“Why Baba, when are you getting married?”

I looked around and snapped, “When I turn 30. And why do I always find you talking of marriage, Aaji? Don’t you have anything else in mind?”
Melhni chuckled. “Baba”, she said. “I’m waiting for the sari. The one I will get on your wedding day. And tell your pitaji, that I am not going to settle for anything less than a Benarasi this time”

“You take whatever you want when the wedding comes”, I looked at her annoyed, “but please don’t talk of my getting married now. I don’t like it”.

Aaji smiled, as if enjoying a private joke she alone understood, and continued mopping the verandah.

Aaji was popularly known in the village as “Melhni”, which meant “the sluggish”. Nobody seemed to know where or when she got that name. What everyone knew though was that no celebration, of birth, or wedding or even mourning would be complete without her. True to her name, she was slow. But at her age, which must be in the late sixties, she never showed any signs of tiredness or giving up. She was persistent with her work, and would mop the entire courtyard of our household without a break.

I had first seen Melhni a few days back right after my arrival at my ancestral village, which I seldom visited. The occasion was a cousin’s wedding that had brought me here, far from the dusty and smoky confines of my hostel room in Dhanbad.

I thought of the day when I had first seen her. Getting down from the Tonga on a sweltering June afternoon, I had gone into the house to find Melhni chattering with a group of women. The only familiar face I saw was that of my aunt, sitting beside her.

I started touching the feet of all elders in sight. When I came to Melhni, I moved forward to touch her feet too.

“Ram! Ram!” she pulled her feet back, “do you want to send me to hell, Baba?” Before I could react, she had touched my feet and then her head in quick succession several times. Next moment, I found my aunt turning me by my shoulder, “don’t you remember Aaji”,she said, “she is the Melhni. But of course you won’t. You were still a child when you last came to Farahada, weren’t you?” she smiled. I could see my face turning red with embarrassment. She had suggested in an offhand manner thet the Melhni was from a lower caste, so I was not supposed to touch her feet. “Yes, I guess”, I said and moved inside to change my clothes.

Melhni’s husband had died years back. Since then, or maybe even before that, she had lived her life by doing odd jobs around the village. Farahada, my village, was still among the hundreds of traditional Indian villages that are self sufficient in certain ways. We still had the privelege of having the barber come over to our house for our hair cuts. A couple of thekuas or some flour would be given to him in return for the cut. Their turn came on festive occasions, and at weddings, when they would get clothes, money and food from the household. It was the same with the blacksmith, the washer man or the lady who gave us leaf thalis. The “lagan” season, when weddings are conducted in India, would be the most, often the only profitable season for them. At other times of the year, it helped if there was a birth, death of some other pooja.

I looked at Melhni. She was too engrossed in her thoughts to notice me. She was busy in the mechanical action of mopping the verandah with the skill which years of repeating the same work had given her.

Her face was shrunk, looking like a small dried pumpkin. Her eyes followed the movement of her hands. There was a look of obedience, respect and a strange fear in her eyes.

“What are you staring at, Baba?” she turned, looking at me. The question brought me back to the moment. There was a look of concern in her eyes. “Nothing”, I said, trying not to look at her. Suddenly I was aware of a feeling of sadness within myself; the sadness one feels on seeing leaves falling from a tree in the autumn. The leaves, once green and full of life,lie dry and wilted on the grass at the mercy of any passerby who crushes them without the least concern or awareness of what he has done.

“Baba”, I heard her voice addressing me again, “what is wrong? You look worried.”

“Oh! Nothing Aaji” I affected a smile. “I was just thinking of you. You work pretty hard, don’t you?”

She smiled, the tension leaving her face. “Oh yes I work hard. If I don’t, will you give me the sari when your bride comes over ? Just get a beautiful wife and your Aaji will forget all her work. And listen, I am going to dance on the dholak when you bring her home”.

“You really want me to marry soon, don’t you?” I looked at her.

“Why, yes. Who wouldn’t like her grandson to bring home a beautiful bride? And why shouldn’t I? You are the only son of your father, in all his children. Oh! How happy your mother would have been to see you wearing the mauri. God bless her soul”.

“Aaji, you will have to wait for a while,” I said apologetically. “It's written in my horoscope that I can’t marry before I turn twenty eight. Otherwise my wife will hang herself within a few days of our marriage”.

“Who told you that?” she demanded. There was a tone of indignation in her voice. “Tulsi pandit, is it? The old man has gone out of his mind. Only last phagun he did a puja at Ramladdu’s, and predicted that he would have a son. You know what happened”, the anger had subsided. “Ramladdu had a daughter. The night she was born, he went to the pandit’s house to beat him up. Only Tulsi Baba was in another village, on the other side of the Ganga, conducting a wedding”.

She laughed, unable to control herself.

“Ok Aaji, I said, “The day I get married, you will definitely be there, and in the Benarasi I give you”.

She moved forward, looking into my eyes, almost pleading “ Baba, don’t forget to call me, even if you don’t get the Benarasi. Any sari will do.And at my age, who wears a Benarasi anyway? I will come and dance to welcome your bride”. Her eyes were flushed with excitement.

* * *

I turned the postcard over. It was posted on the 10th, exactly a fortnight back. Towards the end, in my grandpa’s uncertain, shaky handwriting were the words:

“Melhni died last week. She had not been sick. The night before her death, she ate at our house, after dhananjay’s sataisa puja. She was asking about you, when you would come back etc. She passed away in her sleep. The village has suddenly become quiet now.”

I took off my spectacles and rose from the table. A drop of tear rolled down my cheeks and fell on the postcard. The first rays of the sun fell on it, emitting a hue of colours.

I brought the postcard closer to my myopic eyes. The drop had fallen exactly over her name, scrawled in my grandpa’s hand.

I turned away, unable to control myself, while “Melhni” glistened in a Benarasi of sunlight.

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Comments: Durga Prasad Pandey(dpsmiles at yahoo.com)