No End

An idyllic summer comes to a close with the dawn of realisation

- Ruth Vanita

Open land stretched, vacation-like, as far as her eyes could reach. Nothing but a few dwarfed treesscarcely trees, more like shrubs-dotted it. From the tiny flat, where, as her mother was fond of remarking, they were cooped up all year, to this expanse, they had journeyed by train for two days and two nights. They had been here several weeks now. Her father had gone back to Delhi but Uncle kept persuading them, much to her delight, to postpone their own return. Twice, he had sent a boy from his office to change their tickets.

She was not supposed to venture beyond the long, slatted, wooden gate on which she was now swinging, but that was not a hardship because there were many wandering ways in the back compound. It seemed to have no particular end, that compound, the trees, bushes and moist pathways petering out into scrub and sand, every path encroached on by vines and hidden nooks beckoning, surprising, slightly frightening, delicious.

One of the hottest spots in the country this was, at this time of year, so the adults stayed indoors until evening, but she didn't mind the dryness or the heat, especially in the shade of the trees behind the house, near the well and in the animals' domain where hens pecked and threw up dust clouds, fluttering off when approached, and where cats, dogs, goats, lizards with astonishingly long tails, slunk, slumbered, skittered.

Slowly would unspool the glorious day.

Her mother was sitting with her great-uncle and would later gravitate to the kitchen to chat with her aunt. Veera, with the privilege of late teenager-hood, was lazing in bed, and would dally with the older cousins after completing her rituals at the old-fashioned dressing table with its swing mirror. Peering at every pimple, plucking every hair, gazing into her own eyes.