Like the cool breeze she comes to lend a hand every morning, she bathes in moderate human values yet she is the supporter of our needs, bathed in wisdom and magnanimity, she is my maid. She smiles and advises me to pull up a thin upper lip when my haughty neighbour passes by me without so much as a cordial look...she says..." what has come to the world didi..? neighbours here fail to recognise each other"? I too wonder at her perseverance and worldly wisdom.
Inspirational blood pumped in my viens, my heart throbbed like the dead bat's wings still in darkness, I set about to think like she did, with care and wartmth, with wisdom and the feeling of giving...and at awe when she recited the saraswati vandana with clarity and frequency that puts my own skill to shame and yet her name is Mehmuda....There are goose bumps on my arms when i heared her recite the Gayatri mantra yet her name is mehmuda and her mother's name is Nafisa.
Her mother does not allow her to dance in the ganapati utsav and how she craved to be discovered, but her cruel mother instead married her off to a drunkard whom she has borne a child. Oh! how ...how she wishes now, standing with the soap-studded scrubber in hand that if she had been given a chance to show her talent to the world! she would have escaped the beatings of her husband! lived on her own terms and done something different!! she wishes she hadnt been so unlucky!!
All of 24 years and the wisdom of the world reflected in her wish to educate her son in an "English medium" school...'didi, teach me English, I will bring a notebook every day, ' she quipped and surprised me further. I looked at her with new -found fondness. Looked above to thank god and aspired for more such prowess and knowledgeable human minds.
I promised myself to take care of Mehmuda's wishes and fulfill them as my own. She lends a hand in washing utensils but she is the butterfly I know in the garden of my dreams fluttering in a corner to be discovered. Our dreams are nothing but mere distant truth for everyone who waits for an opportunity to fly...if only the moment arrives for Mehmuda.
The morning when when she ran home to appease her bedraggled husband, I promised myself again to wake up to the need to fulfill the dreams of the fluttering butterfly that has been my inspiration to strive on and discover more Mehmudas in this world.
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