Woman in Love

Pawan Verma

SHE WAS undoubtedly in love. There was an unmistakable wistfulness in her eyes and passion in her face as she talked of him. Her voice was full of emotion and she seemed to be completely possessed by the intensity of her feelings. And as I saw her skin glow with radiance, for a moment I thought it was ‘Dove’. But no, my wife said, it was decidedly love.

I knew that there is a certain madness in love and that it makes a deewana of an otherwise normal human being. But that it could happen to her at this stage in life, was difficult to believe. The mother of two school-going children, she looked far from the picture of a lady torn between love and life. She could beat any teenager in the depth and display of her passions. As she came to our house, introduced by a common friend, she kept on talking of her new-found love, his likes and dislikes, how sweetly he sings and how beautifully he dances with her and, above all, how lovingly he calls her ‘Suzie’, an endearment for Suzata.

Her husband, a renowned surgeon, is too busy a person healing others to take care of the loneliness in her life. He is blissfully unaware that there is someone else demanding her attention and that he is no longer at the centre-stage in her life. Her daughters are also too busy with their own studies to take note of the emotional upheaval in their mother’s life.

Out to cultivate a relationship with the family, my wife called on her one winter afternoon. Our lady was knitting a sweater for the new hero in her life. She had attempted at least half-a-dozen patterns from the design-book, but was far from being contented with the outcome. Over a cup of tea, she kept on talking about her new experience in love – her passion for him, his daily routine, his food habits and preferences, and so on. My wife came back home more amused and enlightened than ever before about the futility of cultivating our lady-in-live.

As days passed by, we almost forgot about Suzata and her love, till the day I saw her in the supermarket. She was buying a pullover for her darling love.

I was amused at the heap of pullovers stocked on the counter and the frustration writ large on the face of the salesgirl. Our lady was rejecting one sweater after the other. In some she didn’t like the design, in others she didn’t approve of the colour or pattern.

Finally, she selected one which could meet her taste in colour and shade, pattern and design. But as she continued to be doubtful about the correct size, the frustrated salesgirl suggested to her:

“Madam, why don’t you bring your dog here? We will give him the size that exactly fits him.”

“Oh, no, dear! Try to understand”, she said persuasively, “I want to give him a surprise.”

(First Published in Hindustan Times, Edit page, dated 29.06.1999)