The Little Secret
Reena was a housewife, mother of two and a
graduate in science. It had been about fifteen years since she last woke up to
the sound of an alarm clock. Every day since then her eyes bid goodbye to her
dreams before the break of dawn. Today was no exception. In an instant she sprung up from the bed and
placed her hand confidently on the snooze button of the alarm clock and
deprived it yet another opportunity to chime to life, almost triumphantly. The milky
white marble floor was still cold from the nip in the night air, as she placed
her bare feet onto it. She coiled her hair into a bun and knotted it
dexterously without the need of a hairpin to hold it up.
An hour later Pratik, her husband, woke up to
his cup of tea by his bedside and a copy of the newspaper – news of murders,
rapes and accidents making gory headlines, the colorful supplements brimming
with discounts of the festive season offering a stark contrast to the realities
of the world. The thick dark velvet curtains were drawn far apart, and tied
together at the end of the French window with handmade tassels, allowing the
first rays of the sun into the room. They rendered a touch of fiery gold to the
henna streaks in Reena’s thick hair.
The room was filled with the scent of her sandalwood bath soap. As she scurried
around the room she left behind an exotic mix of fragrances stemming from her
hair, body and the soft cotton saree that
was draped hastily around her slender built with its loose end tucked neatly at
the waist. The bright red vermillion in the partition of her hair added a dash
of color to the pale facial features and the dull shades of her cotton saree. The usual morning orchestra continued
to play in the kitchen, the pressure cooker hissing and whistling, the metal
utensils clanging, water gushing, the microwave beeping and the mixer roaring
as it grinded tiny pieces of coconut into a fine paste. As he watched her
multi-task, Pratik imagined her to be the Goddess Durga with twelve arms from
the photos of deities that hung in various corners of their house. She
exhibited the same level of energy and confidence. It was only unfortunate that
she was human and a woman and that made no one regard her as highly or worship
her like the Goddess.
After the morning cacophony ended, when the
kids were off to school and the husband at work, Reena found her piece of
solitude. She looked at the watch strapped to her wrist, flakes of leather
peeling off from its skin. She reminded herself to drop by the watchmakers shop
over the weekend to have it replaced. Secretly she hoped her husband would
surprise her with a new one. She had hinted at it in more than one ways. The
clock read, 12:29 pm. It would be an hour and a half before her daughter Shreya
would be back from school. She tuned into the radio to listen to her favorite
radio show. It played soft music interspersed with some easy-to-cook recipes which
Reena experimented with for the children’s evening snack. She pulled out the
drawer of the old walnut almirah that
was heavy with stacks of unorganized photos of numerous occasions or no
occasions at all, some of them already having borrowed a yellowish tinge from
the slightly damp air, some others marred with fingerprints left behind from
not holding them gingerly at the sides as Reena had always insisted. Reena sifted
through the pile of pictures trying to arrange them chronologically, preserving
some special ones on the empty leaves of an old album. The photos carried her
back to a world that now seemed to have been left far behind, light years away!
The pictures of her uncle who had passed away unexpectedly, her friend from
college who had battled cancer, her cousin who hadn’t called her in three years
after a petty argument they had had, her granny who had not lived long enough
to see her great grandchildren…memories kept flashing back and tears surged in her
eyes, her throat choked as if it had just ended a long conversation, and her
head felt heavy like how her husband sometimes complained when he returned home
late from office parties. She dumped those pictures in a box, shut it close and
hid it in the farthermost corner of the drawer. The radio hummed the song “Yaadein” in the background.
She decided to treat herself to the happier
times captured in the photographs. She was amazed at how quickly time flies.
She wondered if her son would choose to be an engineer like his father, or
would he follow his passion for sports? She mulled over the thoughts of her
daughter who was growing up to be a pretty lady. Would she sacrifice her career
to look after her family, or would she be more ambitious and pursue it
alongside? She wondered if a few years from now, would the children still be
around or would they be traveling the world to follow their dreams. She
shuddered at the thought of going to bed for days on end not having heard their
voice, of living on the other side of the world, in two geographically and
culturally estranged countries.
