She was there, all of a sudden, in front of my eyes. I was shattered. I was emptied; I was inundated. I knew it was her, yet I managed to try the failing efforts of denying my own. No, I didn't wanted it to be her. I couldn't figure out exactly what ruled me at the instant; the hormones secreted were aliens to my being. The gloom that got me in was weird; unknown; unanticipated. Desperation tied me up and I began to shiver in the scorching heat. Ears reddened and so did my flabby cheeks. Shackled by my morbid emotions, I could do nothing but watch her helplessly in utter stillness. Her denuded reality stood infront of me in the guise of her bare existence. A supposedly opaque red colored blouse that was transparent enough to perceive the insight hung in her upper- self. The blouse was unbuttoned, may be it hadn't any. Her emaciated chest was showcasing her ribs coated with nothing but too thin a layer of skin. Her wrinkled breasts hung loosely and her nipples pointed towards the south. Her stomach was pushed inside as if one does it perforce. But her lower abdomen seemed to jut out a little with loose muscles causing it to acquire a fitful up-down motion while she walked. The scratches and rashes along with too deep a navel over the abdomen were even augmenting the crude vulgarity nature enforced on women's body. Her lower-half was covered with ragged and dirty petticoat torn in at places. The color of the garment didn't cast in my mind hence, I couldn't remember any hue of it. Her firm and florid cheeks were substituted with skinny and pallid ones transmuting her from chubby to chiseled. Her shoulder length curled hair was rough and dry making her appear uncouth. With such attire she was walking back and forth barefooted on the footpath nearby the highway.
She was in her early thirties, I knew, because mom once told me that she had delivered her first child while she was only sixteen, a month before my younger brother was born who is now seventeen. But hardly would anybody agree with me. She looked like the women in their late forties. Miseries had mercilessly swallowed her times. I could still recall those scenes from my past when I and my friends used to play for hours in the barren land that was much like a play ground which was located very near to her house, Durga aunt's house. It wasn't the fun alone; those hours instilled on me the implacable despair as well. Empathy was practiced on me since my early days. Slaps and kicks, jerks and whips, tirades and shouts; she endured them all. She lived through all her raucous man's brutalities. Ironically, she always seemed robust; she always behaved composed. Yeah, it amazed me every time when she found the reasons to smile even in the dearth of happiness. She was actually the earth personified; it always happened to me.
I was sure that it wasn't the small grief that had succeeded to agitate her, that had looted her senses, that had muted her conscience. Only a violent devastation could destruct her so; only a filthy attack on her dignity could have shaken up her so. Her dignified conduct still reflected in her madding acts. She would curl up her petticoat to hide her visage whenever she felt as if someone is staring at her bare upward. The view petitioned the tears on my eyes and I was obliged. Silent streams rolled down causing noisy turmoil inside me. She was non-existent in her existence. The apathetic actions her hollowed self performed were penetrating me too deep to perceive the depth. She was composed in her perturbation. She kept moving around, nonchalantly for a while and left me disturbed in my seemingly calm stance. Her departing footsteps filled my heart with the agony of the doomed, hurt me like the wounds of the burnt and shattered me like the trust of deceived lover, that dark and gloomy sunny day..
