Beats of Loneliness & Other Stories

“Yes it is his name and the letters that comprise it! And perhaps when I would scribble it down it would be set free from the bondage of my thoughts-my thoughts that keep his name forever chained in my memory.” That day Saira sat down to scribble just one name on whichever paper she could lay her hands on. Even before the ink could dry over one page, she would be busy penning over another. Sometimes, in between when her slender fingers would refuse to go any further without a break, she would drag them to the margins of the page to doodle flowers and never forget to put a smile over each one of them-smiling, happy flowers. But she never allowed her fingers complete rest. She soon discovered that ink and paper were not able to satiate the hunger of words to be drawn out-out in to the open where they could acquire their own identity. In fact charcoal was a better substitute and even better was ash from the fireplace. “O Saira, my child! This is sheer madness. If destiny desires he would anyway be yours. And who ever knew what oracles really conveyed,” and granny broke down in to sobs. Whole night her sobs rent the house with a gloom that no one sensed, for Saira was too busy scribbling to notice any plaintive note in the air though she heard the sobs. “O Granny, why don’t you just rub balm over your nose and stop blowing it so hard?” Saira pitied poor granny for having fallen ill for an illness at her age could be really serious. Her long grey tresses, wrinkled skin, puckered lip, skeleton like hands with veins so prominent that Saira got scared even if she touched them by chance. It was a wonder how she managed to knit sweaters. Her fingers worked habitually, quickly and skillfully over the knitting needles. Going by her age she had probably not admired any of her works since a long time now. Just one name all over the floor, over the curtains, over the walls, over the almirah, over the doors, over the windows, over the bedcover, over the pillows and over the bed itself. Granny’s initial reaction was an obvious resentment for though she could not see the nuisance nevertheless she found the sniff of it unbearable. Wherever granny went the odour of coal had reached before her. But slowly the odour overpowered the olfactory and granny never sniffed anything unusual in the air of the house. Each day Saira spared some time to observe the rosebush in her backyard. But the bush looked just the same with roses blooming and blushing each time the breeze jostled past. “Testing times perhaps. I must not despair so soon,” muttering this Saira set out on her daily routine of setting the letters free one by one, turn by turn. Having not spared even an inch of space with her writing, she was faced with the problem of space to set free the bonded. But the problem was after all not so insurmountable for she quickly realized the power of the scrubber with which she scrubbed away the old letters to make place for new ones. She would start early each morning with scrubbing of the floor and the walls and never end up writing and writing over and over again just one name, his name. She would write the name in bold letters shading the outline of each letter of the name over and over again till the inanimate letters were emboldened enough to come up alive in front of the observer. Observer? But there was no observer. Ostensibly there was one- the so called silent observer. In fact she wasted one full day looking for the silent observer. She looked in all the rooms, in each of the cupboards, under the furniture and behind all that was capable of hiding someone behind it or below it or above it. But she found no one. Not a single soul. Perhaps the fault lay with her understanding of the oracle. Predictions have earned for themselves the bad reputation of being dicey after all. Nevertheless there was this one respite this time that granny had started showing an enormous amount of patience. She neither nagged nor stopped Saira from rummaging the entire house. Alas, greying years had taught granny to be calm and patient, thought Saira. A few days later, while she was scrubbing the floor, Saira did find something that reinforced her faith in the oracle. She found a pearl, a real pearl, a pearl so white, so pure, just like the morning dew. She instantly threaded it and hung it on the wall and wondered how long it would take for the entire pearl-string to get completed. After this short pause, she resumed her ritual of writing. One by one she wrote the letters of the word, this time slowly-slowly for she began to think and thinking makes action slow. Why must she carry on henceforth? What if he did not return? What if he simply forgot? What if she had been already rubbed from his memory? “No, but the oracle predicted that the heart will find what it treasures most and anyway now I have spent a lot of effort in reaching thus far and now even granny endorses my stance, she complains no longer.” And Saira began to doodle flowers on the floor. This time her flowers carried several whorls; petals over petals over petals. And when she lay back to admire her flowers she realized how horrifying they appeared. In her horror she even forgot to draw smiles over them. Unhappy, complex, dreadful flowers.