The Freedom of Choice

On that cold quiet evening, Siti moved around her little rented apartment in slippers too large for her feet. She walked around in the kitchen making the hot coffee that was to energize her. She poured it into a steel cup and carried it over to the window and perched herself on the edge of a tall chair. Her feet with their over-sized slippers were hanging from beneath a faded brown dress. Siti felt strangely at peace as she sipped the coffee, listening to the rain, from her safe sanctuary. The cold elements of nature and the heat of the coffee were an excellent combination.

As she sat by the window, every object she saw had an added charm to it. The trees seemed to be gladly shaking off some heavy burden with each drop of water that dripped off their leaves. The streets lay open and wide inviting anyone to come and run over them. The air was welcoming and fragrant with the smell of earth. Siti alternated between smelling the earth and the coffee that she held between her hands. The bare naked smell of the earth and the rich roasted aroma of the coffee beans were both heavily intoxicating. The soaked canvass of nature, the frenzy of the rains, the assuring heat of the coffee, the positivity of her thoughts and a future of bright possibilities all combined into a whirlpool of delights that made Siti’s mind dance in thrill.

As if responding to a lover’s call, Siti moved closer to the window and exposed her face to the wind which blew over the soft features of her face. The wind, delighted at this new object put in its path, put in much mischievous effort to tug at tendrils of hair that were carefully tucked behind her ears and graze them seductively over her smooth cheek. It tickled her with each move, until she lifted her nude arm to secure it back in place. The arm that she lifted revealed the finesse of an unparalleled creator who would have spent many a diligent hours in shaping it to that perfection. It was neither a very fair colored arm nor a very dark one, but the kind of rare shade that must have resulted almost as a happy accident when the Creator must have been mixing colors. It shone gold in the light of that evening’s setting sun. An observer, had he looked at her that very instant, might have easily mistaken that lovely creature to be a divine being carved out of delicate gold, created to perfection by an artist whose skill was unsurpassed by any human.

Yet if you were to pass by her someday, nothing much out of the ordinary would strike you about her at first. She wasn’t the kind of beauty that would blind you at first sight, but the kind of bewitching madness that would slowly grow over you until it mercilessly consumed you wholly. For not in her face alone was beauty and not in her body alone was grace, but in every movement of her she possessed a delicate feminity, be it in the look of her eyes or in the curve of her lips, in the rising of her hand or in the crossing of her legs.

However, beauty like all other assets does bring to its owner some amount of pride. And so Siti was a little vain, but it was the kind of vanity that can be easily blamed on beauty and hence we must not be very harsh in judging her. She was reasonably kind and generous. Not that she had much to be generous about, for her means were poor and did not allow her much material possessions to share. A skilled seamstress, she sewed for a living and what that paid her managed to barely pay her bills and let her sleep on a stomach that was not completely empty at night.

She took another sip of her coffee. It paid to be optimistic, she thought. She had truly believed that her future would bring her prosperity and that time had almost come. Happiness was only an arm’s distance away. Had happiness been palpable then at that instant she could smell it, feel it and drink it.

As she sipped on her coffee, her thoughts wandered off to that wonderful afternoon when her life changed for the better. She remembered sitting on her sewing machine at her workplace in the dingy backroom of a large shopping complex, sowing a new design on a beautiful silk fabric, when her boss had come in with a couple of important looking men. It was not the first time that she was meeting new clients, they were men from the fashion industry and they came with new designs for their labels. One of them was short and round with a balding head of hair, it was the other man that had fascinated her. He was tall and lean with broad shoulders and an easy smile which he liberally used. His eyes mischievously twinkled, which suggested to an onlooker that there was always something interesting going on in his mind. His hair was curly dark brown like hers. Siti had rightly figured that he was in his early thirties. At one point, Siti was asked to help him with taking some measurements, which she did, but not without some faint pink color rising in her cheek. That faint pink on Siti’s face had the effect of the sunrise on the sky; it gave light to her soft eyes and color to her lips. Siti never needed makeup she was endowed with it naturally.

