The Inelegant Bride. (Part II)

They pitied her, they pitied her. And yet on the streets, they would shy away from calling her. Her obscenely fleshy frame which she covered in soul-less colors, the knife clutched firmly in her hand, the hair which she had never cut, a mass of black broomsticks, and those hollow eyes of a volcano black, put people off her. On social gatherings, when the ladies would sit together, at the dirty pinches of the frayed multicolored tent, the topic would inadvertently and surely touch the life of "Poor Swati". There would be audible sighs and sympathetic clucks. Someone would try to mutter, but instead in needle-like voice say a small verse, with the theatric closing of eyes, and clasping of fingers. The new brides would shake their majestic heads of hair in pity, the meek one would look pointedly down. Pregnancies, babies, philandering husbands, failed businesses, family feuds, cat fights and a visit by the local film star later, the murder of the Mathur's and the fate of their only, spoiled child, still was titillating sensation, the sobered embers of which were fueled to a tickling life, every now and then. 


15 years was a long time. But it stood frozen for Swati, the winsome 25 year old, who walked into the dead bodies of her beloved parents. A balmy afternoon, with the heat fluttering in a listless haze, while fondling happily the complying bodies of her dead parents. Her Mom's wheat colored face coated with sluggish blood, her Dad's eye unseeing and lolling in their sockets. They laid side by side, like two dummies, in clothes tinctured with drying blood, cold bodies in the copper heat. 
The people came to take her away wanting to wipe her tears. There were none. Soft voices, softer touches, the softest words. A kind lady  gently opened the fancy necklaces that looped on her neck, someone else greedily took off the gold bands on her fingers. There were five of them. Somewhere, someone, in a plaintive voice warbled about God's grace. The smell of the rose incense wafted around the house, gently  like the footsteps of a fleecy lamb.They fed, she did not protest. They nudged the spoon of daal into her tiny mouth, they dabbed her chin with the towel when water would dribble down it. They talked, she did not hear. She stood, frozen in time.


And then she made love to madness. The neighborhood would be woken up by her acidulous cries of unbearable pain. The night would be punctuated with her spams of wails, the venomous sobs and withering laments. The dawn would have her convulsing with heart pain, the day would hear her tempest of prayers, frenzy and feverish. The God's were ripped from the walls and hurled into garden with its long, octopus like grass tentacles. She laughed, her delirious laugh, seeing the wooden frames and their slaughtered inhabitants rotting in the rains, fading in the sun,even the stray spring flower not wanting to touch them.Her hair grew long and in copious amounts- her body clung to the comfort of fat, her eyes became more vacant. She muttered, she stalked. Her rants were soft like a pianissimo, and sometimes vicious like the wolves. She paced, she paced.  She was shackled to life but not to its obligations. She cared not to care for herself, for the society. And she went on, making love to her insanity, besotted to her madness. 




How could she get be married ? Who would marry her?

The pandit drawled again. 

"Bring the bride"
The pandit-he was an oily man.His verses were oiled and so was his hair and just like his face. He righteously chanted the hymns and the verses, while feeding the hungry pyre of orange, its milk of ghee. Every now and then, he would tinkle the bell, and toss the lilies floating in the bowl next to him unceremoniously in the humid air. There was a place, empty next to him. And he beckoned on to her.


She stood up. Everyone eyed her like a jackal, hungry for their morsel of gossip to whet their craving appetites. They watched her, place one unsteady foot shod in golden plastics after another. Her frame wobbled, she grunted. Like as if a spotlight was on her, everyone just stared as she took her steps on the dirty velvet of the carpet, slowly making way to the bamboo mat next to the pandit. She sat down on it, inelegant bride that she was, farting, as she let herself spread on the carpeted macadam. Her eyes black, yet shampooed to a hard glint by her frenzied excitement, her lips pursed, her body heaving, sweating, trembling. Swati- The mad bride. 


Everyone held their breath. For now they had to call the groom. There was a rustling of tacky silks, and the graze of nylon trousers, as people turned their head around, peeking squinting waiting for the HER groom to arrive.


"Bring the groom", he intoned,in his not so melodious voice. A frisson of excitement in the crowd. The excitement was palpable, like a trembling wave threatening to break open and drench the people any moment. The mother put a hurried palm over her crying toddler, the men chewed their paan tensely. The teenage rebel quietly slung her arm through her mother's. The short ones unabashedly stood on their toes. The old matrons controlled their lashong tongues, the sole waiter serving the guests, paused with his tray of oil lathered goodies. Everyone waited with bathed breath. 
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Years later, Swati's marriage still remained, tucked into manifolds of every conversation. Everyone recounted the disbelief that coursed through them as the inelegant bride, pulled out the picture of a random man, cut out from the newspaper and placed it on the seat next to her. How she walked around the pyre holding the picture in his hand, head held erect. One time, two times, Seven times. Someone said, that was the picture of her mother's favorite singer. Nobody could see properly. The ink of the newspaper had started fading with age, the picture was spotted with unbecoming circles of purple. She placed her fat, fleshy thumb stained with the red and drew a long tikka on the paper. She took that paper and rubbed it on her forehead, and ran it along her hair. She stabbed the paper with a single flower, and herself slung a magnificent garland of orange blossoms. She placed the picture on the ground and then bowed down in front of. Kissed the ground. A play so elegant, a play so dark, its actress so wild, the audience so stunned. They recalled, how when the rituals were over, Swati never looked at any one of them, and walked, the picture clutched to her bosom, to her house, shut the door, to never look back. The mural of the gory murder was complete with the one last piece of the insane daughter. No one knew, no one knew. Why Swati got married, to whom Swati got married.




No one knew, about the times, she spent looking at that one picture of her mother that was stuck on the wall. Her mother in the wedding dress. No one knew, Swati's hours of staring at the picture, wanting to bring her mother back. That smiling face, those chubby arms washed with that sweet smelling cream. Her mother. No one knew, how she would sit on the ground, her hair falling around her, the rat slyly running past her, and look and stare at that picture pasted on the crumbly blue wall. They called her mad, she was not. She lived in another world, where she was not yet born, and her mother was still alive and blushing like a bride. She just wanted her mother back. She just wanted to walk every evening straight into her mother's embrace. Her frozen brain fathomed that a marriage could bring her back. Maybe those rituals had some magic? Maybe the windchime in her parent's bathroom would tinkle once again, as her mom would flippantly strike it, after her bath. Maybe her Mom would be found cooking a delightful mixture of spicy curry for her in the kitchen. Maybe, Maybe. But it did not, it did not.


No one saw Swati after that day.