Today somebody died. She was the sister of my grand father, probably one of the persons who had known him the most who was alive till yesterday.
She used to come almost everyday for tea at our place. She probably wanted to spend her some time in our house, a house built by her only brother. Her story begins much earlier. Born in a humble family, she aspired to become an educated lady. If looks could kill, she was a dynamite.
She studied MA English and became a lecturer in a girls college. She wanted to be successful,an ambitious woman. An educated and a smart woman with beauty at her side , is a lethal combination. It not only gave her confidence but an appeal which could have made the straightest of trees bend. She helped everybody who came to her. She inspired a friendship within people. She was with everybody yet always a leader, a support of her friends.
One day she met him. He was an advocate, a rich man of generations. He was well respected and his opponents felt their knees weaken just by the mention of his name. He was everything a girl inspired in a man. He was a gentleman. He was orthodox. He had earned his reputation of one of the greatest men by his own merit in his twenty year career. The only problem was that he was already married.
The first day she met him, she did not swoon. She looked at him in his eye and asked him to behave better. He found her endearing. She found him irresistible. The first meeting became a series of meetings.
He left his wife. She was tagged as the 'other woman'. When she married him, she became the 'gold digger'. Her family resisted, yet they understood later. She then became the principal of colleges and probably one of the most respected women of the city.
She had his children later. He died his natural death. She was younger than most of his friend's widows. She lived on, sparkling in her glory.
She started visiting our house more frequently since the last few years. She would look at her brother's photograph in our drawing room and cry. She had no memory of the recent past yet had a crystal clear memory of what happened a two decades ago.
I met her yesterday. She died today.
I was not close to her, yet her death makes me remember her words which she had once told me,"They may call me a 'gold digger' but I was irrevocably in love with him. I see myself in you. Don't settle for what the world hands you. Fight for you want and choose your own regrets".
I like to believe that she went to a special place where he was waiting for her. After all, an era of hers cannot end without a happy ending for she never settled what the world handed her.
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