Twenty seven

The clamorous ringing of phone in the sitting room interrupted the silence. It was Mr. Ribadau. She did not pick the call. It was a wrong time to call a single mother. Night. The call kept coming. It was for her, but because their discussion would linger till pitch dark, she avoided and did not pick it. The caller was a good talker who could talk for an hour or more on nothing serious. She looked up at intervals and was saddened, and sorrowed at the mere look of her husband's statutes which stood lifelessly gazing at her. It was this enlarged frame that kept hunting her, hung on the wall and it stared at her day and night.  He would have kept her company at that time. The phone had gone silent now. At death, the memory of the dead kept coming. One sees how relevant and important a dead relation is. The memory never dies. The memory never goes.

That outgoing year was mixed up with bad experiences and threw up a number of good and bad times. In a flash to her future, she saw the hardship thrown her way by the loss of her husband, the hard work of rearing modern children whose civility depended on what they saw others do in the television and who knew all paths to luxury life all alone. The loneliness that goes with widowhood. In a few months, a few days or even years she might begin to know. Suddenly, her stoic posture vanished and she came close to tears, but controlled herself, never seeing anyone to console her, she broke into a loud cry, knowing that it would be bad to be that way for the night. She bit her lips and sat silent. It was better to die crying than to rot away in loneliness.

How clearly she saw the day. Thrilled and overcome by this thought at length, she lowered her eyes, slept off the whole night, and opened her eyes to see the next morning.