Moushi

 At 9.40 am, I want a tea. Moushi has got me used to this habit. And for the last ten years she has been serving me tea the same time, without fail. I do not know her language and she does not know mine. We converse well , in our own syllable. She wears sari like a dhoti, the traditional way, walks 4 km to work and same distance back home. I think she was supporting a family of eight. She is fair complexioned, wrinkled face and arms. She wears a shy smile, if we look straight into her. She mutters and grumbles and scolds, if we don’t have our tea on time. Moushi is an inseparable part of the building and the premises. I always felt she was a woman zoomed out of an unread novel !

But she is so male biased, she would always give the first cup of tea to Pramay , and the best tea cup is meant for him. She does not mind crossing her hands and switching the ‘right’ tea cup to him, when I sit on the ‘wrong’ side. Maybe she felt him more like a son, and must have been a ‘son - fond of mom’. After her son died of excessive drinking, she never was the same. She aged ten years in just the last two months. She became so weak that she could not carry the tea tray and the thermos.

Yesterday I went to see her in her house for the first time. When the garland was put on her body, I looked at her face. She is not Moushi, atleast doesn’t look like her at all. But they say she died yesterday morning and that was her. I looked blankly at the woman and left.

.. the grumbling, muttering Moushi , her shy smile, sari, wrinkled hands and the sound of her worn out chappals, in my mind. She is one of those people who will stay forever in my memory.