The Blue Silk Scarf
She was sitting across the room from me in a Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out the window. The bloodstained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf. It was a Saturday night. Cloudy with a cool breeze that flew outside. A little drizzle and darkness.
I looked at her and then back at my laptop. I could see the knife from underneath the scarf. I tried to focus on my work but my eyes kept twisting toward her chair. The bag was from Michael Kors, stunningly white with broad blue stripes on it.
She was wearing a beautiful black dress, a ‘70s Paris collection in the twenty-first century. That invited me in, too, to look at her.
A beautiful girl, an amazing bag and intriguing eyes. She had long hair, amazingly black. Mascara on her eyelashes and turquoise kohl underneath her grey eyes. But what really hooked me was that she just sat there, for a long time, with tears rolling down her cheeks. I felt that I knew her, closely but at that moment, it felt like Deja Vu.
Every time she turned around to look at something or the other, it sparked a kinship I felt with her.
The waitress at the desk called out her name.
Time froze.
It seemed as though my fingers stopped moving on the keyboard, the raindrops hung in the air, exactly where they were. The noises in the cafe seemed dead. I watched her wipe her tears away, walk to the counter gracefully, pick up her cappuccino and walk back to her chair.
My eyes followed her footsteps.
Then the most uncertain and unfortunate thing happened. She looked at me. She had definitely noticed my interest in her. The tears in her eyes increased. Her eyes were red.
I knew her.
Something changed in her face as I kept staring. She was furious as she left her coffee and walked out of the cafe. I tried to pack my things up as soon as I could and walked behind her.
‘Ana? Ana, wait!’ I called after her.
She pretended not to have heard me and went on. Two lanes down the street, I lost track of her, but I knew where I could find her, so I walked there.
‘Ana?’ I kept my hand on her shoulder but she did not turn around.
I walked forward and stood at her side, took her hand in mine and held it tight. We kept standing there for quite some time. It was past 10 p.m. but that did not bother either of us.
A few minutes later, I decided to break the silence.
‘I am sorry, Ana.’
She did not reply.
‘Are you okay, darling?’
She broke down in tears. I had feared that the most. But I did not say anything because I could not. Instead, I just took her in my arms.
I finally got to hear her voice again, after fifteen years.
‘Why did you leave me?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t have stayed any longer.’
‘What went so wrong? What forced you to leave? You could have at least stayed in the same city. Why did you move to Delhi?’
‘Ana, I had memories here. I just could not live with those.’
‘They were that horrible?’
‘No, Ananya.’
At that very moment, I saw a bloodstain on her neck. It reminded me of that knife and the scarf. I demanded answers for those odd things she had on her and so I asked.
At first, she refused to answer me. But eventually, she gave in.
‘After you left …’ She paused, hesitated and then continued. ‘I was in despair. I could not digest the fact that you chose to leave me. I was just a little girl back then. I could not even think about living my life without you in it. But as they say, time is the best healer, my injuries healed, too. Gradually, I started moving on and took myself and my life very seriously, until one night.
‘It had been nine years since you had left. I was asleep, but in the middle of the night, I felt that someone had entered my room. I thought it was a dream, but by the time I realised I was wrong, it was too late.
‘An hour later, I was lying there in my bed, naked, with bruises on my body. Blood and tears became best friends. I could not understand what had happened. He was gone. I was destroyed.
‘It took days for me to come to my senses. I did not see him for months. I would scream the entire night but only the walls could hear me. Even they did not listen. That wasn’t what I had wished my first time to be like. Five months later, everything returned. All the devastation and evil returned with him. He tortured me, raped me, and threatened me. It became a daily affair. I had no escape. For five years, he came into my room, every night, touched me, undressed me, had sex with me, and I could not utter a word.
‘Three days ago, it happened again, but I somehow lost control of my senses and I ran out of the room and found myself in the kitchen. I did not understand anything. I just stood there in a half-torn dress, grabbed a knife and killed my own father.’
Silence.
I knew what she had seen in my absence, now. She was quiet. Calm. I stood there, shocked and at a loss for words. I was completely clueless. I had no idea what I was doing nor what I should do.
She broke into tears, fell down to the ground and screamed. She stayed there for hours, in my arms on the ground.
That night in Mumbai, in the middle of the Juhu beach, I got her back. The night had passed. Everything was over and as morning lightened up, she finally spoke something to break the ghostly silence.
‘If only you had stayed, Mom. But I am glad I have you back. I hope I won’t lose you again.’
I smiled at her and she knew the answer. I should have known it was her, even before I heard her name. After all, the blue silk scarf in her bag was the one I’d left at her bedside the last time I had seen her.
Before I left her.
We walked back home, leaning on one another for support. Both barely tethered to this world, but finally at peace.
Shubhrika is a fiction writer, photographer, Author and YouTuber among other things. Do you read poetry? Here’s her first book: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B086W98H53/
