The television came to life all of a sudden, before it was just static. She picked up the remote and started her favourite pastime of flipping through the channels. Her eyes fell on her hands; they seemed so spotted and ugly. A lot of things come with age, besides wisdom. Loneliness was one of those things, but it had never been much of a problem for her. She liked being by herself most of the time. The screen was filled with horrific images; a lion was attacking a hyena. She was intrigued, why would a predator be more interested in a hyena rather than the herd of zebras, who were meanwhile making a fast escape from the gory scene. She liked watching them, animals were never apologetic about who they were unlike humans. The hyena was laughing in its characteristic fashion while the lion was ripping it apart. She sat still, eyes riveted on the screen. She could imagine the terrible screams which the laughter hid. She could empathize with the creature, the pain of being torn apart yet having no choice but laugh…she couldn’t watch it anymore, the screen went black, she had turned the TV off. Sometimes one hides the suffering, the pain somewhere, and then tends to forget them. She didn’t need any reminding, she didn’t need the pain, emptiness was better.
The phone started to ring in a thin and obscene manner. She had come to like silence so much that her own voice often disturbed her. Painfully, she shuffled across the room to the hall near the kitchen. It was her parent’s and grandparent’s home, this old four roomed apartment in Little Russell Street, with large French windows and high ceilings. She had been living here for the last sixty years. The phone had stopped ringing, she stopped in her tracks realizing she was already in the hall. While she was at it, she might as well, have some tea. The maid would usually make enough tea to last throughout the day. After pouring a cup for herself, she had just placed the flask back when the phone started ringing again. Quite annoying, she thought, her arthritis was getting worse these days, moving around wasn’t a very pleasant pastime for her.
“Hullo? What’s wrong with you? Its your own sister……granted you haven’t been keeping well lately…so we didn’t ask you to be a part of the arrangements…the least you could do is show up for her funeral?” It was her nephew, he sounded upset, hurt even. She made the appropriate sounds of “hmm” and “hmp”s, and then placed the receiver back.
She sighed to herself; it had been fifty odd years of memories, memories of her, the beautiful June. She remembered her sister as a precocious child with tight ringlets of curls hanging over her dainty forehead. Ma and Pa mooning over her, her wonderful talents, her beautiful singing voice and her paintings…exquisite they were in their details and splendour. For someone to be so astonishing, so special, won’t there be some others who were plain and ordinary, so that the contrast was stark enough. She remembered herself, a painfully shy child, her bitter and lonely days as an adolescent and finally an unwanted woman.
She seated herself in her favourite armchair at the balcony overlooking the street. It was a dark night with stars veiled in smoke. The cacophony of the traffic was soothing somehow, strangely the silence seemed oppressive to her now. The chair was as old as she was, it groaned under her weight.
Sometimes she had the strangest vision. It was an old man with blind milky white eyes and a long black coat, and he was making watches. The spare parts were strewn all over the work bench and the man would just put the parts together into a watch. Whether they were functional or not seemed insignificant to him, the blind watchmaker would need to just finish them on time. It’s quite the picture for fate or chance or whatever name it goes by. Some people have everything working just fine, and some have faulty parts. Is it by chance or predestined? Do genes determine one’s happiness in life or does fate? She had little time for such profound but silly philosophies. For she was who she was, a watch stopped at 8, June, on the other hand was…she couldn’t complete her thought, she felt dizzy and suffocated. She got up and hurriedly went to her bedroom. Opening her closet, she almost threw out all her belongings, frantically searching for something…and finally found it. An old framed photo of her sister, on her wedding day. June looked so beautiful even in black and white. The photo was dusty from time and neglect. A tear drop followed by few more suddenly fell on the thick dust; she wiped them away, cleaning the filthy layers.
“Even in death you won, June”, she said in a dry whisper. The photo fell from her hands, the glass shattered showering broken pieces everywhere.
