But then, she resembled her mother, my brother’s wife, my mejo boudi – yes, she did. I was seeing her after many years had passed. Maybe my in-between body rendered me incapable of identifying her. There was a lady who tried to look bleary-eyed, to feign sorrow. If there was one thing I did not like, it was noise. The room was packed with relatives, I think, and there was so much noise. What surprised me was the beeline of people who came in after it was all over.

It was a white one with small blue patterns, a few lines, some leaves, some branches too.

I loved looking at the colours and small patterns on them – small flowers, criss-cross designs, some lines that appeared to move up and down. There were green, brown, blue and pink ones. A nightie was my usual dress and, you know what, it brought some colour back into my days. I needed help putting on any piece of dress. I hadn’t worn a saree for quite some time.

I would like to talk about something else today, about what I saw after it all came to an end. At times my son would be around but in the main he remained busy at work. I lived alone in this big house for most of the day. It is a long list, as you might understand. Not going to mope and pine about how bad things became, either, or about how no one really bothered about me, about how my friendship circle shrank with my trials, how no one visited, no one gave a thought as to what I would like to eat or whether I had eaten anyway, no one seemed to care whether or not I wanted to talk, or if something was bothering me. I was no longer able to do what I could always do before people said I was losing my marbles. Life seemed to chip away slowly about twelve years ago. When I draped it, my son looked at me quizzically. Many, many years later, I began to enjoy colour again, that red border on my white saree looked so nice. No one asked me to, I knew that these were the things I had to do, and I did. When he passed away, I started wearing white, stopped eating non-vegetarian food. He was a nice man, simple and down to earth and he listened to all I said. I lived for over thirty years without him, a long time.

My husband fell sick years ago, thankfully he did not suffer much before death came - god bless his soul. I had lived a good life, on my own terms. I am not going to talk about the end as I was happy when it all ended. Having lived in this world for over eighty five years, the end came none-too-sudden. It’s dark brown, so it took some effort to look over to ascertain the colour. An enlarged image, blown-up and framed in heavy wood with wide borders. Rahul Viswanath: Coconut Tree Leaves, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, 2020 ( Unsplash) by Nishi Pulugurtha

Bombyonder by Reb Livingston