Just Another Ordinary Day

The heat seeped in...Sweaty faces everywhere.... patient, stressed, desolate odds...

The lunch break took forever....

The child in the cramped corner bawled incessantly hearing the loud, aggressive voices.

Hush little baby, don't you cry...she whispered to the scared, sleepy child.... the distraught mother who was from a poorer background soothed with kind words of hope...

The bells clanged in the red bricked building, a living testimony of the British Raj....the crowds dissipating into the rooms in the corridor.

They waited silently.....the pronouncement was as expected. Minutes later, handing her the cheque; asking her to use wisely not just the money but the chance at a meaningful life...

Dedicated to Ms. Rajalaksmi, my firebrand divorce lawyer who won an election in my home state last week and has become a Member of the State Legislature...she had hinted at our last meeting of a role in politics but this was unexpected....I hope she uses her new powers for the betterment of women, especially victims of domestic violence.

Mother's Day - Haiku 14

Image courtesy where did my smile go

World's force feeding /

Turning poison to nectar /

 A mother's touch //

Zeitgeist?? # 35, # 36 And # 37 Random Musings For The Day

Is today's "shout out to be heard" world not really for introverts and shrinking wall flowers  ???......

Is a pretty face a prerequisite for a singer or can the voice outshine everything else???

A post on Susan Boyle and her acidic reception on Britain's got Talent on a blog I visited got me thinking.....

Does character assault and bullying start at kindergarten??

Yesterdays - At The O.T

Oblivious to all, pain and blood…she lay, her wounds being sutured, her right leg amputated below her knees…a journey, fending off robbers of her gold chain, a fall from a speeding train…and the volleyball player's dream lay shattered on the tracks. Right now, blissfully unaware of the blame game and aspersions cast on her story.

He was dying; he knew it as did the surgeons…..the woman on the plastic chair looked distraught and scared. A freak accident, her fault. Nobody told her, opening the car rear doors in a busy street could cause a biker a bleeding, painful end. She mulled their fate as those moments passed before her eyes.

They held hands, hope in their speaking eyes, prayer on their silent lips….they shared a loss neither regretted; their husbands shared more than a common affliction. They would be sharing theirs spouses kidney swapped. An uncommon exchange, perfect matches among then strangers.  A difficult sacrifice, would theirs better halves have done the same for them?

Xanthippe Widow

Image courtesy Claude Renault

She stood in the doorway, a creased face, paan stained red lips and a perpetual frown on the face….

A scowl said that I was standing in her way….She grumbled at "today’s kids" and their lack of traditional values….Funny, she should consider a 30 something one…

My friend was irritated at the stooping old woman as she walked fast for her age, despite her cane.

We made our way to the temple, there she was, the one I bumped into…she reprimanded me for not covering my head… I laughed and informed her that in our community only widows of old wore them that way….

Her eyes watered and she slunk away without taking her evening meal, the free Prasadam offered to the devotees.

 I felt guilty, the price of having a nagging voice in the head that enjoyed lecturing to my discomfort.

Back at the cottage I questioned the caretaker about her as she swept the verandah…

Married off at 12, send to live with her in-laws and absentee husband at 14, widowed at 17, the childless, now, 70 year old thrown out of her marital home a year later for being unlucky…Vrindavan had been her haven for the past five decades…

Doing odd jobs, eating at temples, spending the night at the cottage premises…she had it lucky than many others out in the temple town or other places…

Time and people had made her what she was today….and yet she blamed no one but her bad karma for a life without a husband… ironic that mine was alive and yet not a part of my life anymore and nobody seemed (well who am I kidding) bothered by it.

Life for a poor widow in rural India is often a nightmare…the woman’s life marked by the father, husband and then son…she on her own had no voice, no freedom, no rights, no dreams, no hopes…

Long after I boarded the train back to the safety of my home…her face and her story haunted my thoughts….till today…hopefully, the voice won’t nag me about her anymore….

*Xanthippe : nagging, peevish, ill - tempered woman

 344 words to be made into 500