Short Story - In Betweens...

As I alighted from the bus, I glanced at the watch. Almost half past seven. I looked expectantly towards the apartment just across the road where the wide gate offered me a good view of an ancient-looking house. Yes! I watched a teenaged girl dressed gracefully in a cotton sari come up to the open porch with a lighted lamp, chanting the evening prayer. An old couple followed her with palms clasped devoutly. As the girl kneeled down, the old lady arranged the cushions on the settee for her husband to sit, while he carried for her, the Holy books that were too heavy for her to lift. He smiled gently as he handed her the reading glasses and seated her by him.

I smiled involuntarily. Every evening, I wait for this little tableau before starting on my walk home.

I started to walk down the mud path to the right of the road. It’s a little longer than by the road, but I have some trysts I have to keep. I stopped a little way away from a tiny cottage at the corner, hidden by the banyan tree. The cottage badly needed a coat of paint. The right-most window was cracked, and the gate was almost falling off the hinges. But the young man who alighted from his motorbike in front of the cottage five minutes later looked at it as if it were Paradise. The door opened almost as soon as he reached the gate and his fresh-faced little bride ran out to meet him, her face aglow with a sweet smile-- just as she did every day.

I suppressed a sigh and walked on.

I stopped by the bakery and the baker smiled at me and nodded –“yes”. I paid him for some buns. “God bless you, daughter” he said. I smiled.

I stood by the bakery door and watched the lady on the corner platform. She did not beg, like the street urchins around her, or sell any wares, like the hawkers on either side of the street. In her rags, she sat huddled, watching the road keenly. At each passerby, she stared for a moment with her searching eyes, in eager anticipation; and then turned away in disappointment. Everyone in the neighborhood knew her story. She was a widow, and her only son, a young boy, had joined the army a year ago. After his training had been completed, he had sent her a telegram from his training camp saying he would be home the next day. The bus he was on, overturned into a flooded river, and his body was never recovered.

Since that day, the lady had never left that platform, and neither force nor persuasion could drag her from her seat. And it seemed cruelty to drag her away…She was waiting for her son to come home. The baker used to feed her some buns every day—she would have died of starvation if he had not, poor woman—but he, with a large and growing family of his own, could ill afford charity. So everyday, I paid him for his buns, and he gave them to the old lady with the searching eyes.

I started off again. Towards the right was a road where I could hear the two ‘wall girls’. This was a curious arrangement that only childhood would have devised. The two houses were adjacent to each other, but opened out to parallel roads--so that the back doors of the houses faced each other. And in the two houses lived two bosom friends of about five or six. Not being permitted out of their respective houses at that late hour, they often conducted extended conversations by shouting from their respective windows. I—and half the neighborhood—often eavesdrop on their conversation, which cover a wide range of topics, including disliked teachers, sick dogs and pregnant mummies. I heard them as I passed by.
“My Mama says I have to go and stay with Aunty when she goes to the hospital to have the baby out.” She seemed to feel it was something like having a tooth out. I stifled a laugh.
“Our baby is such a pain, though everyone says she’s so cute. She sleeps all day and cries all night. I es…es…espekt yours will too. Daddy says it hasn’t yet figured out which is day and which is night. Imagine that!!”

Happy innocence! What did they care that half the world was listening to them?

I was almost in sight of my destination. Even in sight of it, I turned to a little road on the left and walked a little way. From behind another tree, I could see a little balcony. Under the light, a middle-aged gentleman sat reading the paper. A sweet-faced lady, his wife, was braiding the long tresses of her young daughter sitting at her feet with maternal care. I could almost read the mother’s dreaming face…”She is growing so fast. Soon she will have to be married. Will her husband take good care of her? She is so innocent and young…” Her hand passed over her daughter’s head in a gentle caress. The girl looked up at her with a smile, kissed her work-worn hands, and leaned her head on her lap. Her father looked at the pair over his paper and smiled.

I sighed again and walked back down the road. I was at the gate of the only home I had ever known. The Orphanage and the Working girls Home stood side-by-side. The Orphanage had fed me, sheltered me, educated me and raised me to proud independence from charity. When I got a job, I had moved to the Home.

As I walked into my room, my roommate glanced at the time and shook her head.
“Walked again? Why don’t you hire a rickshaw?”

“And miss my walk? Not a chance!” I replied.