Yellow Is the Colour of Longing by K.R. Meera

Author:K.R. Meera [K.R. Meera]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184755947
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Jugular of Memory

Her voice sounded like the creak of rusty door-hinges. On her wrinkled throat a purple vein stood erect, defiance itself. The old woman set her glasses right and, with no attempt at an introduction, asked straight: ‘Kutty, do you write?’

The young woman was quiet. She continued to look at the old woman blandly. Her gaze fell on the old woman’s head by chance. Half her skull was visible. But there were still a few dark strands of hair here and there.

‘There was a meeting in which Vallathol* came … that was before we got freedom …’ the old woman said.

When she uttered the word ‘freedom’, her false teeth came loose and jutted out pathetically.

The young woman found it revolting.

To conceal her unease, she twisted the tassels of the blue shawl she wore above her salwar suit around her fingers, tightening and releasing them.

‘Freedom, in those days, ah—wasn’t everyone going mad over it? Everybody burned nylon and nylex … we wore only khaddar! I had a black-bordered sari … it wasn’t much of a fashion those days, even a sari!’

Finding it hard to look up when the old woman was shoving her false teeth back into place, the young woman turned her gaze towards the bookshelves in the room.

There were a few framed photographs on top of the shelves. A black-and-white photograph, which showed someone greeting someone else with a garland, stood out among the others with an air of authority. The rest looked like moth-eaten, mouldy, disfigured, family pictures. The second and third rows were full of notebooks.

The young woman glanced again at the old woman without thinking.

‘Uncle said I should write a poem, and I wrote one. Read it at the meeting …

Small and fearful, we are frail,

But even in our gardens pale,

Dream-flowers bloom without fail

Fragrance flows o’er hill and dale …’

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