by Indu Parvathi
Dusk had died and a shadowy gloom was creeping up the tiled roof of the cottage as Blossom drove into the porch. Inside the cold house, the mute, mildewed air hung heavy and still. It was an unbearable silence –an overpowering, wet blanket kind of silence which suffocated her in its squishy folds. A disused building–that’s what it had become without its mistress. The house and her mother- both were indistinguishable in their warmth, in their ability to welcome her into the soft, warm cocoon of comfort and love each time she returned.
It had been almost a year since she stepped into the house, though she lived just a 20 minutes’ drive away. It was a fragrant summer evening when her mother had spoken to her last just before she sank down to the terracotta step leading to the car porch and died –and then the house died too. Her father had gone five years before that in an accident.
When Blossom stepped in to the drawing room, memories rustled. The task ahead was daunting. She was going to clear out the house in the next seven days for the new owner. It was almost like chopping away parts of her. Days scuttled past. Apart from a few visits from her husband and son Blossom was left alone to travel back and forth in a chaotic procession of memories from all stages of her life.
It was the sixth day, and there were still more things to clear. Her past had shrunk to a messy, dusty pile of knickknacks and packets on the floor. There were some things she had rescued from the jumble that poured out from the cupboards- she needed to sort them out. She opened the windows wide open to let in the summer sun. Pink rimmed frangipani flowers gazed at her desolately, reaching out to her with the fragrance of lazy childhood afternoons spent in the garden. But, there was no more time for goodbyes. From a picture frame on top of the pile her father smiled benignly, his mirthful eyes glistening behind his round rimmed glasses. Her elder son sat in his lap, flashing a toothy grin and reaching out with pudgy, chocolate smeared hands.
A couple of hours later most of the things stood neatly sorted out in cartons and suitcases. A few more books to go now, Blossom sighed. She pulled out a photograph with frayed edges from a coffee table book absentmindedly. It was an old family photo–a young couple smiling smugly with a plump, frizzy haired baby in a lemon yellow frock in a glitzy studio setting. She looked at the faces peering at her from a split second so many years ago. Something vaguely disturbing stirred in her mind. They were not friends, nor were they relatives. Who then were they?
In his immaculate suit, pin-striped tie and his erect posture the man exuded a youthful, earnest kind of confidence. There was a familiarity in his expression. She stared at the photo for a long moment, not being able to decipher the vague, nagging feeling that the innocuous photo was the door to a poignant story. What was it?
She picked up a pink butterfly clip from the pile staring at it vacantly. Then she went back to her convent school and all the fun she had -those carefree years; roaming the colony streets on her bicycle, the colony chapel and pleasant Sunday mornings, friends and laughter, and of course her mom and dad. That’s when she remembered him with a jolt– the man in the photograph. Yes, it was during the fag end of her high school days that she had met him. The incongruity of the series of meetings which followed had made this first memory very vivid. A cold evening in December, he had intercepted her life outside the ice cream parlour in the park. He appeared to be about her father’s age, maybe in his early forties. She remembered him striding purposefully towards her, dressed smartly in a charcoal grey suit, looking quite out of place in the bright, sweatshirt clad crowd in the park. He stood at arm’s length, enveloping her in his intimidating allure .She was startled when her name slid down from his mouth like soft silk. But then he wouldn’t say anything more and after a long moment of suffocating silence she had broken free and run back to her friends.
It was almost a fortnight later that she saw him again. She was gliding past the colony chapel on her sports bike when he suddenly materialized right in the middle of the road. Though she managed to swerve past him, she met him again and again in the days that followed–near the pool, in the library, in the cafeteria, near the stadium, in the sports complex… Every time he just looked at her imploringly, with his huge soulful eyes. Then one day she found him sitting right opposite to her at the coffee shop.
She cringed when she looked at his handsome face and wondered what kind of a pervert would intimidate a young girl like that. Some 5 minutes later he still hadn’t told her anything apart from questioning her casually about her studies and future options. After regaining her senses, she stood up, swallowed all the unasked questions she had for him and mumbled a goodbye. That’s when he pushed a thin paper packet towards her. Something surprising happened at that moment, which changed her attitude towards him completely. His eyes started welling with tears and a teardrop slid down his chiselled face and his determined chin to crash on the glass tabletop. Then he got up abruptly and just walked away. Bewildered and overcome with curiosity she had taken the packet home, but had found nothing but the photograph of a young couple and a baby, presumably a family photograph of the man, clicked years ago. The deluge of the boisterous vacation that followed and the excitement of college admissions drowned the photograph and the stranger completely.
Back in the present, Blossom scrutinized the photograph which had captured a moment so many years ago. In the yellowing photograph the family sat poised, perfectly encapsulated in a bubble of happiness, leaving in her a strange kind of uneasiness. The baby with its brown glittering eyes and curly hair reminded her of a cute doll which she had in her childhood.
The young woman sitting with him was resplendent in a pink frilly dress. Her hair framed her radiant face like a halo in a small fluffy bob. Her eyes, her perfectly oval face and the way she tilted her chin proudly–everything was dearly familiar to her. How do I know her, and why didn’t I notice her when he gave me the photo, wondered Blossom. She sighed and stood up placing the photo back in the book, trying to shrug away the memory. But the beautiful face haunted her through the rest of the evening as she feverishly worked through the heap.
By eight in the evening everything was packed and stacked away neatly in labelled cartons and boxes. Dressed in an old satin frock, Blossom stood in front of the antique wall mounted mirror in her bedroom. In the patches of the mirror where the mercury coating hadn’t chipped off yet, she could see bits and pieces of her face and the abyss of loss in her brown eyes. Every link with her past would be severed the next day when she would pass the gates for the last time.
But in a split second, without any warning, the scarred reflection in the old mirror shattered the person named Blossom as she had known herself all those 35 years, into fluffy cotton wool drifting in the air. It was the woman in the photograph who stared back at her mournfully from the mirror. The same features set in a perfectly oval face and the same tilt of head. It was not her, it was the woman in the photograph; the only difference was Blossom’s hair which streamed past her shoulders in a curly, tumbling mass.
After a few moments of frenzied action, the long tresses lay down in a silky mass on the floor and the picture in the mirror was complete. Blossom curved her quivering lips into that haunting, blissful smile in the photograph. The snap trembled in her hand and ever so slightly her chin tilted up to match that proud bearing in the image. In a while they were one-the unfamiliar woman in the photo and her. Or was she a stranger at all?
“Who am I?” cackled Blossom. The empty house echoed with her hysterical laughter. Suddenly a memory floated up from deep within her soul–of the sea and a small cottage and the ringing laughter of the young lady in the photograph. The toddler ambling towards the woman was none other than Blossom herself.
“Mom,” the baby sang out sweetly.
From the deep recesses of her memory rose jagged fragments of a remote past she had spent as the daughter of the couple in the photograph. Why was she not told? Was it real or was she imagining it? The mushy night descended over her as her past coagulated into an impenetrable shadow.
*Anamnesis– A recalling to mind, reminiscence
Pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/
