a short story

Prabha was never known for her sentimentality; not that she found it weak when she saw it in other women. They say one softens as one ages but even at 77, she is unbreakable as ever. Boss of the household, with a smallish circular vermillion stain on her forehead, she is dressed in a soft cotton saree and white blouse, and looks formidable.

Every morning she wakes up with the sun, but is fully awake and functional after her large cup of boiling hot tea. These 20 minutes after sunrise are hers: nobody else is awake except Jack, the handsome brown dog who sometimes spends the night in their aangan.

For the last ten years, Prabha has planned her day around her husband, who has become progressively unwell, as more and more of his body started giving up. But his mind has always been with him. At some point, they started sleeping on separate beds, what with all the medical equipment around his, but not far from one another. Prabha does not remember the exact day or the events leading up to it. It was supposed to be for a couple of weeks at first, but that has not been the case. She looks after him unresistingly, with the kind of acceptance that only comes after being married to the person for most of your life. 
Her relationship with her husband took a turn a couple of years into his illness. The separate beds bothered him more than they did her; he couldn't deny his dependence anymore. He dealt with it by appreciating her existence in his life, something he never did overtly before. She didn't understand this, still doesn't. He insists that she leave her jasmine gajra by his pillow at the end of each day, and she does so without really thinking about it. Whenever she tries to empathise and guess where he is coming from, her defenses kick in: a marriage that was an arrangement can't suddenly make a romantic companion out of her. He is mildly aware of this, for she doesn't hide it, but he keeps it to himself.

He has the face of someone who is always accepting of everything that is thrown at him, unconditionally. His eyes listen, and his smile speaks. He is the sounding board of the house; you could throw ten ideas at him in confusion and emerge knowing exactly what you want. And even though his overall appearance is perhaps alarming - the overly skinny limbs, sunk cheeks, frail fingers - the wrinkles on his face tell a different story, he has lived a good life.

The 7 am alarm on her old Nokia 3310 tells Prabha that it is time to wake him. She helps him freshen up, helps him sit up on the bed, brings him the newspaper, pours him tea in a saucer and hands it to him. The house is slowly coming to. A mellow radio playing songs of P Savlaram and the likes keeps him company while she goes out to delegate the day's errands among the workers. Soon, the place is filled with people and movement and noise. Prabha picks flowers for the Gods from the small thicket behind the house, feeds the cattle, occasionally checking on the workers, and takes up a job for herself. He watches the hustle from the small window next to his bed, and the workers' chatter is oddly comforting to him. Time passes like the traffic in cities, slow and impatient, into the afternoon. Lunch mostly involves listening to the news on the radio and sharing news from around the neighbourhood. The next hour or so, everyone sits before the television while also doing something mundane, peeling garlic or going over the accounts.

 Early in the evening the grandsons take him around the neighbourhood. On some days they go to the beach and he watches the sunset while the boys go for a swim. Dinner is a quaint affair, but recently they have started having coffee after, because he insisted on trying it out, like he read in a book about a French family. They were all surprised when it grew on them, after having made faces the first couple of times.




This morning, like every morning, the alarm goes off at 7. She turns it off, stares into nothing for a second, and gets up from the old wooden swing. She goes into the room and pulls away the bandhani saree hung as a curtain over the window. The sun is soft and the light doesn't bite when it touches his pale wrinkled forehead. But this morning, he doesn't press his eyes together in response.
And she knows.

The rest of the day is hazy in Prabha's memory. There are people, and there is crying.
After sunset, it quiets down, and people leave.

Prabha now sleeps in his bed; it smells of him, not of his illness or his medicines, but of him.

They still have coffee after dinner every night.