“How much did you pay for the coriander?”, squinted acchi, as she peered into the coins that Guru, my cousin, had handed over to her.

“Let me give you the full account. You will never let me rest in peace, otherwise”, frowned Guru.

“You better do that”, retorted Acchi.

Guru drew a deep breath. He knew he had no escape. I smiled behind the newspaper.

“Ok, here goes – Okra – 12 rupees, tomatoes – 6.50, spinach – 10, peas – 20, chillies – 2, coriander – 2.50, ginger – 3 rupees…so I guess that makes it 57.50”, he read out from a little piece of paper which was apparently given to him by the vegetable vendor

“How? That makes it Rs. 56”, answered Achhi calmly and Guru blinked at her.

I was stumped too! That was mighty quick and she didn’t even have the list with her. Nor a calculator, for that matter.

“And you have given me 12.50 here. I thought I gave you Rs70. Where is the rest 1.50?”, achhi peered into Guru’s face still frowning. She was dangerously close to his face and Guru backed away, “Er…then I think the chillies are for Rs 3 ”, he blurted

“So its still 50 paise short”, said achhi.

“Acchi, come on, now…are you going to hold me on ransom for 50 paise??”

“Its not a question of 50 paise young man. Do you know how tough it is to earn that?”, acchi admonished and Guru squirmed uncomfortably trying to work out the best possible way to avoid a discourse on how much 50 paise was worth.

I realized he was knocking on my newspaper a second later and peered over it.

“Do you have a 50 paise coin?? This smart lady is not going to let me go otherwise. I will need to take that vendor to task for cheating me of my 1.50  later on”, he said between clenched teeth.

“He he…so you realize the worth of 50 paise now, eh, young man?”, I replied smilingly and handed him a coin.

“you are an angel!”, he said and rushed to Achhi to hand it over to her before she had a chance to make him whine with guilt.

Achhi was still muttering under her breath for she apparently had not taken too lightly the possibility that Guru would have “cheated” her if she hadn’t been “on her guard”.

That was achhi for you…85 years old and she had a memory that would force any elephant to shameful tears. She knew the multiplication table of 19 backwards…a feat which I was never able to achieve even after a professional degree. I don’t think any of my friends or cousins did either! And to think she had studied upto her 4^th standard!

If only…I wonder if she has ever wondered what her life would have been if only it was not what it was now…

I watched her as I put my newspaper away…she was bent in half and always walked around that way, standing up only when she needed something from the top shelves. She was so thin, it looked as though her skin was wrapped around her bones without a layer of flesh in between. Her skin was so wrinkled it looked like the ripples caused on a calm lake disturbed by several pieces of stones. She didn’t need glasses even while she read out of a book with letters of the font size 6 and she still had most of her teeth intact.

I wondered what she looked like when she was younger…it was hard to imagine. It was even harder to imagine the life she had led and I shuddered to think about it. She was my grandmother’s elder sister and granny had told me her story… I can’t even call it heart wrenching because its even beyond that…a life heartlessly left to rot, to say the least. A brilliant student, she was forced to drop out of school to get married when she was 8. She lost her husband an year later, even before she had had a chance to have a decent talk with him, considering she wasn’t allowed to stay at her in-laws’ until she “came of age”. I still wonder what the point was of getting her married then! Widowed at an age when she didn’t even know what it meant, she led a life of rejection, suffering and placid acceptance. She lived with her brother, who is also my uncle.

“Do you want some coffee, Deepu?”, I shook out of my reverie and found her peering into my face with a little cup of steaming hot coffee.

I looked into her eyes which looked almost dead in wide, dark, wrinkled, hollow sockets…how many dreams had they held and how did she manage to kill them all? How many tears had they held? How many hopes had they nurtured before they were rudely, forcefully shut off from having any more hopes? How many sleepless, lonely  nights had they seen? Had they lit up once upon a time when she had seen the colours of life? Was there any light at all in those little blinking eyes which were reduced to a set of white and grey devices now? They always remained ex-pressionless now except for the time when they filled with affection when she held and rocked little babies in her arms. She had been a part of many child births in the family, considering my aunt had 4 children and my grandma had had 8. She would be the first to offer help whenever there was any childbirth in the family and she would take to any child instantly, as if they were her very own, rejoice in their successes and be a part of their every grief.. It was as though she was trying to make up for the fact that she would never mother a child herself.

“Acchi”, I said, accepting the cup of coffee which smelled heavenly as always, “why didn’t you get married after your husband died?”

“What??” her eyes opened so wide I feared they might drop out of their sockets. I was glad in a way that they were still capable of evoking ex-pressions.

I smiled and her ex-pression softened and she laughed it away, as though it was a big joke. “I am serious acchi…you were just about 9 when you were widowed! I mean, you hadn’t even slept with your husband…(she clapped her hand on her mouth and looked even more shocked)…er, I mean, it wasn’t even a marriage if you ask me”

“Oh god…the things that you girls speak these days!! I would have been hanged if I had so much as imagined such things in my days!”, she kept shaking her head as though shaking away the thought lest it malign her self. She seemed too shocked to be able to say anything else.

“hmmm..ok…but you could have atleast gone to school, continued your studies…I am sure you would have made a very good student, achhi”.

This softened her a bit, as she sat down to grate the coconut for chutney. She was quiet for a bit, as if recovering from her previous shock. I thought she hadn’t heard me or maybe chose not to answer because of the anger I had just evoked, before she sighed and said, waving her hand in dismissal, “I wish that too…I wish I were lucky as you all and was allowed to go to school…I even wanted to pursue my singing… my own father was a music teacher(Granny had told me that acchi was an excellent singer, though she couldn’t sing anymore because of her asthma), but well…”, she sighed again and began grating the coconuts with more vigour and left me to imagine how she had crumpled each of her little and big dreams and watched them being crushed under the large feet of destiny. That was probably as far as acchi had gotten in complaining about life. How had she felt when her sister- my grandma - had gotten married and moved to her husband’s place? How had she felt when her brothers got married too and brought their brides home? How had she felt when she had lost her parents and wondered who would take care of her? How had she felt when her brothers and sisters had babies and graduated from being spouses to parents, while all that was left to her was the tag of a “widow”? Whom did she complain to? How helpless had she felt?

My eyes filled with tears as I watched her go about her chores as if the conversation hadn’t happened at all. She had even lost the capability of remembering her childhood dreams. They were probably like distant flashes of memories which vanished even before she could replay them in her mind.

 I walked towards her and hugged her and she looked at me blankly for a second and then her eyes filled with affection…the same eyes that I had seen when she would cuddle me when I was a little kid. The same eyes that I had seen which had filled with joy when she saw me draw my first rangoli…and when I had told her that I had topped my class and when I had held up my appointment letter…

She hugged me back for a brief moment and then gently pushed me away, as if she didn’t want her passive life to be disturbed with an extra dose of affection.

Its been 5 years today since she breathed her last, but I still remember her warmth and the eyes that had seen everything, yet…not the things that she probably would have liked to see.