THE CANARY AND THE CAT
“She
is 20!”
The silent abode of
Tagore`s, quacked with a loud and strident mortifying voice on a barefaced
Sunday morning. Anuradha rushed down
through the stairways to realize her maa
and baba conversing her wedding. Anuradha was not ambitious but like every
other of her classmate she too had imaginings about her Mr. Perfect. It was a regular morning dose in the
conservative families of Kolkata, where females were trained to establish a
successful married and nuptial life after a certain age, which signified that,
with Anuradha turning 20, it was an alarm for her parents to proceed with her ensuing
life. With almost half of her friends
having tied a knot, Anuradha had also been envisaging her wedding for almost
months, but the only barrier which she faced, were her qualifications, she was
a science graduate, with numerous scholarships and fellowships signifying her
enthusiasm towards academics and also justifying abnormal delay in her wedding.
“aiyeje, ami bole dichchi! jodi ei boshor biye thik hoyeni, ami bari
chede chole jabo!”
{listen! I am making it
clear that if this year the wedding is not fixed, I shall leave this house and
go}
Anuradha`s mother was in
her state of dominance, and contrastingly her father was pretending to be sluggish
and unconcerned but deep down, his qualms had already gifted him his first mild
heart attack. Taking the cover of his
newspaper, Shriman Sudipto Chandra
Tagore, replied to his better half in a calm and composed way
“don’t worry! GOD is
there”
Anuradha was seeing two
conflicting forms of the creation, where the female counterpart is so
belligerent that she will open up her third eye any moment whereas the male
counterpart is sedentary in meditation and not even opening a single eye! She was astounded at the forte her mother was
expressing, ultimately symbolising the high rising status of matriarchal system
in coming days.
But all of these never occurred
in the present-day, it was all a scenario which had taken 20 years ago in the adolescence
of her life. Since then, this
pronouncement of her mother always presented itself in the form of a question
mark to Anuradha, sometimes appearing in dreams, sometimes in situations.
It was a Sunday
afternoon, the hot burning season of summer had just began, and Anuradha was
just finished her mid day nap when she realised that it was time for Tiyasa,
her daughter to return from her tuitions.
She opened her bleary eyes, when the cat, all seven pounds of squirming
flesh, climbed onto her belly. Squinting
into the sunlight streaming in from the open window, she discovered that she
was now the weary possessor of a pounding headache, and at some point, had
managed to loose both a tooth and a spouse.
Rational about the dream
she had minutes before, Anuradha looked the identity card lying on the small
table next to her bed, it read ‘Anuradha vedhi’.
“12 years…..so
momentarily they conceded…..” something just whispered in Anuradha`s ears.
It was quite unusual as
she never meditated on her past. With
her fuzzy eyes, she looked at her cat, a Turkish angora, which mewed back
signifying a petition for her food. After few seconds of endless staring at ‘Jemish’
Anuradha started remembering Vishnu and how days before both of them frolicked
with their cat-‘Jemish’, and at the same time she was also recalling her
parents, who had a moral policy of discipline in their minds for her life.
She got up, as ‘Jemish’
jumped from her lap and stood near her feet and walked along with her towards
the hall and in meanwhile she came across the picture of her husband, alongside
which was their honeymoon picture of Goa.
Before the obituary
picture of Vishnu, she stood thinking-
“Why womankind is blamed
for everything? Was losing you my destiny or was it my mistake? I did not kill
you but I was there when that incident happened! It happened, because I was
there… those men who tried to tease me were no one to me, but you were my
promise for life…”
Her eyes were bleary
again and she had a throat pain to accompany with her headache, and then the
doorbell rang!
She smeared her tears and
unlocked the door to find her 10 years old daughter, Tiyasa, standing and
constantly smiling at her. Minutes before she could realise, Tiyasa was already
near her table unpacking her bag.
She looked at Tiyasa,
such an innocent kid, who passed on over the loss of her father so
swiftly. This smiling face compelled her
to continue her thoughts-
“Now, the whole life just
revolves around this kid, what life should I give her? The life of Tagore`s or
should she have a life which I lived willingly or should she choose on her own? What a dilemma Is to be a woman in this era?
Why are we such blame goats? For everything, we blame ourselves, receiving
nothing from the society!! Am I to be blamed for my husband`s death? I don’t
want the blame anymore, nor will Tiyasa be blamed any further”
The next jiffy she saw
her daughter embracing her and watching towards her with eyes full of
starvation, and gently telling her
“MUMMA!! KHANA!!”
The entire world functions
under the insolence of canary and the cat, but when we are cast-off to be the cat,
our conversion to canary often leaves us in deep predicament in the world. In actuality, a woman is more of a paradigm than
being a dilemmatic status quo for the society. So, the earnings of a morality
of woman leads to the formation as well as demolition of the society, and
society is nothing but her own life and world which is in a reciprocal relation
with her. Anuradha faced the coin from both its sides, which raised a prominent
question for her
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