The Water Lily - Part II: A Story of Loss and Liberation | Thursday Tale No. 29

The stories people tell can shape a life. The stories people stop telling can shape it just as profoundly. 

  The Water Lily - Part II continues to unfolds in the silence between the two.

The Water Lily - Part II

Photograph by 대정 김 on Pexels.

  During Madhavan's funeral rites, Kumuda’s thali was torn away, her bangles crushed off her hands, her sindhoor wiped off her forehead, her meti cut down from her toes. She was dressed out of her wedding saree and draped in a white saree. 

  Soon, Kumuda's life became painted in white, from her clothing to her food. Kumuda felt claustrophobic. 

  Kumuda's mother grieved her daughter’s fate. She wished to get her daughter remarried, or at least brought back home, but all she was told by her husband was: “You are insane. How can you even think of this? Do you not know that this is against our tradition? Do you not know that she now belongs to Madhavan's family?” Her mother went silent. 

  Kumuda herself wanted to at least resume her studies, but her in-laws were completely against it. They did not wish their widow to go out of confinement and bring them any shame, especially after she brought in the bad luck that killed their son.  

  Kumuda despised her life, but eventually, although there were no events in her life, adapted to her new existence. 

  Four decades passed. Everything around her changed. Her brother-in-laws got married, rebuilt the house, had children, and watched them get married. Her parents-in-law and her parents passed away. Her brother moved abroad, married a British woman, and settled there. Tirichy itself transitioned from a city into a metropolitan with flyovers swirling under the sky, to motor vehicles jamming the road, and towers reaching for the sky.

  But Kumuda's world remained majorly untouched. Her 10x10 grey room still housed the same furniture from when her husband died— a small wooden cot with a white bedsheet, a small wooden bedside cabinet holding a box of religious beads and a hymn book, and an earthen pot of water with a steel tumbler propped upside-down. The only things that had changed were her age and its relative impact on her physique. Kumuda's long hair greyed early, as if to mock her relationship with the colour white; her skin wrinkled moderately, and her back bore the impact of limited mobility. 

  It was 2023, the year of recovery after what her nieces and nephews called the “pandemic”. Kumuda really did not understand the concept of lockdown. What was so difficult about sitting in the house? She wondered what made their stay at home difficult if they had access to what they called the mobile phone. It was only during this period that Kumuda negotiated her way into getting newspapers delivered to her room everyday. 

  The colours and words from the paper, although overstimulating in the beginning, gradually felt like fresh raindrops on a barren land. Kumuda read voraciously everyday. She learnt so much more about the world in a month from when she got the permission to read than in the past forty years. During such reading, Kumuda often ran into the realisation that her life had not moved an inch in any direction. A spark of indignance would rise, which she would douse with her encompassing smile. 

  One day, as she was reading, Kumuda came across an article on the Vrindavan Gopinath Temple festival. The more she read about it, the more she wanted to go to Vrindavan. That evening, Kumuda asked her brother-in-law to arrange for her travel, but he rejected the idea. 

  A spark of rage flickered. Kumuda was sixty, and in all those years of compliance, she had never asked for anything apart from the newspaper and the travel. So this time, Kumuda, chose not to let the indignance extinguish. Kumuda waited for a year, and saved up about a thousand rupees, which were not enough for her journey. 

  So one night, in late March, Kumuda opened her box of religious beads, and counted all the gold ones. She had twelve of those. Kumuda carefully knotted the beads in the corner seams of her pallu. Then, she took her white pillow cover, and used it as a bag to pack herself a pair of white saree and blouse, and the newspaper in which she had read the article. 

  The next afternoon, when everyone was asleep, Kumuda quietly sneaked out of the house. She went to the local pawn shop to sell her gold beads. It was only through the conversation with the shop owner that she realised that she was a forgotten invisible woman. The same town that had taunted her all her life for her husband's untimely demise, had moved on to other affairs, leaving her nothing of herself—acquired or ascribed. 

  Kumuda became more certain of her venture, and sold her gold for ₹8,000. Then, she took a bus to Tirichrapalli Junction. There she bought herself a general-class ticket to Delhi, and waited ten hours for the next train. The Thirukkural Express, running forty minutes late, reached the junction at 3:45 a.m. Kumuda boarded the train. Finding no seat to sit, Kumuda sat by the toilet-side and held tightly to her pillow cover bag.   

