The village power transmission had not broken down that evening as it so often did. When she went upstairs after turning off the dim lights in the empty house, her feet on the old wooden staircase sounded like steps from another lifetime. The third step groaned as it always did.
Leaving the silent ground floor further and further below, she rose above the level of the old storeroom and reached the first landing. She paused to make sure that the window to the verandah was latched. How thoughtful of the builder to have placed a window at that height. The dark shapes of the furniture she could see through it and the rustle of trees beyond it always brought back sharply, memories of the last time she had seen him. Silent, expressionless, unmoving, he had arrived in a group that came to condole with the family when the matriarch of the tharavad passed away. Had he hoped to see her? A great wave of pain had risen in her as she had watched him from this very angle, unseen.
The next landing took her above the room where her grandmother, uncle, mother and brother had all slipped away, each intensely nursed by their closest surviving kin: herself. There were faint creaks on the polished black-topped floor as she walked towards the bedroom where the old decorative bed stood, and the door swung open into the only space where she had been truly happy. It was a small room at the end of the corridor with two sets of windows, a large mirror facing the door and a glass-faced cupboard fitted into the wall. Prose Selections for Matriculation, High School Grammar, Poetry for Pleasure.
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The textbooks she had taught as Prema-Teacher. She had been a good teacher, a popular teacher and even years after they passed out of her care, former students had continued to write or visit. Gradually, unwilling to revive memories of a time when she had been in touch with them, she stopped corresponding altogether. And finally there came the day when her steps had slowed outside her old school and the watchman who no longer recognised her had very politely asked her to move on as the principal's rickshaw was waiting to turn into the gate.
“Ngahh- hah..” her uncle had cleared his throat signalling that he had something important to say. “She had better stop working and stay home. We have no one to take care of Ammumma and to see to the kitchen.”
Her uncle had decided her future without even looking in her direction. Her brothers had neither agreed nor disagreed. In nearly the same way, her marriage had been terminated because it had been a social inconvenience for the rest of the family. They had never wanted to separate but had been forced to because her brother had left his sister a few weeks after the exchange-wedding. There followed six months of negotiations, temple visits, and pleas. Furious, her in-laws had demanded that the injury be paid for in full.
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Fifty-two years had passed since that last night they had spent together, talking in low voices about everything except the forced divorce.
The moonlight of that warm night had lain on the floor like a new mat, picking out even the bits of gilt and green on the handmade fans in the room.
“Will you marry again?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
Every full moon night, she relived those hours when they had sat side by side looking out into the silvery night because she never saw him face to face again.
Mini Krishnan is the Editor-Translations, Oxford University Press-India