Peace treaty.
Faint pink light traversed through the clear sky, forming thin rectangular strips across her brown eyes, transfixed at the corner pointing to a distant object, with a denser shadow imposed over her throat.
Her shoulders inclined across the steel railings, the flabby flesh of her arm seemed to be completely inundated by the uneven geography of the railings but least bothering her.
Renuka spent most of her day like this, she woke up late in the afternoon, ate once a day in the afternoon and immersed herself in solitude till sunrise, never having acknowledged my constant presence.
I sat across the open verandah, trying to understand and imbibe her emotions.
Silent and stationary.
I couldn’t trace what she was so captivated by with Miles of barren land ahead of us.
The infinite stretch of solitude protecting her from the bigoted worldly reality, the thin violet dispersion where the sky and land met offering a quick window to her thought before deceiving to the clear white sky.
The fading flower patterned dress, was a constant cover over her body throughout her stay in the farmhouse, light enough not to hinder her thoughts.
She was beyond help, none of materialistic possessions could retort her mind back to the social duties of human.
Her husband could not tolerate the detachment anymore after all these years, it was proving fatal for their daughter.
He summoned me for counselling, which I had gladly agreed unaware of the depth that the constraints that had taken over her. The confidence was as a result of clinically witnessing every case mentioned in medical literature.
As I dug deep into her case, I couldn’t find anything etiological in her story leading to this radical form of isolation. No known incident had caused this, no trauma had disturbed her. It was a gradual and cataclysmically change affecting since her childhood, the effects clearly showing since recent years.
She grew up in a secure, middle class family in a small town throughout her life, completed her basic schooling, after which stayed at home, to help out her ailing mother in housework. Her family quickly used their societal influence to get her married to a city man, an engineer in an upcoming city. Not finding trace, I brought her to my farmhouse.
Renuka transferred her weight to her right as well, balancing herself, steering herself to a comfortable space, one without the constraints of her body movements. The place too fervent and vast to search for her soul, drifting into the farthest spaces seeking for absolute serenity.
I had to find the answers she was seeking out. Something isolated from the physical realm yet connected by the infinite boundaries of space, where every particle seems to be the center, continuously separating from each other, stretching until a random disruption in the cycle reflects upon the surroundings to harness energy.
I had led a solitary life throughout my life and didn’t blame her for taking this path. Solitude provided me with peace, thoughtfulness and understanding. Being alone, was when I understood myself, when I understood the environment better. In this time, I was able to contemplate the most basic, genetic flaw in us humans, our ignorance, to the fact that we are just another form of energy released by this cycle of events, soon to be transformed to another.
But I still quite didn’t understand Renuka to answer to questions.
Witnessing the half crescent moon rise up to the sky, I dosed off at the chair.
The next morning, I expectedly looked out to the barren lands, through which she had followed the path of solitude.
I wasn’t ready to follow her. I wasn’t ready to take her path, I could not treat her back to the seasoned civilities of our world.
She had to find her own peace.
