A tribute to the woman...

She was her world for fourteen years; the precious first fourteen years of life.   Then there was the man and the boy, who came in and went out of it sometimes.  She admired her, adored her, cherished her….. Loved her…  It was all returned with an equal or stronger intensity.  That’s what made it all special, filled her world with dreams, hopes, fantasies…………….. with life.  Even the man and the boy were not aware of the special bond.  They all thought it was normal for the relationship.  But how wrong they were….!!  It was something very beautiful.  They, the girl and the woman, transformed together into the childhood of one and the womanhood of the other.  They were friends one minute and the next, they were a teacher-mentor pair.  They danced together, sang together, played together, laughed together and cried together.   The woman told her stories of her own childhood.  The woman told her things she had not shared with anyone else.  The woman told her that she lived only for her-the girl.  She always said that.  She almost said that everyday, whenever they were together.    The girl never understood why she says that but she felt happy, sad and important, all at once.
It was all lovely……and more.  She saw the world in a view that covered only whatever happened to the woman.  That’s all she knew to do.  She hated the people who hated the woman, and she loved the people who loved the woman.  It was simple for her.  She saw what the woman went through.  She could not do anything about it.  Since she did not understand that, she fought for the woman bravely, every time.  She did not stop even when she got hurt in the process.  For this, the woman loved her even more, and the girl fought harder, the next time.  The girl acted a woman and took care of the woman, soothed her with her songs and kisses and the woman melted into a child, in the child’s arms.  Ah….She would never forget that…..
 Then there was the boy.  She used to love him too, though not as much as she did the woman.  This was different.   They used to play together often and she used to enjoy those times with him very much.  He was nice to her.  Though he used to play his pranks on her and make her cry, he was nice to her in his own way.  May be they were friends.  But no, he was older than her, and he did not treat her as he did his other friends.  No it was not friendship.  The “names of their relationship”- the terms of the world of adults - do not matter to the young hearts.  They just know to like, dislike, befriend or avoid someone.   So she loved him in her own way.  She used to fight for him too.  And he used to be very protective about her.  She knew that her childhood was a weapon she could use for their defense and she did that, at every opportunity, to help the woman and the boy, as much as she could.  It worked mostly, and she was happy she could offer something.  She started respecting the boy, loving him, as days went by and she saw more of that life.  She felt inferior to him.  She wanted to become like him.  He became her role model.
The man was an entirely different story.  The girl still doesn’t know if she loved him or not in those days.  He was more in the outer circle than the boy.  The man used to adore her, love her.  She did too but not always.  It depended on how the woman felt about the man at that time.   She felt guilty about it when the man told her that she was very precious to him.  She liked him very much, but for the times he was not nice to the woman.  She looked forward to his stories at bedtime.  She loved to swing on his outstretched arms holding a wall.  She felt very happy when she almost flew with his bike, sitting in front of him on her way to school. She loved to listen to him, sing his own songs for her, learned them and sang for him proudly, whenever he was in the mood to listen to her.  She squealed with joy when he tickled her little face with his beard and she slept peacefully lying on his back listening to his stories.  Oh… he was adorable….. but for those other times, when he was not….. 
Her world was made of the woman, with these people in the background.  Now, she barely remembers the rush in the mornings and the lovely Sunday-lunches they had together.   The woman is all she can recall.  There were times, when she was afraid of the woman too, but that was all out of the extraordinary love they shared.  She wanted to please her in every possible way.  She was scared she won’t meet the woman's expectations.  She even fainted when the woman scolded her for the first time because she felt guilty that she had disappointed the woman and was afraid that she might lose her love.  She always wanted to be the most important thing in the woman’s life.  She was very protective of the woman.  She defended her in every possible way.  She did not care who it was she was confronting or how they felt about it.  It was all about the woman.   She had gotten used to the “basking in the undivided (or at least, as she assumed, a special) attention of the woman” that she was very proud of.  She used to feel happy when she used to be visited by her every weekend in those eventful two years that all four of them lived separately.  She hated the man for letting this happen to them.  She did not like his visits.  She never spoke to him at that time though she could see his face blossoming at the sight of her.  She secretly felt guilty too.  She never understood him at that time.  She still doesn’t understand.  Those memories are rooted too deep in her heart for her to forget and she was way too small then, to understand whatever was happening.  After all this happened, she never expected the woman to actually talk to the man ever again.  After all, according to her, it was he who was responsible for whatever happened to them.  So she never understood when the woman started paying more attention to the man after they all got back together.  The boy was still living separately.  She got angry when the boy tried explaining to her that the man was not solely responsible.  “How dare he even hint that the woman had a role to play in whatever happened?!!  Even he loves her doesn’t he?”  As she saw the woman tend to the man more and more, she became upset more and more, but never so openly.  She never asked the woman about it.  Then, the fateful last few days with the woman were even worse.  She never understood why the woman would want to spend her last few conscious moments with the man rather than her, the girl.  Had she not always told the girl that she lived only for her?  Had she not loved the girl more than anyone else in the world?  Had the girl not been the one who fought for the woman?  How can the woman do this to her?  Then she hated herself for such questions.  May be the woman had a reason.  She always did.  She obviously loved her-the girl, more than anyone else in the world.  Everyone knew that.  SHE knew that.  The woman would have asked the man to take care of her.  That’s what she would have been talking to him about.  Obviously, she wanted her to be happy.  That’s what it would have been.  Or was it?
Now it’s been 7 and half years.  She has forgotten the woman’s voice and is able to recall her face only from her pictures.  She used to have a cassette tape that had her voice recorded accidentally, that she discovered in some pile of waste and had guarded it safely for a long time.  Now she doesn’t remember where she kept it.  It has become less important though even now she would like to hear her voice.  She still bears some fond memories, their tickle games, and their dancing and singing together, very few they were.  There are also some vivid ones that she doesn’t want to remember.  She had the habit of writing to the woman, letters that would never reach the addressee, whenever she was upset or wanted to talk about something very personal.  O, wasn’t the woman her best friend after all.  But now the frequency of the letters has come down.  Well, lots have changed.  The man has become old.  The girl and the man are sharing a good relationship she never imagined she would, even in the wildest dreams of her early childhood.  But still shades of gray come over their relationship, the shadow of her dark memories of him, when they have, even the smallest of misunderstandings.  Then she paints it with colors of maturity and understanding and love, oh how weird!  The boy has become a man now.  The girl herself is a young lady.  She has even come to terms with;  1) the fact that the woman also had a role to play in whatever happened, 2) the woman having not spent her last few conscious moments with her but the man instead, and well, a score of other things she had not earlier.  But one thing has not changed.  Still the bond has not worn out, she’s still defensive about the woman, and the man and the boy still do not know about the special bond the woman and the girl had shared.  They haven’t realized.  They would never understand.  So she doesn’t try to explain.  May be it is too special to be understood by others.  Actually, just the first eight years of her life should be considered the best till now, when all of them were really 'together'.  She doesn’t remember much from those years but the thought of all of them having been together is what makes it good…..the warmth of that imagination - no not a memory, she doesn’t remember - the imagination fed by the pictures she has seen….  Her first eight years.  But the first fourteen is what would be apt to be called precious, because that carries her whole treasure of the woman with her………….. Those precious first fourteen years of life…….




 PS: I wrote it about a couple of years back... For those who do not understand, I am sorry I cannot explain anything more for I took great care in writing it the way it has been... I did not want to blog but something today just made me take it out from the pile of mails in my mailbox and put it up here... Well, thanks for stopping by and reading is all I can say...