(Section from a long work of fiction )
The lady in Surtout
It is Tuesday morning and now I am holding up at S.G. railroad terminal to see my significant other off who is heading towards another city. She goes usually by train and it happens to be my duty to see her off. This was the time when Ms Monica Somers, calls me over phone to discuss the fresh achievements in our concern. Miss. Monica is my immediate assistant in the establishment and she is in her late forties and has peculiar ways as her colleagues confirm. When she is in the capital, she will walk in the morning on the narrow streets that will wind and end in the golf club. On the way, as reported by herself, there are many sweet shops and she would wait for a few seconds for her munching of laddus [an Indian sweet made of gram flour.ghee and sugar]
Then she would walk for a mile to the golf center, and it will be probably seven o'clock in the morning and she will get into the club library to read the morning paper. She will search the latest news on pets and see some cartoon clips of David Hoyt and Jeff Knurek and other than that, no interest in either politics or cultural things- Perhaps she may see if there are any concerts going on in the city and if possible, book a ticket for her and her friend Jasmine who studied with her in the academy and since her husband got a transfer to this city, they meet and share feelings.
Then she will come back and will have her millet meals or breakfast. During last season, she went to Sonamarg and had sledge ride with her friend.Miss.Monica is talkative as her friends attest, but with me she is rather reticent. Her ill reputation started one fine morning when she told somebody about her witnessing her younger brother walking through a northern country in the company an elderly man with white hair and white beard. In fact this younger brother had left home when he was a boy and after that there is no news of him. She told many people in the office that he is in the Northern part, and she said, that she actually saw him in a dream, in the early hours of the day at about 3 a.m. And in the clans that surround us, we have a belief that the dreams of such an hour will come true though I am apprehensive of this fact . (My father would have told to get the speaker admitted in 'Oolampara', the latter word signifying a well-known lunatic asylum in that area of the same name).
She said her brother was hiking in the northern country beset by snow mountains along with an old man, who had an aquiline nose.When she told me once of this dream business, I suggested that she listen more music, good music, perhaps, Bach for a change. And she did accordingly hearing Bach often and of course enjoyed Bach, but could not be cured of her stories.
Presently, she works under me in our establishment and in her presence emanates aromas of superior odour always when she is around with her co-workers in the warehouse.
After duty, she is most casual in her bearing, washing clean off her face and putting on jeans and a woolen top, goes straight to the golf court and her first husband is still her instructor, though they have parted ways.
Being her direct boss and also a man of her neighborhood , I mostly had a sort of close contact with her in certain matters.But generally she was never close to men. I was informed by herself about the grounds for this estrangement. She admitted that it was partly her fault and also that her husband is different from what he appears to be outside, though she did not reveal the exact reason . This was news to me, though I did not confide it to anybody else, even to my wife. In fact, I have postponed the discussion with her , but later it turned out to be the basis for some other troubles that I could not foresee. See, life is full of countless twists, and in a way, we all like these fluctuations from the bottom of our heart and could even be a hint to the reality that what we do habitually cannot be the assigned route of creation. You readers might already be familiar with her sibling, Miss. Helen Parks and I have pondered over the latter in our earlier discussion. Was it a summer day -Or a winter evening at Alaska under Denali -I don't remember exactly...
This account, I hold will further cast a flash into the ways of this venerable family tree. They are as such, very laudable people from three generations, as Miss. Monica's father was the first archon of our country club, and her granddad was the head of our village court that settled petty cases informally by discussions. He was rather punctilious in his verdicts on the civil affairs of minor nature, though the petitions of compelling size and those pressing civil matters were brought under the jurisdiction of regular courts. The grandpa, never said, 'Much can be said on both sides' as you mark in Addison's expositions, though some of the cases brought before the sire were of such character. Incidents of cattle rampaging the neighborhood tillage, cases of elopement, cases of withdrawal from payment of society recompenses, cases of young people engaging in public services in improper garments, and such issues. Remember, this happened long back in time-- Her granddad kept many trawling yachts in those eras and was deemed a lavish blade, and some avouched that he had multiple families. But latter things are not
supported unanimously even now.
Coming to Miss. Monica Somers, she had the most impassioned simper ever and attired herself in all peculiarities with extra flounces and select jabot to her clothes most of the time. In a word, it was more ornamental than was necessary. But who is the final judge of what is necessary? It is nothing but the state of mind ,and the person and that moment .
By all means, you can say that she is a venturesome lady and drank barley-bree and whisky in public, always in the troop of women of her age and status, but never in the company of men, because she is reported as saying to somebody, that men are capricious or judgmental or both and she also used a not so common derogatory word in this context and being a man, it irked me. One need not attribute this to her falling apart in the nuptial scene, nevertheless, one can fairly conclude that she, in general, was not pleased with the maladroitness of certain male counterparts, who tried to gash her public life.
On the first day of her joining our company, she wore jammies and long shirt and a surtout. And she is indeed of my age and she addresses me by my first name,never with appellations though I am her superior at work. This kind of familiarity is very much a harsh banter when your wife differs with you for such unwelcome intimacies.
Miss. Monica always conversed while demonstrating the evenness of her teeth and the tip of her tongue made appearance in serious argy-bargy.
Her uncle maintained a Fowls Sanctuary and a healing center and he cared the feathered creatures as we treat our kids or an adoring friend. Recently he had secured a red crossbill and also a black skimmer of North American origin.
Even in the stories of the Mughal eras, in the 15th or the 16th centuries, I read from the voyages of Pietro Della Valle, the Italian traveler who toured in Persia and India and drafted in detail about the Orient, such descriptions are seen. The Italian tourist discusses a Birds' Healing Center in great detail. In any case, her uncle was the most benevolent in the whole line...
Monica Somers had blueish virescent eyes, which is a rarity in our societies.
She unwittingly taught every erroneous thing to her fans, of couse, with good intentions which could be gathered by the wealth of her words and the respectful diction and the rich voice that was much like a fledgeling's. But invariably she fumbled the mark. The aficionado never forgot her private tales and private falls and she was at length turned into a laughing stock . Such a bitter curlicue of events in her life was taken note of by the new mayor and he one day, beseeches for a meeting of Miss. Somers, my wife and myself in order to discern whether he could do something to her and her order since he knew her daddy well at the golf course.
--[FROM A WORK OF FICTION IN PROGRESS]
Section -The Lady in Surtout