Kinaara

M. R. Radhika Pai is a student of B.A. Honours in English at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.

—

She sat by the window
And seemed to watch everything go past.
One would think she was drinking the divinity of the dying sun;
Sinking lower every minute, it wouldn’t quite last.

Or listening to the rhythmic jingle of tired bullocks
Unsettling the dust to amuse their languorous lives.
Or feeling the odourless wind reach out for her dry cheeks,
Trying to console the inconsolably naïve.

Not once did the young widow shift in that poignant white sari.
Her glassy eyes were blind to the sinking sun, her rigid eardrums deaf to the
bells of the bullocks.
Did her gelid skin feel the wind that yet blew, but in vain?
That tried to blow gently through her soft, black locks?

He’d died for the country
He’d do it a hundred times over, he’d declared.
She’d be widowed a hundred times over then, she told herself;
Not with the struggling throes of apprehension, but with the passionate
determination of a patriot who dared.

Something gripped her from within the labyrinths of her heart.
It swelled uncontrollably
And grew insidiously.
Nothing quelled it.
Nothing would.
Nothing could.
It grew unchecked.
Till all of a sudden, it dwarfed the brim – position
And came rolling down her cheeks as tears.
What was it that enveloped her being so?
Was it
Pain – that she couldn’t bear?
Sorrow – that had grown uncontrollable?
Or Pride – that she couldn’t speak of?

—