The next day the man had come again with more designs and Siti had helped him yet again. She remembered the exact moment when their eyes had met and how he smiled at her. Siti had managed a shy smile in response but what effect that smile had on that man was impossible to tell, for at that instant Siti’s boss had come in and the man turned to look at him. She remembered how he kept coming every day for a week, each time with new designs or with changes to a previous design. Each time he had smiled at her and she had smiled back. She knew right from the start that he liked her and she had liked him too.

His manners were gentle and refined. He had opened doors for her when she came carrying the sewing material. Siti was certain that he came from a good family with good breeding. His smile was contagious and his face handsome. There was something about his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. They were deep and mysterious. But it was this mystery about him that attracted him to her all the more.

Then she thought of that wonderful evening when she left from work by the usual tiny backdoor of the shopping complex and had seen him standing outside. Her heart had given a sudden ecstatic twitch. On seeing her, he had waved at her. On her asking why he was still there, he had mumbled about some work that he had to finish and offered that as the reason. It had been very easy for her to tell that he had been lying. Siti remembered how she laughed at this apparent lie. She replayed the conversation in her head.

“What? Why do you laugh?” the man asked, blushing red. It was very rare for a man to blush, Siti thought and felt all the more pleased at herself for making him do so.

“Nothing”, replied Siti, suppressing her laugh, which had still lingered on as a badly concealed smile.

“Alright, if you say so!” he said, and laughed too, “I have been caught, I confess, I was waiting for you to come out”.

Siti had given him one of her bewitching looks.

He seemed unable to form a complete sentence and blurted, “Coffee”.

“What?” asked Siti, though she knew exactly what he meant.

“Coffee, would you like to have coffee with me?” he asked. She smiled.

Their friendship had grown with every cup of coffee they had together. They had discussed their childhood, their ambitions and their dreams. He said that he worked for a renowned fashion designer. He had offered her a chance to try out as a model. He was convinced she could make it to the top, for she was very beautiful. He arranged for the audition.

How Siti’s eyes had danced at this news. A good, strong man beside her and the opportunity to become rich and famous! Life was going to be alright after all. All the luxuries she had dreamed of would finally be hers. The palm reader lady had told that the future had something great in store for her. Siti believed it.

Tomorrow was the day of the audition. She decided to sleep in early to be fresh for the morning. She carefully selected her best dress to wear, ironed it and kept it on the chair. After giving her pillow a little fluff and drawing down the shades, she slept contently on what would be her last night as a poor seamstress.

He accompanied her the next morning for the audition all the while holding her hand and encouraging her. The audition place was a little deserted. There was no long line of girls waiting outside the door for their turn. They told her she was late and everyone was already inside. He said he would wait outside and urged her to go in. Siti hesitated, but he encouraged. She stepped in but something seemed strange to her. Just before the audition room’s door closed, realization dawned on Siti. Her chest pounded, her mind blanked out in horror. She turned to look at him through the gap of the closing door, blinking back at the sudden moisture that burned her eyes. Her last look at what had been a free world for her.

He saw her look at him in disbelief, in shock, in sorrow. He turned his face away, clenching the wad of currency that was just handed to him, as if the money would redeem him. He did not see her run to the door just as it closed. He did not see her banging her fists at the door, while someone much too big for her cruelly dragged her in.

*
It was that very day that Hell’s fires flared and burnt more viciously than usual. Yet another soul had been claimed to its treacherous horror. The devil feasted on it. For with each human soul, the devil grew stronger. It had been so easy, he thought, to get the man’s soul. All he needed was something the humans called money. He laughed at the Creator who couldn’t safeguard his creations.

In heaven, the guardian angel wept over the lost soul. It wondered just why the Creator would not allow it to tell the man everything. Why did the Creator not let it stop the man from selling the girl? It wondered why it was restricted to only whispering good thoughts in the man's head. It cried out its thoughts to an older angel, who consoled him. The older angel then showed the younger one every opportunity that the man had had to stop himself from committing this act, all options that were before him, but chose to ignore.

“Do not forget”, said the older angel to the younger one, “Humans have the great gift of choice. They themselves choose what happens to them. We cannot stop them from doing what they want to or else they would be slaves to the Creator and He loves these humans so much that he wants them to be truly free!”