Just as she had started to drift in the
thoughts, she glanced at her watch. It was past 03:00 pm and her daughter had
not returned from school. Panic gripped her momentarily, until she reached out
to her dairy of telephone numbers. Little glossy tags carrying the alphabet stuck
out from the right border to form an index. She ran her thumb down as if she
was mentally rehearsing the alphabet until she reached “F” for Friends and
opened the leaf that carried about 10 numbers in order of decreasing
amiability. She dialed the numbers frantically, one after the other, redialing
the ones that were busy, asking the same set of questions on every call, but
garnered no clues on her daughter’s whereabouts. After 20 minutes of the
relentless phone calls, the doorbell buzzed, a quick sequence of three, a
signature way in which the kids and the husband announced their arrival.
Reena rushed to the door, flung it open and
barked.
“Where’d you been? All your friends have been
back from school more than an hour back. Riya tells me you didn’t leave with
her. Look at me, will you?
“Why did you have to call up all my friends?
It’s so embarrassing. I would have
been home anyway”
“Now will you please tell me what took you so
long? It’s not easy to be the mother of a 14 year old daughter, with the kind of
things that are happening in the city. You read the newspapers don’t you?”
“I need time to talk about this. But I assure
you there’s nothing to be worried about.”
With that her daughter left a furious Reena
with an obstinate silence and a mind clouded with wandering thoughts that
fluttered like wild butterflies of what her daughter could have possibly been
up to in those sixty minutes. A woman in doubt paints some of the most complex
of images; churns out some of the most forbidden thoughts and plays them
repeatedly in her head to satiate the hunger of her ravenous mind. The thoughts
that floated in her mind made Reena feel queasy and restless. Her pale face
which always seemed flushed of color suddenly turned crimson. As she frowned,
the skin of her forehead wrinkled like the creases on her cotton saree. She walked around heavily from
one room to another finishing her chores, thumping and banging whatever she
could so that her hysteria doesn’t go unnoticed. Her lips quivered in fury and
she pursed them together, lest they let out words sharp as a blade that could
slay and ravage a little heart. She sank in her bed and with it in her quagmire
of hassled thoughts.
She could feel her heart pump blood
vigorously through her body; she could feel it was warm. She could hear herself
breathe, faster than when she climbed the flight of stairs with bags of
vegetables clubbed in one hand and the pleats of her saree in the other. She could feel her body tremble and shiver more
than when she had to step into the cold shower early morning. Even with her
eyes closed she could sense Rhea had tip-toed into her room. She resolved to
keep her eyes shut and ignore the presence of her daughter who by now had
crawled next to her into the bed, until she felt the soft, gentle touch of her
hand on her cheeks. She opened her eyes that were sore from fighting back
tears. Through her blurry vision she could see the little hand sticking out
close to her reindeer nose, holding a box wrapped in cellophane and tied with a
lovely pink bow. It read ‘Happy Birthday Mommy!’
“This
is why I was late from school!” she exclaimed with a wide smile drawn across
her face! “I went shopping for it with
Dad. He dropped me back home. You were so upset; I couldn’t keep it from you!
It’s a wristwatch.” With those words she wrapped her arms around her mother and
buried her head in the pillow next to Reena’s.
As the words fell on her ears, Reena regained
her poise that had been strewn in bits like the shards of broken glass that cut
some of the deepest wounds never to heal. She shut her eyes tightly and let the
tears flow incessantly; this time out of relief. She felt the peace of a
thousand splendid sunsets and her heart felt light and free like a thousand doves
that headed into them. She hugged her daughter and whispered, “I was so
scared!” She felt miserable for having forced her daughter to reveal what was
otherwise a well-planned surprise.
“It’s okay! But just don’t tell Daddy that
you know yet!”
“I promise!”
The following Sunday, the kids gathered
around her wearing colorful birthday hats, singing the famous Happy Birthday
song, clapping and doing a little Macarena to their own tunes and yelled
“Surprise!” Out came the familiar box wrapped in cellophane with the pink bow,
the words ‘Happy Birthday Mommy!’ written in Shreya’s bold cursive handwriting,
the Titan Logo visible through the translucent packing.
“Thank you so much! It’s what I always
wanted” Reena smiled gratefully.
“Dad and I picked it up last week after my
football classes,” chirped little Riyan innocently, forcing a big piece of the
chocolate cake in his tiny mouth, crushing Rhea’s alibi and stealing the
happiness that they had just gifted Reena.
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