Snatches-1

What kind of light do you like, she asked.

I looked at her, and wondered why she would even ask me such a question. Everyone likes light, that’s all, I thought.

I told her so.

No, she replied, some people prefer the darkness. Then she corrected herself, all people want to regulate the light they are subjected to. It makes them feel in control.

How do you mean, I asked.

I draw the heavy blue curtains when I am napping. I like to know whether it’s light outside when I wake up, but I don’t want the lightness in the evening to wake me up.

I realised that I had not thought about it. I walked into the kitchen and looked at the soot-coated patch of sky through the wall above the stone stove.

Don’t you want some more light in here, I asked the old maid squatting in a corner.

She coughed, and heaved a deep breath.

No, she said.

Soon, it would be twilight, and the patch of sky would not send its light even through the soot. The incandescent bulb will go on, and the old maid would squat under its artificial sunlight.

Out in the yard, amma was sweeping the dried leaves away from the pebbles. Her nightie was tucked at the waist, and I could see the frayed hem of her petticoat beneath it. She glanced at me and nodded.

What’s your favourite light, I asked.

She looked at the sky, and muttered something about cloudy evenings, just before it rained at sunset.

I turned to go back into the house, when she called out to me to light the lamp for the gods when the sun goes down.

The sound of her broom on the pebbles followed me through the dark emptiness of the house.

In the alcove, surrounded by blackened thick lumps of groundnut oil, the gods sat smiling. The smell of the soot from the lamp and the left over ashes from the incense sticks mixed with the fragrance of the sandalwood paste smeared across a piece of a banana leaf that my father had brought home from a temple. The gods themselves sat in pristine conditions- one on a pure white lotus with a pure white swan, another standing on a pink lotus with elephants pouring gold coins in the background, the elephant-headed Ganapathi smiling fondly at the sweets in front of him, and adolescent Krishna smiling benignly through the thick flower garlands around him. Outside of him, dried up flowers lay scattered, untouched by my mother’s hurried cleaning of the alcove in the mornings.

I lit the lamp- an offering of more soot to soot-covered clean gods in their glass frames; a patch of sunlight quickly snatched from the day as it slowly sunk into dusk and then into the all-encompassing darkness.

In the kitchen, the old maid started moving around. I could hear her sounds. I walked back to my room where my visitor was sitting. She had helped herself to some of my kohl, and the rims of her eyes were drawn in with the black. She didn’t smile much, but her hand seemed to suggest playfulness in the way her fingers tapped on the table.

Are you still thinking about light, I asked.

No, she replied, it’s no more the time to think about light.

She paused and peered out through the wooden bars of the window at the paddy stalks billowing in the cold wind that was starting to blow from the hills.

I need to get back, she said, before it gets really dark.

I smiled. Can’t regulate the darkness when there are only rice fields around and the black sky above you, I thought, but I stayed silent.

She gathered the pleats of the skirt. In the little light that twilight begrudged us, she appeared like a moving blue shadow. She walked towards me and touched my waist. I made to kiss her, but she moved away. For a second, when we were close, we would have been one big blue shadow.

We will meet tomorrow, I said.

She nodded, and swung her long, plaited hair behind her. I turned to look at the fields and heard her footsteps recede down the staircase.

She’d be back tomorrow, I told myself, with more stories of light and such things.

A minute later, I saw her walk on the embankment between the paddy fields to her house. In front of the basil plant at her doorstep, a lamp was lit. I vaguely saw her bending towards the lamps, rubbing a bit of the soot on her finger tips, and refreshing the kohl at the outer tips of her eyes. Then, she walked inside and vanished into the glow of the electric lights and TV screens that were coming on in every house.