Winterreise

Winterreise Her aunt exhibited an unusual behaviour when she was 53. She was a professor in the university and was also a musician in her private hours… Sometimes, she sang alone at night and the neighbours could hear the melody pouring out ..One day she reached home in that summer evening late after taking two buses. Because she missed the university bus and all the other lecturers had gone home. Only a few had cars and the rest came in scooters or buses. The students, half of them ,stayed in the hostel. ..In the evening the aunt was behaving deviantly and they took her to the hospital at midnight and the duty doctor prescribed some medicines and they came back…Her aunt had a dear cohort in her youth and telegram reached home that she had kidney failure and should undergo dialysis. It harried her aunt much…But the aunt’s malady was repeated frequently and finally the diagnosis was like this:She had severe Symptoms of FTD …It finally led from behavior changes to memory loss.(Change in behavior is sometimes an early sign of FTD, and issues with memory may occur in advanced stages. In contrast, Alzheimer’s affects memory early on and may lead to behavior issues ..)… Finally they took her to a specialist in Bombay, where the aunt got better treatment .She was relieved to some extent.. Aunt had a grand piano in the inner room of her house. It was a big mans made by her father and presented to her because she was not married and her father thought much of her lonely future. She played Winterreise, (the winter journey ) composed in 1827 by Austrian maestro Franz Schubert. Instead of the male voice she sang it in her shrill female voice… Her life was also a torment of memories, dreams, and pain.That agony of mixed chords .. Likewise, she took out a solo jaunt to Ranikhet mountains and stayed in a hotel room. She had taken a card in her middle age which enabled her to access a chain of hostels around the globe at subsidized rates …This possibly reduced the tensions of loneliness ,nevertheless she had a habit of making casual friends on her trips, particularly students. She learnt painting, a couple of years before her passing.She limned pictures of pines in the backdrop of snow , like the tresses of a woman’s hair.Some pictures of white tailed deer,the weasel changing its colour that made it camouflaged into white, seeking prey.Grouses, snow drift birds, predatory hawks,the ruffed grouse that kept a little secret in its toes,Alpine skiing and caliginous nights…… But towards the end, her aunt had severe memory issues and she died at 68 not bedridden,but due to a tram accident..The interesting part is that it was the same spot where poet Jibanananda Das, the famous Bengali poet met with a similar doom in 1954..….. –(From a work of Fiction in progress)