The human mind has a tremendous capacity to bear. It is seen through moments of weakness and disparity, when it all strikes you at once. You never really know how much you can go through, even when it is trying to destroy you, and sometimes irreparably so. There?s something about this life that never stops. It?s like the dictum of the Arjuna Chakra; that?s how life really is. Moments come and pass in a flurry of events and yet, there is the will to survive.

Precisely it is all about surviving, rather than living. It is no different for the inhabitants of ?Shantidoot? house. It is a tall, spacious bungalow some kilometers away from Palakkad station in a district of South India. Here, there lives a unit, the collectivistic cultures call this unit a pre-requisite: the family. The family has the same historical silences that even history books sometimes fail to unravel. There is a history that comes from below. It has been sixteen years that Gayatri?s grandparents haven?t spoken to each other. Gayatri was an orphan; or so was she told. She did not question, but rather went by living each day of her life as it invited her into another realm of sorts.

Twenty four years old, and many years wiser than her age, she had the depth of understanding of human relationships and their functioning at large. It is not that she did not try asking her grandparents about who she was, or the question of the parents she belonged to. We all have some questions about ourselves, our identities which are varied and complex. It is but natural and understandable. Yet all identities were concealed from her, she did not have even faint memories or any memoirs of her parents.

One day, as she was coming back from her workplace, she came across an old woman on the street. Gayatri heard her asking for Mrs. Padmalaxmi, who was no other than Gayatri’s grandmother. She quickly went to the old lady and introduced herself as Padmalaxmi’s granddaughter. The old lady had her eyes transfixed on her. It took about two minutes of silence, for Gayatri to intervene.

?Excuse me, ma?am. I think we need to rush home, it is already half past seven and I?m late.?

?Yes, beta, I?m following you.?

?So, Aunty, what brings you here??

There was something that the woman had kept to herself, there was something almost mystical about her. She said, ?I need to talk to your grandma,? and the footsteps traced themselves ahead.

?Here, we are, Aunty,? said Gayatri, ?This is my grandmother Padmalaxmi. You sit and have a word with her, while I?ll come in five minutes. I need to freshen up.?

?Yes, ma?am? Hello? Tell me, You?ve come to meet me?

?Err?Hello, I?m?. Kavita??

?Who?Kavita? I?m sorry I don?t really recollect??

?Kavita Vishwanathan? Delhi University, Lata?s friend??

?How dare do you come again here, you polluting nuisance! How on earth do you muster the courage to face me and my grand daughter. Get out of my house??

The old woman stood and watched every detail of the house. How meticulously Lata had mentioned it to her! The same passion seen in the paintings stuck on the wall, the same amalgamation of the aromatic smells that engulfed the kitchen and the nearby room with the splash of south Indian essences! But the time was not right now, the time was never wrong nor right. It was a feeling.

The old woman had a diary with her and she slowly opened it. By this time, Padmalaxmi was physically pushing her out of the house. When Gayatri arrived and saw this sight, she urged her grandmother to keep calm and took the old woman inside. She gave Gayatri the diary without speaking a word.

?14, July 1990.

It is a bright, sunny morning. My baby must have just got up and started crying for milk. How I miss giving my breasts and tucking you close to my heart, my child? But the world see?s me as a possession. A possession to another woman.

It has been five days since I have left my husband. He has other options and will get remarried. What do I do, child? I Love another woman. Society sees me as corrupting and bad. They say my shadow would be harmful to you. My mother understands, somewhere down the line, but due to the rigidness of my father, is silenced. It has been five days, but I can feel myself getting a sense of satisfaction. The body has its own needs, the way the mind does??

Padmalaxmi snapped the hand of her granddaughter and in a flurry of sorts, the pages were torn and distorted. The old woman, for the first time spoke in a tone of self assertion, saying??Your mother passed away the day she wrote this. Ever since I knew of her, she wanted you to understand the relationship dynamics and wanted to herself tell you, her life, as she thought you deserved to know. I have been diagnosed with cancer and had to do this before I leave. God bless, child.?

As the old woman walked away, Gayatri could see her back, the footsteps, and the hurried mannerism of hers. Today, most questions that life offered with silences faced her. She understood the reason between the silences of her grandparents; the homophobia of her grandfather and the suppression of her grandmother. She understood her identity and perhaps, in a greater sense, the futility of an identity that people pass judgments on!

Slowly, she picked up the pages that had fallen down and clutched all of them together in the diary. A life that was dead had been recovered, through the voice of the deceased, being read through paper.

?If it be that we have varied identities,
Why is it that people judge me only through one??
The altar of time keeps ticking
And I await my beginning
Which is my end
This circular momentum of life
Keeps straddling
And I yearn for living in the world I was born in!

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