The Unfluttering Veil in a Tempest

(ILLUSTRATION BY KAREEMGRAPHY)

  A city sprawls with vignettes of hues, absorbing the palette of people’s lives it contains. But which shade engross us in the portrait? The lushness of the greenery, the brown breweries immersing the grey evenings, the sweaty redness of the workers with or without a union, the white and silvery structure of MNCs and the places of worship, the blue of the coastal or the endless amalgamated colours of love and food. Transfixed on the shade we adore or see ourselves in, we miss minding the hands that wield to erase the colours we are not interested in, thus mangling the portrait. The more we are engulfed in our shades, the more oneness seeps through, leaving us stranded on an island waiting only to be ravaged. 

Siva partly shifted his gaze to a remote shade. The spilled sorrow on her daughter’s face held his cheek and turned his head to it. As his motorbike parted the fading sunlight and the opposing wind, making her bangs flutter and eyes well up, he felt the side of her face on his traps. 

“Are you sleepy? Don’t fall off!” 

 A deep, mellow, “No!” reverberated around his body and reached his heart. 

“Then, why are you quiet?” Siva stroked her head, abandoning the clutch for a moment.  

More questions and blandishments, but nothing elicited a word from her as it never seemed to distort her thinking. Whenever moments like this spring up between them, Siva knows what to do. 

He accelerated to an ice cream parlour. The stranded parking lot shrugged off its siesta as they entered it. 

“Get down, Keerthana!” 

“I don’t want ice cream, paa. Let’s go home.” 

“I want to have one!” 

“When did you start having ice cream without me?” 

“You have been sad and tight-lipped about it since we started from school. And you don’t want an ice cream. So, I thought I would eat one for you.” 

He ordered their favourite flavours. Gazing at the table, he was puzzled by the reasons that might have made Keerthana renounce an ice cream even momentarily. But it failed him. Never did it happen, as far as he shuffled back through his memory. 

“Rafia didn’t write the exam today……They didn’t let her and many other girls.” 

“What happened?” 

“They asked to remove her headscarf, paa, and she did not. They did not let anyone, wearing a scarf or burqa, write the exam.” 

“Did anyone remove it?” 

“Few. Told those girls not to wear it to school anymore and let them inside….” 

“Did you talk to her?” 

“On our way to the hall where they stopped her at the entrance. Few were already standing at the corner. They asked me to go inside. I heard their murmurs when the exam started. But couldn’t find her when I came out.” 

“You want to talk to her now!” he extended his mobile. 

“I don’t know what to talk to her, paa.” Preceded by a short-muffled sob, she asked, “Do you think she should have removed her scarf?” 

“They would have let her in, Keerthana.” 

“But should she have done it, paa?” 

“Yes! She could have chosen to remove it. After that, they wouldn’t have bothered about it. Maybe, she was afraid at that moment.” 

“When I think of her or hear her name, all that comes to mind is her face engulfed by that scarf. I don’t remember her any other way.” 

Siva held her hand, stroked it, and pinched her cheeks while they stood to leave. 

His gaze on a remote shade, an impact of her daughter’s despair, made him realize the blemish it had cast on their vibrance in the portrait. Her bowl of thawed strawberry scoop stood a testimony. 

* 

Their sea-like silence entering the home, crashed by the animated shrills, propagated as news on the television, front of which Durga stood and murmured to her unaware of their presence. 

Siva’s nudge on her elbow brought her attention to home. Reducing the volume, she asked pensively, “Were you stuck in traffic? It’s past 5.” She caressed Keerthana’s head, “You look dull! Was your exam tough?” 

“No, maa,” sullen, Keerthana paced across the hall to her room. 

“Why are you both unusually silent?” 

“This happened at her school too. Rafia didn’t write the exam, and that got into her,” he said, looking at the feeble television. 

While Siva asked, “Did anything as such happen at your school as well?” the calling bell rang. 

At the door stood Rafia, along with her mother. Delving into mutual concern about each other’s wellness, their talk tread towards the unsuspected incident of the day. 

“I even scolded her. Girl, you got there. You are removing it just for the sake of writing your exam.” 

“Them, who should be making it easy for our children to study, go the other way around.” 

“What else can we do, Durga? We want our children to study, whatever it takes. And, they keep on imposing whatever they can to not let them.” 

Peeking into the hall midway through this worrying conversation, Keerthana took Rafia to her room. 

“He left us. But not his stubbornness. She has it…..,” the miseries mellowed down in Keerthana’s room. 

* 

As Keerthana picked the question paper from her bag, Rafia sitting on the edge of the bed probed her, 

“Was it easy? Have you done well?” 

Thrusting the paper into Rafia’s lap and sitting beside her, Keerthana stared at her floral hijab. 

Kneading the knitted beads of it, she said, “You would also have done it well if you had removed this for three hours.” 

Unruffled, Rafia’s gaze zig-zagged across the questions. 

“Only if they make it as easy as this for the public exam too. But they won’t!” 

Keerthana slapped the paper down, “Will you write the next exam? Even your mother doesn’t bother about you removing the scarf. Then why are you so adamant about it?” 

“But the other girls! Would they be able to remove it? Because of their family or they want to wear it for themselves. Yes, they are few, but I can add to them. Management might not reverse their minds, but I want to be a part of them.” She picked the paper from the floor and smoothened it with her palm, “I shall take a picture of this.” 

After taking a snap of it, she folded it and handed it to Keerthana, who was stock-still. Rafia stood in front of her and shook her shoulders, “Keerthu! Rid this of your mind and study for tomorrow. We will meet at school.” 

“Yes, we will,” her smile, branching from her will to join her, spread across the room, and lighted Rafia’s face as she bid to leave. 

Durga and Keerthana saw their friends go amidst the lights illuminating the flipping darkness. Keerthana asked Durga, “Maa! How many girls did you stop from writing their exam today?” 

As a parent and as a teacher, Durga’s weeping conscience muted her words. 

The glorious and glamourous spectacle of the city stood unconstrained about the invading hands and their bloody claws on such lives. 

THE END