Dharini

Dharini dipped the steel tumbler in the eathern pot. Her mother , who was busy grinding in the kitchen outhouse heard the sound and said with a knowing tone “I hope the glass is unused” referring to a practice in most Hindu households, where only unused fresh glasses are be dipped into the earthern pot and jhootha also means something else apart from a liar.

She peeped in and saw Dharini scuttering out the kitchen without her slippers. ‘Aye, Dharini wear your slippers it is too hot to be out on in scalding sun without your chappals’ Dharini ran, it was possibly a flash of a second where her tiny shapely feet fell on the hot floor of the courtyard and she could sense the burn. 'It almost seethes the soles until your feet pop back up as a reflex action,' she muttered under her breath. What a fool she had been to not wear her chappals. It wasn’t anything that prevented her from putting them on. She was busy with nothing. It was just that she was often called a lazy wastrel and she acknowledged herself to be that. So very often she would behave how she would be expected to, and not how she would have liked to.

Between her elder brother who was a prodigy of sorts, rank holder in school, Olympiad winner and had stable hobbies like collecting stamps, Dharini just liked to while her time and be. She’d often invent her own games. In the evenings when her father would return from work, he would find her collecting stones , building houses for creatures in the mud in their backyard. He would look disapprovingly and move on to change his clothes. Her slow languid pace bothered her father, who couldn’t imagine a life without routine.

Her father, a clerk in the postal department, was a precise rule bound man , even in banal matters like how many times he folded his handkerchief, before leaving for office, and stuffing it in his right pocket in the same way. He couldn’t quite understand what made Dharini so fluid in her ways. She enjoyed school and the teachers never complained about her, but unlike her elder brother she was not accomplished at anything, and showed no desire to prove herself and win his affections. He was certain the child had some desire to excel, just needed to be prodded more, and in his universe that could only mean comparing her to her accomplished brother. But very little ever came from this, she remained her average self and he couldn’t come to terms with her settling.

Dharini in turn mirrored the thoughts and judgments of all the others, she may have behaved another way had she been free of the burden of their judgement , maybe she wouldn’t have set such unexacting standards for her. But she remained unfazed now in the face of such judgement. She felt as if it was a pass to do what she always wanted to do-while away her time day dreaming , thinking about trips to the ghats of the Ganga, stacking stones into tall towers, watching clouds pass by, collecting fallen feathers and imagining that she will sew them together into wings.

Sitting by the ghats was one of her favourite pastimes, she could while away hours, looking at the boats passing by , dipping her feet into the muddy waters . She often thought ‘maybe sometimes judgments that have already been cast free us, rather than put us in shackles from any more expectations. ‘Not a bad thing entirely,’ she thought to herself, as she ran her fingers through the water in the. Dharini knew her pursuits just occupied her and her time, but she had no complaints. She felt incomplete if a day passed too quickly in chores or in school work. She hated missing days like this and craved for stillness in time, where she could just be.

‘There’s a thrill in being average too, achievement is a trap!’ she thought to herself. ‘You are free from the cares. The expectation slides off.’ and it opens a whole new world of freedom to be yourself. 'And deep in our hearts, isn’t that the only thing we crave,' she thought she had gotten the better deal of the lot, the others just didn’t know it yet.

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