  The train journeyed 37 hours. Most of the journey was unpleasant. Kumuda's joint pains were aggravated by sitting without much movement in the crammed corridor. The stench from the toilet made it more uncomfortable. Kumuda also survived only on two cups of chai, buns, and two vada pavs. The only things that made the journey worthwhile were her conversation with Binod Sah, a migrant worker returning to his family in Basti, and the destination. 

  Through Binod, who spoke her language having worked in the South for over a decade, and had the touch wala mobile phone, Kumuda learnt how to reach the Temple in Vrindavan. Kumuda noted down all the details of the places she would have to reach, and buses she would have to take to reach the temple. 

  Through the phone, Kumuda also got to meet Pinky, Binod’s seven year old daughter. As a token of gratitude for the warmth with which Binod and his family acknowledged her, Kumuda slid two five-hundred rupee notes into Binod's hand saying, “Buy Pinky something on my behalf.” Binod firmly turned it down. So Kumuda used the oldest trick known to humanity to make him accept her gratitude: “Would you not accept it if I were your mother?”

  At 7:35 p.m. the train pulled into Hazrat Nizamuddin station. Kumuda deboarded the train. A cool evening breeze, and the clatter of a language she had wished to learn if she took up the bank job greeted her. Having been guided by Binod to navigate her way to her destination without much use of the language, Kumuda bid goodbye to Binod. Binod had insistently invited her home for the night, but Kumuda politely declined the invitation and spent the night in a second-class railway dormitory.

  The next morning, Kumuda set out on her journey. She took a rickshaw from the station to the bus stop. From there she took a bus to Mathura. And from there she took a rickshaw to the temple in Vrindavan.

  Kumuda travelled 138 kilometres and finally reached the Shri Radha Gopinath Temple. Kumuda was welcomed by the red sandstone arches. She removed her footwear at the entrance, and climbed up the worn steps into the entry. The fragrance of burning jasmine incense from the brass lamps intoxicated her senses for a brief moment. As she stepped into the muted ochre courtyard of the temple, a loud soothing conch was blown. Despite stepping on the uneven dusty beige flooring of the courtyard, Kumuda felt quite certain of her venture.  

  Kumuda walked past other devotees to the sanctum. There stood Krishna as Gopinath, bedecked in a bright yellow silk garment, with gold and pearl ornaments, marigold garlands, and a crown decorated with a peacock feather. In his tribanga, he held his flute as if he were playing a lilting tune to a forlorn Kumuda. His calm, almost illuminating eyes, looking at her through the black kasauti stone, seemed to tell her, “I see you. I see your woes. You are safe here.”

  Beside him stood Radha, equally ornate in an orange garment, ornaments and garlands. She shined her golden face at Kumuda, as if taking away her repressed sorrows. 

  Having paid respect to them, Kumuda took on the white tilak on her forehead, and sat on the marble bench in meditation. 

  But her journey was not fulfilled yet. Kumuda was there for the event, the one covered by the newspaper. She had to wait for two more days. 

  Kumuda spent two nights in the ashram along with other devotees who chanted “Radhe, Radhe!” and other Sanskrit shloks. 

  Soon the day of the event arrived. Kumuda showered and put on her white saree and entered the temple. There she saw hundreds of fellow widows, some as young as thirteen and old as eighty. She saw many dressed in white, and many in the vibrant colours of the world. Kumuda silently rejoiced at the progress made. She also grieved being born and married into orthodox families, because widowhood was not as rigid in the South as she had experience. Sighing out her past, Kumuda reached out to the gulal served on a copper plate by a volunteer from the NGO. Looking at the white eyes of women draped in white, and looking up at the azure sky, Kumuda smeared the gulal onto her face and body. A maddening laughter departed her mouth. Breaking into ecstasy, Kumuda moved around the temple, taking handfuls of all the colours—red, yellow, saffron, green, and blue—from the plates, and joined her fellow sisters, speaking another tongue, echoing the same laughter in their celebration.

- Mercy Rebonica