Hello friends,
I hope you are all doing very well. I do apologize for not coming up with fresh book reviews often..........however I will soon come back with some interesting reviews on some fabulous books. In the meantime, my friends I gift you the following story. Life untitled is a short story written by me..........I sincerely hope you like it. And don't forget to give me your valuable feedback. Till then goodbye.
Life Untitled
They
said I will never recover. I didn't doubt them. I was after all ill for quite
some time now. I can feel the disease gnawing away at my innards. I have none
to worry about, no money or property to put down in a will. I was always a very
plain person living a very average life.....till I had the extraordinary
disease which is set to finish my short unappealing life. No one has yet turned
up with a bouquet of flowers; no one's even sent a get-well-soon card to me. But
I am satisfied, I don't like a fuss. Since my childhood nothing for me was ever
celebrated, I never deserved such attention. I don't know what it feels to be
admired or cherished, I will never know of such things ever.
As
hakimji left I stood by the door clasping my hands together, watching the
setting sun. It's so beautiful, the orange hue spreading, engulfing the entire
sky and then slowly fading away. And suddenly his thoughts crept up, they
always have, an adamant habit of finding me when I least expect them. I try to
block them but they erupt out, spreading warmth in my cold heart.
He
was a young man, a soldier in the army. They had come to our village for food,
he and his dashing, merry friends loudly joking and talking with each other,
smart in their uniforms .I watched them out of the corners of my eye, working
in the pigs sty. Our family had gone to my uncle's house in a nearby village
for a puja and I was left to take care of the livestock lest the wolves take
them. I averted my eyes as a piglet leapt up in evident glee. Radha our cow
mooed loudly. I quickened my pace at work, a lot was left. Butter had to be
churned, cows to be fed, kitchen to be cleaned, floors have to be scrubbed.
‘Hey, miss’, I was startled, my train of thoughts abruptly stopped by a deep,
jovial voice. I saw a twinkle in his eye, a patch of roughness on his stubble,
hands wringing as if in some kind of nervousness, and a foot tapping
impatiently. ‘Can you spare us some bread and cheese, we have been asking at
every door for it’, he seemed serious yet there was some playfulness in the way
he said. As if he was cracking a joke yet was trying to be somber at the same
time. I lowered my eyes and nodded; I could feel his gaze as I went in for what
he wanted. I shivered, it was cold and my clothes with years of constant use
were frayed and permeable. I looked up for a lump of goat milk’s cheese and
some stale dry bread. There were rats everywhere in the kitchen. ‘Maam, can you
kindly give me a glass of water, my lips are parched’. Balancing the food and
water in an earthen tray I went out to him. His eyes brightened and he eagerly
took the tray off my hands. I had put some pickle, a carrot and an apple too on
the plate. I watched him drain the glass thirstily and eat the food hurriedly
sitting on a stool by the cow-shed. His hands were dirty, his nails long and I
saw a mad gleam in his eyes as he ate. He smelled of tobaccos and sweat. ‘Ah
the pickle’s delicious;you have a husband? your husband’s a lucky man.’ I was too ashamed to admit
that at twenty-seven I was still unmarried, a burden to my family. My nineteen
year old pretty sister was already married off. He sucked his fingers clean and
brushed off the bread crumbs off his clothes. Handing me the tray back he stood
up. He was so tall, as if he overshadowed the noon sun. He saluted smartly and
simply said ‘Thank you maam’. As he marched away, out of the garden gates, I
looked on; I yearned to know his name so much. I sat down on the stool he was
sitting. He thanked me; I thought over and over again, he had thanked me. No
one had ever thanked me before. I could feel hot tears flowing down freely over
my cheeks. I cried. A gate was as if suddenly opened in my mind and all its
pain, regrets, losses freed from its fetters. It was dusk when I crept back in
the house. My mind was back to its normal state, but I felt peaceful and happy,
that one ‘thank you’ gave me hope that I probably had more to live for.
But
that was the last ‘thank you’ I ever received. They didn’t say that when I gave
away my only pair of gold earrings to my newborn niece, or when I gave up my
room to my younger brother after his marriage, or when I finally bundled off to
a distant aging aunt’s house in a far-off village to take care of her. None
shedded a tear as I left, not even my mother. She had other important worries.
I looked after my aunt till her death; she was ninety years old when she died.
Since then I have lived alone in her small house; she was childless and a
widow. I have nothing to look forward to and after all these years the only
thing welcoming is my death. I can still see him, eating my pickles, pocketing
the apple and then saluting me; the bright twinkle in his eyes as he said that
my husband’s a lucky man. I smiled in grief; he would never know my life, a
fruitless life, a life untitled.
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