Coward

                                                 
     The room is quiet.The maid has just left.The whirring sound of the fan is creating a soothing effect on the frayed nerves of suman.It is very hot outside.Inside too it is not cool.But she manages to remain so by keeping cool and managing her regular breathing.She concentrates on the rhythm of her breath.She follows it ponderously and feels her eyes drooping.She suddenly remembers that she has  to take her medicine.The lethargy has completely taken over her.She does not feel like moving.She spreads her legs on the bed and once again listens to her breathing.She turns it to catch some other soft and invisible sounds. Her quiet mind floats effotlessly to catch the diffused and muffled sounds hovering around which oterwise the noisy brain never catches.She sees the curtains shivering in the fan's air.They flap so softly and fall into rhythm with the rest of the curtains.It is an imperceptible activity going on unabated,a cosmic participation.The ticking clock too sounds  less boisterous.And then she hears the jingling sound .The other maid has arrived. It is lunch time. This  maid has a persistent cough which irks Suman quite a lot. She  keeps telling her to get herself checked but she turns a deaf ear to it and mostly takes offence.She knows  what Suman means by thorough check-up and Suman could never be explicit about her medical condition.She sometimes is  shocked by the directness of her daughter's  expression of her opinions.She never dilly dallies nor she cares for creating any impressions. It feels  like she bull-dozes  through the facade of sensitive human emotions and hits the bull in the eye.She could never  be pursuaded or diverted and she would shoot off  her opinion as if she was passing the final verdict.Suman with bated breath would plead with her to soften her stance and be a little sophisticated.But she gave a damn to it and with a jerk of her head left the scene. She never felt remorse or never suffered any guilt or repentance.Suman felt strange and nervous at such moments. she herself  was made .of a different stuff. Her brain was like that huge community bin which was stuffed with debris of all manner and which remained cluttered all along raising a stink which never left it and she being  like the litter boy who picked and chose out of this debri according to the demand in the junk market.Suman also picked and chose out of her accumulated debri according to her mood of the moment.She was full of the baggage which she dragged along like the peddler who carries his wares through rain or sun shine.He can never do without this burden like Suman would feel hollow and meaningless without her  brimming brain.But her daughter-she was made of different stuff. She was blunt and straight though a very learned and intelligent young girl quick at perceptions and piercing  in her judgements which were astonishingly way ahead in their discretion. Yet she was primeval in her social interactions.Suman could see her in absolute black or white shade but there was no grey in it. The grey which has perhaps spawned this universe and created the modern civilised man.this very grey which stops suman from being blunt with her maid and tell her to get tested for consumption or leave the job.She knows the maid  would sit before her after her work in the kitchen was  over and Suman would be seething with fear and discomfort because of her veiled coughing.Suman will not even have the courage to get out of the range of her coughing thinking  it might hurt her feelings.It was a torment and at the same time the stubborness of the maid not to have proper treatment because that would mean she has accepted the adverse and thus be the cause of social stigma for her family.

                                                  Now she is sitting before her baring her pale and rusty teeth trying to laugh and gauge Suman's reaction to her muffled dry cough. Suman puts her breathing in a different gear, breaks its rhythm and holds back her breath waiting for the maid to go.