Closure

The green paddy field seemed purple in the dying light. The wind ran its hand through the grass, which swayed and swirled, in delighted glee. A gaiety that sickened his heart. The beauty and happy serenity of the place filled him with disgust. He looked around the vast expanse of the paddy field, girdled only at the horizon by stately coconut trees, the dark silhouette of their huge leaves majestic against the sky. Standing on the narrow, raised path that cut across the field, he watched the red embers of the dying light from which countless birds emerged, flying back to their nests. He could smell the old, familiar scent of camphor and oil from a temple that stood at the edge of the field. Occasionally muted sounds of temple bells rang out between the cry of crickets.

A woman with a large, wicker basket cradled at her hip walked past him. He felt her innocently intrusive stare on him. He was suddenly aware of the ridiculous sight he presented- a middle aged man in shorts, Ray-Bans and rubber slippers standing in the middle of a paddy field. He fitted so ridiculously into the stereotype of the 'foreign returned desi' that he could have laughed. But he felt strangely exposed and violated under the woman’s gaze. He felt that she could see into his soul and read his thoughts. Watching her go, irritated and anxious, he reached into the pocket of his shorts and brought out a small paper package, a folded red tissue paper. He noticed his hand shaking as he held it. "Eccentricity," he thought to himself. "Fucking eccentricity! That was what had brought him here. An eccentric woman’s eccentric dying wish, the eccentric sentiment of love, and his eccentric weakness." His inability to say no to being forced into this ridiculous, self-compromising situation- back to a country, a land he hated, among people from whom he had fled years back, to do something he found silly- infuriated him.  He heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. Dark clouds were gathering in the horizon.

He had better be done with this, he reminded himself. Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his mind. But thoughts, words and images kept bombarding his closed lids with a frequency that made him dizzy. He could not make them stop. “Screw it!” , he said out aloud and began opening the folds of the red tissue paper.  He was about to hold it up when a sudden, strong gust of wind blew it clean out of his hands. Grey dust spilled from the paper before it bounced along with the wind and disappeared into the approaching darkness. A tiny grey cloud formed in the air for a moment and then it was gone. 

Shocked at this unexpected defeat, he stared in disbelief. Before he realised what had happened it was all over. He looked down at the ground for grey specks, but there were none. Infinite loss filled him. Robbed of this final act of self-determination, he felt robbed of everything. He realized that his anger and irritation at being there, alone in the town they had both grown up in, was an expression of his pain, his hurting love. This one conscious act of scattering her ashes had been his only chance at gaining control over his life once again, to deny the inevitability of fate. Suddenly rendered helpless, utterly helpless, he felt himself fall to the ground. Lying there crouched, his knee held to his mouth, he wept. Like a baby, bereft of everything, he wept like he had not wept for a very long time. He felt rain pelt down on him. The heavy drops hit his body like rocks. It stripped away his clothes and his layers of skin. He wept harder and harder until he felt the earth melt down below him in his tears mingled with the rain. And in the rivulet that ran, his pain, anger, love, and hate; all his emotions, flowed. The red earth took it all in, the land he had once called home.