The Reflection In My Window

Yesterday, while dusting my living room window, I saw a reflection that caught my breath. A thin little girl wearing a frock slowly walked about my garden and picked flowers. She seemed nervous, at first, and glanced around to see if anybody was looking at her. As she jerked her head around to catch a sign of danger, her nervous thin fingers froze in a pause, sparing the tiny flowers for a moment. Once assured that she was undetected, she calmly busied herself with plucking the blooms that took her fancy. After gathering a handful of primroses, her eyes searched the garden for other bright colours. As I stared at her, amused at her calm self indulgence in choosing the flowers that enamoured her, I realized slowly that the garden in which she picked the flowers was not my walled small back garden.

Instead the window reflected a vast garden bordered with flower beds. Tall neem trees stood at one end of the garden and at the edge that bordered the drive way. Their graceful branches leaned over the paved driveway, shadowing the vast grey gate. On the far side, further flowerbeds bordered the driveway next to the boundary wall that stood impassively green with clipped climbing creepers. The garden lay to the left of the gate as I entered this complex. The little girl, unaware of my presence, flitted like a fairy from one flower bed to another picking bright marigolds, budding primroses and violet pansies. She moved about freely, her earlier hesitant looks over the shoulder distracted her no more as she moved from the marigolds to the roses and then to the pansies. Her delicate fingers seemed to be drawn by the brightest flowers, those in their prime and by picking them she seemed to enjoy their beauty in an odd uncaring way that had no tinge of cruelty, no idea of the life she destroyed. Her thick black hair, braided in two sections, gleamed in the autumn sunshine. I noticed how tightly it had been braided and how profusely it had been oiled. As I stood behind her observing her flit from one flower bed to another, my eyes followed the uneven hem of her obviously stitched-at-home frock with its pattern of bright flowers on the cream cotton fabric. She moved light footedly in her cheap but flowery plastic flip-flop sandals. I was so close to her that I could hear her quietly counting the number of flowers she held in her hand but somehow, she seemed to look past me each time somebody called out to her in the middle of her counting.

She turned round to listen to a young boy calling out to her to hurry. He seemed agitated and angry as though they were partners in committing a crime. Somebody was going to catch them unless she hurried. “Get the red roses�, he said. Unhurried, she pulled a face and bent to pick some of the flowers she had dropped. She was so busy recounting them that she had no idea when a tall, thin, white haired man grabbed her wrist and pulled at her. “What do you think you are doing? I’ll take you to your Khala with these flowers�, rasped a cigarette-caressed voice. As he twisted her wrist, the little girl writhed in pain, tears welling in her eyes as she struggled to free her self. Her brother, pulled at the man’s other arm to distract his attention but the man snarled and grabbed his ear and twisted it till the boy squealed in pain. He seemed a strange cold hearted man, his nostrils flaring, eyes gleaming in victory and discovery behind thick glasses perched on his nose. The little girl slapped at his arm in desperation to flee herself but the grip twisted and twisted her wrist relentlessly despite her obvious pain until it broke her red bangles. As they fell on to the grass among the flowers she had gathered, she cried out even louder. With a savage pull she managed to free her arm and ran away wiping her tears and the man, smug at his prowess, finally released her brother.

That day Khala scolded us for stealing “her� flowers. We were “terrible children�, “not fit for visiting this house�! Bhai Jan and I looked up at her shame facedly, tear smudged faces filled with guilt and dread. Our punishment? No milk and biscuits. We did not dare tell Ammie that we had been given no milk that evening or that we had stolen the flowers to lay them on the breakfast table for her birthday – the next day. We knew she could do nothing.

Mamoo and Khala ruled over the large mansion on Lawrence Road, where our grandparents lived. As in the family photographs, we sat at their feet. Our Sunday visits to their sprawling old mansion made us as much a part of the family as the monkey man who came every week-end to play the drum and wield a stick to make his emaciated monkey perform acrobatic tricks. In the evening, after all of Ammie’s sisters had gone home in their shiny cars, Avvie, our manservant, brought us back home to our upper-storey cramped apartment on his bike while Ammie walked home with Apa. Tired by our ordeal, we slept soundly. The tiredness had taken my guilt away but the scratches from the broken glass bangles left blood marks. I would wash them in the morning before taking the bus to school and in a few days they would be gone but I never picked flowers again without glancing over my back.