Social Short Story – The Widow
Social Short Story – The Widow
Photo credit: xenia from morguefile.com
Her man died of a disease folks around in the locality dread talking about. “A bad malady” is all you may coax out of them. But we know it was HIV. For some reasons elders live under this impression that such secrets will remain concealed from reaching a young ear but, as the carpenter’s foul-mouthed, tobacco-spitting son once said-
‘They are a bunch of d***-heads! Let me tell you all about it. These so called secrets, in the first place, are unveiled by young men like us, you get me? That is how they come out in open and are propagated. Let them keep denying!’
All of us believed him not because we had made a habit out of it but of a trace of rationale we seemed to find in his words but, now when I look back, I have no doubt it was because of the false sense of importance his words gave us!
Some other day he told us that few years back, her husband was spotted philandering with several women all over the city. ‘That is how the pig caught it.’ Carpenter’s son had concluded.
And once her husband had succumbed to the so called “bad malady”, the president of the community arranged an urgent meeting in the temple hall and delivered a speech expounding upon grim matters like “The continuous degradation of our moral values” and “The mockery institution of marriage has become”. And the number of people his overnight meeting drew proved that the better chunk of the community shared his sentiments.
Her parents-in-law mortified and disquieted under the constant exposure to unsympathetic glances they received and whispers exchanged behind their backs, couldn’t carry themselves in the locality and soon left for Delhi to live with their younger son. She stayed on. It is easy to imagine that it must’ve been tough for her but she seemed to manage it somehow. She hardly came out initially and I remember spotting her on the terrace putting the clothes to dry in the sun. Even then she was never in whites and it had, obviously, been on every body’s lips, after morning prayers in the temple, over vegetable seller’s carts, on evening walks around the revenue collector’s office premises, under the sheds of grocery stores and even while waiting at the bus-stop for their children’s school buses. Everywhere! And when she stepped out, one rainy day, wearing a light green sari under the umbrella in her hands, it took shape of a full blown scandal.
Husbands were warned by their respective wives or were forced to swear not to socialize with her in any way, children and teenagers including me were given a clear warning not to wander anywhere near the gate of the house she lived in, and the president and his men who had voluntarily taken up the responsibility to look into it the matters which, at least according to them, seemed to disturb the smooth running of society pondered all day, all night long over the ways to stop her from coming out of her house. I think this is what they pondered about. But I wasn’t sure and, of course, I didn’t care!
But there was something else to her not many knew before that same foulmouthed, tobacco-spitting friend of ours told us about it. A maid helped her in keeping the house, a tribal woman who lived in the hamlet near the river boundary. The carpenter’s son knew the maid for he had slept with her daughter several times and it was during one those adventures she revealed it to him. He met us in the playground when we were done with cricket for the day and took us aside under a tree near the tube well. Somebody was trying to start the well but struggled with the wires. The carpenter’s son waited for him to finish his business. After a while the man lost it to wires and walked away along the road towards the paddy fields.
‘Come let me blow your bottoms with this news.’ And when we were huddled around him the way he wanted us to be, he continued ‘He was not the one to catch it…’
‘Who are you talking about?’ One of us had asked him.
‘Idiot! I am talking about the green-sari-clad widow.’ That was how people had started mocking about her.
‘Oh all right, what about her?’
‘If you let me talk.’
‘I didn’t stop you.’
‘Listen then, as I said, her poor husband was not the one to get infected. It was she who had it.’
‘I don’t get this, what do you mean?’ the same boy asked again.
‘All I mean is she is a bitch, nothing less nothing more. It was due to her and her affair with her lover the fu**ing disease led her husband to deathbed. You get it now?’
‘But…eh!’
‘He was unlucky to have died so early, unlucky to have died before her. But can you help it? That’s how the fu**ing disease is.’ He went silent after that and we joined him in that.
Then after lighting a cigarette he added- ‘So my idiot-party, be careful, very, very careful in choosing your future wife when the time comes, if you don’t want to die like him. I definitely hate it. It’s a shitty way to die. So be careful, that will be the only chance you may get. So attention-attention-attention! All well? Goodbye then!’
And we dispersed after a round of laughter his final words had induced.
That evening I returned home with a heavy heart. I was not sure of the reason behind it but I’d been thinking of her all the way back home. I dreaded the thought of people finding about what carpenter’s son had shared with us and I was sure they would find out sooner or later. It couldn’t have remained only within us. That, unfortunately, never happens. For a moment I wondered if the carpenter’s son had any theory explaining this.
After cleaning up, I climbed up the stairs to the terrace and looked in the direction of her house and luckily within five minutes she came up, her hair untied and flowing down her shoulders. She kept walking up and down the terrace awhile and then stood by the parapet fixing her gaze on the maize crops moving in the wind. I felt good to see that she looked like enjoying the moment and I thought about what we’d heard earlier in the playground and wondered how long this newly found peace in her life would stay undisturbed.
I kept on thinking over this question long after she had climbed down and then for hours in the bed. It just didn’t left me!
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