Four Corners

She looked up at the sky and whispered something to herself.She then looked at the white haired woman sitting next to her on a chair. The woman was wearing a yellow coloured saree, and was taking sips of tea from a cup gone yellow from indiscriminate use over many years.
'Mita, bring me that flower.' She said pointing towards a blood red hibiscus. Mita hearing the order went and brought it to her. The woman took the flower and played with it for some time, and then tied it to the loosened part of her saree. She was Mrs. Mennon, and Mita was her servant and only companion. They were sitting in the terrace of her house while twilight was setting in. Mita was a girl of about thirty, dark and slim. She had striking eyes that were both beautiful and lively. After sitting for an hour they came downstairs.
'Mita, did Subho call today?'
'No, Mashima.'
'Oh. Then I'll go and get some sleep. You can have your dinner when you want to, I think I'll skip it today.'
Mita went to her room, situated in a corner of the house. The house was palatial with huge glass windows, a garden and expensive imported items that Mr. Mennon brought while he went abroad for business. Mrs. Mennon let Mita have that room in the corner, as there was no one to claim it.
Mita fidgeted with a Chinese brass idol for some time, and then began with her usual contemplation. Mita was vaguely aware that Mashima was sick, and that the sickness was serious. But she knew she was helpless, Mashima wouldn't let her help her, because she waited for her son to do so.
Mita went to the window and looked at the brightest star in the sky. 'Dhruba Tara' , she said to herself as she remembered what she had learnt from her text books. Mashima herself had arranged for her education. Mita had thought then that after being educated she would do something on her own. Perhaps buy a brick house in the village and live in it with her parents and her little sister, who was born just after the day she left for Kolkata. But then it has been five years since her tryst with education and she has realized that her education was not enough to support her financially, and that probably by working for Mashima she would earn more, than her education would ever allow. And along with that she also realized that she was trapped, forever in this house.
After Mashima's husband died, she turned out to be her only companion. She had heard of Mashima's son Subho, but the result of her eager questions had always been noxious murmurs that suggested that he was living somewhere else and that Mashima hadn't seen him for a long time.
Subho seldom called, once or twice in six months. And it was Mita who always answered the phone. Mashima however asked everyday whether he called. Sometimes Mita pretended that she didn't hear her question. The pain that she saw in Mashima's eyes every time that she answered a "no",broke her heart, even though she was incapable of comprehending the magnitude of pain that she experienced. As she looked out she remembered that the next day was the third of the month, the day for which she waited with a suffocated heart. The day on which she was allowed to leave the house and
go for grocery shopping for the whole month. This was always a day of excitement for her, as that was the only day that she was allowed out of the house. That was the only day that she was free to set her feet out. That was the only day that she could breathe. But her freedom had constraints. Her time was carefully clocked, by Mashima. She was ''trapped" and she was never allowed to leave. Ever since Mr Mennon died and ever since Subho left, Mashima the retired school teacher, was blinded by the truth that she acknowledged and asserted all of a sudden- those who left never returned.
Mita thought how she was fooled by Life and Destiny, tricked into doom, mocked for life when she said yes to a handsome pay, and perhaps to a suicidal employer. She remembered with a shudder how once when she had decided to stay and bargain with the shopkeeper and was ready to save money and waste time, she returned to see, a fainted white haired woman with sleeping pills beside her paying the price of her wasted time.
The next day she woke up early. Like she always did, on that date, perhaps because she was helped by her nervousness,for the ten years that she had stayed there.
She left for the market at ten, in the morning and she was to return precisely at eleven. She hummed a song, as she worked fast to complete her work by ten and didn't bother to wake Mashima. She left home, calm and composed, knowing exactly what she was about to do. She reached the market and started with her list. Potatoes, onions, soaps, detergents...
She walked past a girl, squatting in front of one of the shops, with a bag in her hand. She went to the next shop to buy medicine when she felt two eyes staring at her. She turned to see, and for a moment she thought she would faint. She saw her eyes in a different head, piercing her. The same gaze that she prided herself for having. Her striking black eyes in the possession of somebody whom she did not know. She pushed herself to the girl, who wore dirty clothes and squatted in the same manner as her.
'What is your name?'
'Rani.' Mita rummaged through her head, fighting hard to find where she had heard that name when she remembered out of clouds of unclear memory, her mother's letter describing her little sister, born right after she had left, and her naming her Rani.
She looked at the girl, unsure of what to tell her. She thought she heard the cruel laughter of somebody, may be she imagined Life laughing at her, nodding his head as he waited for the story to unfold.
'What are you doing here?'
'My father is ill. So I came here to find work. We are very poor. And my mother is dead.'
'Don't you have anybody else, who could do it for you?'
'No'.
Mita's heart shattered. She indeed had been mocked by Fate and Destiny. Her voice trembled as as she spoke the next few words.
'You wait here ok?, I'll come back with some money and help you find work. J-j-j-ust wait here.'
She ran home, it was half past eleven, rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. She fumbled for the key that she kept with herself and entered the house. Her throat dried, she tried not to look, but she had to. It was her fault, her own handiwork. Mashima was smiling, but not at her. She was looking but not at her. She was swaying but she wasn't doing it on purpose , because she was hanging from the low hanging ceiling fan.
Mita grabbed her purse and whatever she could find, she didn't want to waste anymore time in this house, she was sick, and tired. She wanted a new life, with her sister, another chance, that had quite unwillingly presented itself before her. She ran out, and ran as fast as her legs could carry her, she ran and she ran, and she ran. As if she was expecting the wind in her hair to make her feel good, even though it didn't want to. She reached the market, to the shop, half crying half laughing, where she had seen her own eyes looking back at her.
But where were those eyes?
She went out, and she went everywhere. Rani was nowhere.
She asked the shopkeeper, about her and he answered promptly:
' She was taken away by a man, who said he would give her work.'
Mita closed her eyes, and laughed at how the very earth beneath her feet was gone. How it vanished within an hour. She sat, as she thought about all the things that her sister might have to face with the man, she shivered at the thought, howled when she understood that she had murdered Mashima. She dried her tears on her cheek,stood up and started walking exercising her freedom, that she had longed for her entire life. But Life had had his game, as he still kept her shackled and bound, trapped within the four corners of life.