Ammani Asked, I Wrote-10

Somewhere in the dark recess of that wooden cupboard, there is a photo album. And somewhere the middle of the album is a photograph of Vaijayanti. She's leaning against a tree, looking up at something and smiling. What is she looking at? When was this photo taken?

When I look at the sepia toned photograph, my seventy year old heart still seems to break into a million pieces. There she is, the thirteen year old Vaijayanti. I remember the day the photograph was taken….. It was taken by Rasai athimbar, her twenty-one year old husband. I remember the joy and festivities in our home those days. Double was the joy…..My sister Vaijayanti had come of age and the all the old ladies of the village had gathered to partake in the festivities….. After 15 days Rasai athimbar had come from Bombay to carry our precious sister away with him. She had been married the previous year and had been left behind in her parents’ house till the auspicious time would come for her to accompany her husband. I had been just 8 years old then and had been instructed to be a chaperone for the couple….more of a spy, as I realized later in life….. I remember how I was hiding among the foliage of the mango orchard, as they both were trying to grab some private moments. Rasai athimbar told her to pose thus, looking up…he said he wanted to capture her perfect silhouette . As she looked up, she saw me and burst out laughing…. That was when Rasai athimbar clicked his old Russian Zenith camera.. I remember falling down from that height and being hauled up by the laughing couple. Vaijayanti left with athimbar the next day.I saw her six months later….. widowed, tonsured, restricted into the dark crypt-like room in her In –law’s house….. I have never seen her smile or laugh like that again.Though I had tried to many times once she was forcibly brought back home by my parents… Only this photograph, that she had given me to put away in the family album along with one of the couple taken in a studio in Bombay, ever reminded us of a very young laughing girl in her teens whose dreams were snatched cruelly away by a monster called typhoid.