Independence

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Priya cannot make use of people, she cannot take where she has nothing to give,

Life is not only about availing,

Birth and death: serpents swallowing each other’s tails. A father dies to make space in the world for the child who is coming. When a nation is born, how many must then die?

But because even saints have enemies, some will be pleased, secretly they will say good riddance, he was too fond of Muslims, because of him the country was broken in two.

But we must go on, carrying the vision forward. It is the only thing we can do to honour the dead.’

This, too, must be what made people love this woman, the complete attention she gave to whomever life placed in front of her.

The world is full of good people too, living their quiet workaday lives.

You may fall from time to time. We all did. What is important is to get up again.

She knows she is only an aunt; in this and in more important matters the mothers will make the final decision, and that is as it should be.

Everyone deserves a little pleasure in life, the excitement of breaking a rule or two.

Silence, she has learnt, is the best defence against Manorama’s good intentions.

Here is a river. Here is a wind rising. Here is a village. Here is the year. The river is time, ebbing, flooding. The wind is memory, it can carry flowers, it can carry flames. The village is the world, and you are at its centre. The year is now. What will you do with it? What will you do?