Except tangentially...

I can't recall her face , never knew her name . She stayed two houses away and used to spend a lot of time on the terrace which was level with my dining room window. Every morning when I opened the kitchen window I would see her , ,putting out clothes to dry ,shaking out the washing , with the peculiar strong flap which women give to wet clothes to get the creases out . She had long wavy hair which she used to dry sitting on a ledge dividing the two halves of the terrace. Earlier , just after her marriage she used to wear sarees , later on a very modest nightie or a dressing gown .

On Saturday and Sunday mornings , my younger daughter and I would normally sit at the table , she with her studies , I keeping her company.Soon our eyes would stray to the windows and beyond , to the hot blue sky if it was summer , the gathering grey clouds massing in the dull northeastern sky if it was the monsoons . In weather as now, the sky a vivid turqouise , so bright with huge cloud puffs of white , it hurt your eyes , in winter , the dull golden gleam of a winter sunshine and the biting North wind . The palm tree , home to the huge eagle at night a dirty green against all that splendour and the masses of trees , the shades of green varying according to the seasons

Invariably we would see her , short , a little dumpy , hair long and loose down to her waist , putting out clothes to dry , feeding the pigeons , throwing out a handful of grains , sometimes spinning around on her feet , hair flying , so that the golden grains flew in all directions - a great mass of birds wheeling in the sky , flying down to rest on the terrace of her house and the one between theirs and ours - so many colours - dull metallic grey , with splodges of a hot ashy pink , white ones with pale grey patterns , pale beige beauties , - cooing and billing madly as they tumbled on to the terrace ..

Tani would wave sometimes , from the verandah and she would laugh back and wave - happy girl - not very beautiful but with a certain wholesomeness that made you feel a degree of comfort - made you think of a clean , bright house , good food smells , cosy rooms , a happy grinning husband and two children, maybe a mortgage on a flat under construction in Tollygunge .

Of course she had none of these - shared a damp , dank , indifferent house with a blowsy irritable mother in law , a spinster sister in law and most important , a retarded and mad husband with a foghorn voice , a scooter and a helmet perched awry on his head ,who also incidentally held down a job somewhere , but was nevertheless, relentlessly insane .

I met her last during the Pujas . In winter I heard she had been taken to the asylum , raving and tearing her clothes off . She came back after a month and fed her birds .

There was a subdued poignancy in her movements which even Tani noticed . She did not fling the grains , strewed them quietly on the terrace , dried innumerable clothes and went away .

One day I saw her with a bundle of the helmeted madman's clothes , waking up the junkie who slept on the dhobi's cart and give it to him.

She disappeared again probably for another round of treatment . When she came back she was fiercely rebellious- wore her husband's shirt and one day cut off her long glorious hair into short uneven spikes , pinned on flashy dangling earrings and heaps of junky bangles on her wrists .

I would often see her at Lords crossing in the morning on my way to office , decked up in a shiny short kameez and salwar, slim and spiky haired , arms thin and laden with bangles , earrings dangling against her thin neck almost down to the shoulder blades which jackknifed sideways ,skittery heels , feverishly glinting eyes ringed with kohl , crossing thte road busily , bag on her wrist - now she looked truly fey and very different , as if she was on drugs or on a very very thin rope between reality and wherever she was travelling to in her mind- it was there in the walk, the short busy strides, the muttering , the very deviant clothing so at odds with her usual normal self .

She disappeared suddenly . Later we heard she had committed suicide having drunk about a gallon of pesticide . They took her to hospital and after she died , straight to the crematorium . She was finally free - free of whatever private torments had transformed her from a happy carefree laughing girl to a raving mad woman - free of the circumstances which had imprisoned her in her tragic life and marriage - indeed she was now free of herself .

Her birds kept wheeling around , hungry , settling on the terraces , calling out and then they too disappeared

The door to the terrace stays open all morning , the clothes flap in the breeze . The birds have come back , fewer than before - other people feed them maybe , but they come back to roost on her terrace , the middle house and the nooks and crannies in our old house .

Except tangentially and with reference to the guy in singlet -shorts and a helmet perpetually stuck on his head ,I dont think of her . But once in a while when we check out the skies,and the eagle on the palm tree on weekend mornings , my eyes do stray to the terrace . Sometimes I can feel the ghost of a girl with long hair, flinging grain to the birds but of course the terrace remains empty ...