Rani

Sitting at his window Rajiv reflected on his life . It seemed there is nothing else left to achieve. He had everything he had ever wished for. He had been hugely successful since his school days . From his childhood people knew, he was cut up for big things . And truly he was . He never settled for anything but the best . And he quite unfailingly achieved what he set out to. All that was left for him to acquire was a wife . Acquire , that is exactly what he wanted to do . Because everything he had, he had acquired. So he never thought that it can be any different with a wife .

There was this girl Rani he was seeing for about three years . She was his employee . A plain , sweet , unassertive little female . She took orders , accomplished her work just to satisfaction . Never aspired for more and hence never achieved more than what she got. Even her looks were nothing but plain . She had a small frame , wore neatly starched cotton salwar kameez to office , kept smiling throughout the day . People liked her , because she was pleasant and she posed no threat .

It was not long before Rajiv grew fond of her too . And then took her out to those numerous dinners, gave her those little pointless gifts , and never thought he would marry her . But marry he did , when she had become a necessity for him , taking care of little things, keeping off all kinds of nagging worries so that he could concentrate on more important matters . So an uneventful romance ended in an uneventful marriage , quite effectively ending whatever romance that had been there .

Rani left the job and devoted her heart and soul to home-making . But as usual , she did not do anything extraordinary . She did everthing just to satisfaction . Probably God did not give her the itelligence that she could do anything out of the ordinary. Rajiv just the same left her to take care of his home while he plunged himself in work and philandering. It was very convinient to have an unsuspecting wife who stayed at home and did the chores .

Years passed like this . They did not have any issue. Rani could not conceive . God not only made her dumb , but also barren . Well as a matter of fact, God had also made her an orphan. From her childhood she had seen only two kinds of people , the compassionate ones and the cruel ones . And she had learnt to feel only two kinds of emotions , gratitude and guilt. With Rajiv however she felt both the emotions in equal measure . She felt immense gratitude for his 'kindness' and unmitigated guilt for not being able to produce a child .It was not like she did not know about her husband' s philandering ways . But she did not think she was upto him to object to it . And so she really did not know what she wanted , how can she put her life back on the tracks . She just felt bad , each day , each moment . She would not even think of ways to get out of this predicament of hers . And slowly she reduced herself to a furniture or rather a machine or an appliance, like the mixer or the washing machine or the oven that she used daily . Slowly but surely she became one of them .

Years passed , one fine day Rani died . A very uneventful death that was . She just stopped living, you may say . As if her time was up and she had to go , so she went . After all the rites and rituals , after the guests left Rajiv woke up in a home that did not have a very important furniture. Panic struck . How was he to manage everything . Who would see to all the little nagging worries so that he could concentrate on more important matters ? Then he remembered he was about to retire in two more years . All the huge success , all the name , fame , everything was to go . He would soon have none of those more important things to do .

In evenings when he would return to an empty house , he would sit at the window and the picture of his wife would come floating in the wind . He would smell the fragrance of the air and remember the cheap perfume she used to wear before their marriage . She had never been more than a convinience for him. He remembered the numerous nights he made love to her with passion only of the body and not of the mind . He tried to remember how she looked when they would make love . He could not remember anything , for he never saw her face at those times . He kept searching in the archives of his mind for some clue and remembered the first time he made love to her . She had looked almost mad with fright that day, but anyways he had not heeded that. He remembered the numerous gifts he gave her that he bought only with money and no love . He tried to remember how she looked when she received those gifts from him, and yet again he had no memories . He searched hard and remembered the day he had given her that engagement ring . Her eyes had lit up like two tiny little bulbs and her thin lips had broken into a smile that very much resembled a rose . But as usual he had not noticed that , he was just gloating with pride at his own munificence.

Suddenly he started feeling strange . He groped about in the years lost for shreds of memories , for recollections that can give him company in lonely nights . Probably for the first time he felt a strange affection for his deceased wife . He bemoaned the pointless life she had lived as his wife . A life which gave her absolutely nothing . A life she spent in quiet agony . He felt pity for her , he felt sad , he felt lonely , he felt guilty . He went to her room and frantically started searching . Searching for some solace, some clue that would let him know she had been happy with him , she had not bore ill will for him , that she loved him unconditionally .

Then he discovered those papers . The papers relating to the orphanage she had grew up in . She worked at the orphanage regularly , nursing and caring for children ,whom she did not conceive . She saved money from her allowance and used most of it for the orphanage .Among other thigs there was a tiny little packet that contained many little cards and trifles that the little children gave her. From the packing it was evident how much she cherished those . She had not lived a pointless life after all .