist.
Realisation struck me when I passed my civil service exams, from the security of my loving family how she must have craved the sense of freedom after carrying the burden of a home and her parents. I understood she was a rarity in the conservative middle class of 1960s.
Now I too stay alone. Kokilaben had no one and she had still lived the way she wanted. People spread stories about her. She was a transgender. She was a witch. She brought bad luck if you met her on the way. She ate children. She was not the pleasing friendly auntie but did not disturb any one and gave money for the annual Holi, Ganesh Chathurthi, and Navaratri festivals when the colony held mass celebrations. She lived quietly and asked no body’s help as she grew old. She paid her bills and fed the street dogs during the monsoons. She gave shelter in her chawl verandah to dogs during downpours and then drove them away when the rains ceased.
So today why was my calm broken by this familiar figure.?
She had not existed in my daily frame. She had merged with my memories even though she was alive like part of the furniture in the background. Living a full animated, varied life, only the present and exciting future mattered. On a certain day called retirement, all that ceased with the strike of a government rule. We all had to retire at the age of sixty. I suddenly became a senior, a retired officer, a suffix, a past tense, a marginalised peripheral person brought down from the tabletop, kept in a corner sometimes consulted. My importance diminished. I was an afterthought, with no fresh shoots , only roots.
It was not loss or failure in love; A spinster missed the bus for not making efforts to find a mate. It was not a voluntary decision to be single. It was not even a decision to be self-sufficient and complete. It was not out of vanity waiting for the best catch or being rejected. I had security, love, care and many relatives and friends looking out for me .
Still I stayed unmarried. I did not have an affair or secret liaisons. I felt I was not ready. I did not know how to handle that particular relationship while I could handle anything else. I feared domination or giving in to being used or abused, being beholden to someone, losing independence, feared not sharing common values and ideas on what I cared or despaired about, feared of the other not being empathetic or sympathetic with me on all issues. Would I be mentally free without commitments?
In my case, it was because of a personality trait of fear, anxiety or disorder as you may call it. Externally, I seemed like a perfect apple but the insides was not perfect. It was flawed with delusional mental problems and phobias. Seeing the woman today, the realisation was stunning. There was no difference between me and her. Both lived but at the end of day, I was alone and lonely and she was not. She lived within herself content with her difficulties.
I lived in my mental cocoon, a moth, and did not struggle to come out as a butterfly. She did emerge out of her pupa. I hid all the broken glass pieces of my mind well and succeeded by external calibration to become a versatile achievement-oriented woman. Kokilaben lived and lives while I now search for the shades and shadows with regret. I fooled myself for I never learnt to depend on myself for my happiness.
Why did he give this book to me, I wondered? The suspicions started gathering like thundered clouds before a storm. The old pain of not believing in my own capacity and struggling to get appreciation and achieve heights of fame and praise imploded inside me. I could not form a trusty relationship; commitment phobic for the fear of failure as anxiety eroded my fragile feelings and left me feeling numb. I was convinced that it was safer to hide behind my own self, not sharing my life with anyone.
But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. (Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’, published posthumously in 1681)
My single hood was surely inferior to Kokilaben’s life. I took the cup to wash in the sink and did not know where the detergent and wipe was kept. I had to wait for the maid to return from the market. I felt my illusions of grandeur turn to mundane sniggers of self-pity.
Kokilaben opened up my deep seated fears and the truth sprang punching my face.
Life is for living. I dreamt my life away. Yes, with luck and some help I slid through life, but at some point or moment, like now my face smashed on that reflection on the mirror. I will taste the salt of blood and tears of reality, feel the self-demeaning regret and pain of not having experienced the love, the hurts and happiness of having a partner.
Kokilaben had self-respect I did not , for I lived in others words and mind .
Why did he still remain my friend or was he trying to say something? Was it too late? I must call him. Talk to him now! Can I live a life time in the time I have? Time was dripping drop by drop, but now I felt life gushing by in my tears .
The panic attack when it came was bad. I struggled up panting to swallow the tablet that was kept handy as an ‘sos’ , but at that moment the telephone rang and I trembled as I took the call, in hope, in fear, in desperation.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run. (Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’, published posthumously in 1681)
[1] Tenements for low-income people
[2] Traditionally, garba is performed during the nine-day Indian festival, Navarātrī, that is held around September-October.
Nirmala Pillai is a writer, painter, and an Ex-Civil Service Officer, who has published three collections of poems and one of short stories. Her published works have appeared in PEN, The Asian Age, Indian Literature, Bare Root review from Minnesota University, Poetry Can, UK [Poetry Southwest], The Telegraph, The Little Magazine, Cha; An Asian literary journal.
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