She Settled

Disha had overheard a conversation, and suddenly she felt as if her stomach was sinking. Her father’s words, “yes we would like to meet your son”, kept on giving her the sweat under the fan in her room. It was one of those October evenings in a middle class nuclear family where everything goes according to a plan, you have to be clear - what career choices to make, what will be made for dinner, you make ‘prasads’ on those assigned days according to the Hindu calendar and some roses bloom in the small garden in front of the house and people retire from their jobs and read a newspaper every morning after that in the same garden.

She had entered the peril zone this birthday, and suddenly everything had changed, she was supposed to think about settling with someone and that someone was supposed to be well settled (he could not be a bohemian, and not with too much of out of the box ideas about life).She was supposed to think about a changed life out of her will, she had to think more about sarees than books, more about culinary skills than adventure trips.

Disha was not against marriage but she felt suffocated when things came prematurely than her heart accepted them. Today if someone wishes to fill the house with roses but what you have are rose buds, would you cut them and force open the petals? No you won’t do that .They will be allowed to bloom in their course of time. So why do we hurry with ourselves?

She always had this question what if she never felt like having a man in her life or may be just travel with a partner , what if she never got the idea of what getting settled really meant , because may be you settle to be happy and if your happiness lies in something else then that is your settled life. May be she would fall in love with a man in her sixties and make love to him each day like a curious teenager .But why today and why now because she blew twenty fours candles .Let her know what she feels about being a woman, let her fail with many men, let her leave a trail but let her be.

Ten years later, I saw Disha in a café reading ‘The Story of Philosophy’ by Wil Durant and Lonely Planet in her satchel was popping out. She was wearing a khaki trouser and a white top which hung on her carelessly. Her laptop was open and maybe she was making some reservations. There was a shopping bag which had some coloring books, a soft toy and some groceries. Who knows what she became professionally ,  who knows did she even marry because I forgot to look at her fingers and those coloring books , children is the next question , maybe for her little girl or for the neighbor’s kid or maybe just for herself. How did she go back home? Did a car pick her up or she took a cab or maybe walked her way home humming ‘Wo sham kutch ajeeb thi …ye sham bhi ajeeb hai’ .I don’t really know but in my candor she looked Settled that day in her most inconspicuous ways.